We’ve been reading and writing poetry this month in Language Arts, and wrote a variety of different types of poetry this past week. The students worked hard to make interesting word choices and tried to paint pictures in their readers’ minds. They are very proud of their variety of poems, and you can see more of your child's poetry on Seesaw!
In Math next week, we are starting a new unit on addition and subtraction. Your child will develop strategies for adding and subtracting whole numbers by using open number lines, addition charts, mental math, estimation, Base Ten Blocks, place-value mats, and pencil and paper.
In this unit, your child will:
Here are some suggestions for activities you can engage in with your child:
This month in our reading lessons we've been focusing on making predictions about what will happen next in our reading. We've discussed that there's no one right prediction, but predictions need to be reasonable and based on evidence in the text. Some of the predictions we've been practicing in class have included:
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane has been an excellent book to practice predicting with because it's so suspenseful, and the author often leaves clues about what might happen next! Our class has been hard at work researching dinosaurs for the past couple of weeks! Different students have been researching the Edmontosaurus, Albertosaurus, Pterosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex, Nodosaurus, and Triceratops. Today we celebrated all our learning and excellent research reports by presenting our information to each other. I think everyone learned lots about dinosaurs today, and we have many budding paleontologists in our class!
Our class has been captivated for the past several days by the chapter book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, which we just started reading. It is about a vain, self-absorbed stuffed rabbit who finds himself on a fantastical adventure. The book has many surprising twists and turns, and we've used the book this week to practice our reading skills of making predictions, using clues from the text to infer, and checking for understanding. We can't wait to find out what happens next to Edward (I am asked multiple times each day if we will be reading Edward Tulane soon)! We wrapped up our focus on money in Math for the past couple of weeks with a food truck festival today! The students practiced counting and keeping track of different amounts of coins and bills, and we had fun with a scavenger hunt and card game to practice those skills. Today, those students put their knowledge of money to the test as they had to create a budget, apply for a business license, and then create a menu with prices. Afterward, students got to shop at each other's food trucks, and they had a blast calculating the totals of orders and pretending to enjoy each other's food.
This month we've had a few chances to work on counting collections during math class! Counting Collections is a hands-on, interactive math exercise that involves students counting and organizing objects in various collections. Collections can be anything, from buttons and coins to toy cars and books. Students organize their collection in a systematic way and count the items which helps improve their counting skills, attention to detail, and critical thinking. Groups keep a record of their findings, using math tools like tally marks, graphs, or written numbers, and we enjoy sharing our approaches to counting when everyone's done. It's an activity that even works at home if students are interested in enumerating household objects!
We've had a blast this week starting our mini-unit on dinosaurs! Students have been learning about different species of dinosaurs and their varied sizes, the time scale of their time on Earth, what the environment was like millions of years ago, and how palaeontologists learn from fossils. Here are some of the concepts we'll be covering over the next few weeks in this unit:
If your child would like to bring a fossil to school and you are alright with them bringing it, we'd love to take a (gentle) look at it in class! |
Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. Archive
April 2024
Categories
All
|