Our class has been enthralled this week by the chapter book Tâpwê and the Magic Hat, which we just started reading. It is by Cree author and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, and is inspired by Indigenous traditions. The boy Tâpwê lives on a prairie reserve and is gifted a magic hat by his kohkom (grandmohter). So far, it seems like Tâpwê is about to embark on quite the adventure! We are very lucky to be working Parkland School Division's Indigenous Education Coordinator Geri Wu on this novel study, and we've already learned so much about Indigenous culture. You may have heard of March Madness, but 3B is taking part in a book tournament called March Book Madness this month. There is a bracket of 16 entertaining and interesting picture books, and we have enjoyed reading the selections. We start voting this week to see which books move on in the tournament. The students have their different favourites, but so far the most popular books have been Blue, Runs With the Stars, Gibberish, There Are No Bears In This Bakery, The Cool Bean, and Endlessly Ever After. We’ll keep you posted on which books make it to the next round of March Book Madness!
Today we celebrated Family Literacy Day at Millgrove! Since 1999, thousands of schools, libraries, literacy organizations and other community groups have taken part in the initiative. We were lucky to have many guests read to our class this month, and today we enjoyed cozying up in our PJs, buddy reading, and listening to stories read by some of our parents. There are so many ways to enjoy reading! Taking time every day to read or do a learning activity with children is crucial to a child’s development, improving a child’s literacy skills dramatically, and can help a parent improve their skills as well. Thanks to all the special guests who read to us this month!
As Millgrove celebrates a focus on literacy this month, our class has been lucky to have special guest readers come and read picture books to our class. You can find out more about Family Literacy Day here (which we will be enjoying with a PJ Day next Friday). We're looking forward to a few more special reading guests next week!
A trailer for the Citadel's production of A Christmas Carol (a different adaptation from the David van Belle one we watched this year) This week we explored a mini-unit on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. We read the book, watched the Citadel's David van Belle Citadel play production (which was also available virtually again this year), and watched the Muppet's film version. The students enjoyed comparing the different adaptations of the story, and examining the history of why Charles Dickens wrote the story and how its message is still important today. To cap off our unit, we played Jeopardy to review our knowledge of the story and the students earned an impressive amount (not that the money matters so much, as we learned from Ebenezer Scrooge of course). It was lovely to see the class embrace the Christmas spirit and remember the importance of kindness and generosity this week! In late November, the students all wrote letters to Santa, and today we got our letter back from him! He sent us a lovely note, including notification that all the students made it onto the nice list! It was the best mail we could receive right before Winter Break!
As we continue to practice our persuasive writing skills in our current writing unit, we delved in the genre of advertisements. The students researched the history of ugly Christmas sweaters and then set to work designing their own ugly Christmas sweaters and detailing numerous convincing reasons that their audience should purchase that sweater. The advertisements were truly convincing, and there are some cunning businesspeople in the making in our class! With the new month came a new writing unit, and we’re now working on changing the world around us with our writing! We’ll be writing persuasive speeches, petitions, and editorials in the coming weeks during our writing time, and the class has been hard at work convincing their audiences of their theses. We are working on changing things in our school and community, and the students have been looking for noteworthy topics and fixable problems to write about. We’ve learned about on developing brave, bold opinions and considering our audience when crafting our arguments. With our recent work on global citizenship in Social Studies, it’s the perfect time for us to be using our writing to change the world around us, whether our school, friends, or community! We wrote letters to Santa today, and then delivered them using Canada Post's Santa Letter-Writing program. It's always engaging to write to a meaningful audience, and there are few audiences as exciting as Santa Claus himself! We're hoping that he might write back to us before Christmas time, so we'll keep watching out for some class mail with anticipation!
We’ve been reading and writing Halloween poetry this week 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! This week we got to start something very exciting: meeting with our buddy class 1C! Ms. Careless' class is very kind and sweet, and we really enjoyed reading to them during our buddy time. The students carefully chose and practiced reading picture books in advance of our buddy time, and I think the grade one students enjoyed hearing all the carefully selected stories. We can't wait to see them again next time!
We’ve been keeping busy with reading and writing in Language Arts this past week, and the students have been learning lots about how to make their writing clear and interesting. In addition to our personal narrative writing this week, we read some non-fiction books about turkeys and wrote plans to care for a prospective turkey pet. There were some very entertaining ideas for how to pass the time with one’s pet turkey. Happy Thanksgiving!
Today we celebrated Dot Day in 3B! Dot Day is based on the book "The Dot" by Peter Reynolds about a girl named Vashti who initially believes she can't draw, but later discovers that everyone can make a mark in the world. 15 million people in 181 countries are celebrating Dot Day this year, and we marked the occasion in 3B by dressing up in dots, working on a dot art project, and reflecting on how we can all make a mark in the world after reading the book. You can see the students' beautiful art, information about the artist Kandinsky who our art was inspired by, and the book "The Dot" below. We've been working hard in 3B over the last couple of weeks on our reading and writing! Grade three is a big year of growth for students as readers and writers, and we've been practicing building our stamina in both of those areas.
In Reading Workshop, we've been talking about how grade three readers build a powerful reading life, read as if books are gold, and read tons of within-reach books. Students have especially enjoyed reading on the Chromebook a couple of times and keeping track of how much they're reading. Our Writing Workshop this year is starting with a focus on narrative writing. Our class has been hard at work examining examples of excellent grade three writing, learning about strategies to help us find writing ideas, and writing up a storm. It's a big job getting back into the swing of writing after the summer, but students are starting to get into more of a groove getting their ideas onto paper and having stamina during writing time. The students love getting to hear their peers' writing during our sharing time! |
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
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