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! He wrote a specific note to each student from the letters they each wrote to him which was especially thoughtful and special. It was the best mail we could receive a week before before Winter Break! This week, the students were excited to crack out their rulers and begin our unit on the measurement of time, length, and perimeter! In this unit, the students will:
Here are some activities you can try with your child:
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! This month in our reading mini-lessons, we'll be practicing the skill of visualizing as we read! Visualizing is all about making a picture in our minds of what we're reading about. When readers visualize:
We wrote letters to Santa yesterday, and then delivered them using Canada Post's Santa Letter-Writing program today. 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!
Today in science we explored the concepts of phase changes, the behaviour of water, and density using ice balloons! Last week we put some liquid water in balloons that we placed in the freezer, and lo and behold, they turned into solid ice over the weekend! The students made some keen observations, and had some interesting hypotheses and questions. It's always fun conducting investigations in science!
This past week we were lucky to have some Inuit artifacts from the Royal Alberta Museum in our classroom. We learned about many interesting aspects of Inuit culture, and were able to use a variety of items including an ulu (multipurpose knife), traditional pulling game, kimiik, art, and a soapstone carving. This kit tied in well with our new Matter unit in science as we learn about natural materials, processed materials, and how Indigenous communities use a variety of materials so conscientiously. As the weather is starting to turn colder, it was exciting to learn about how Inuit people adapt so well to the cold climate! You can watch the video below to hear Inuit throat singing.
Because of the timing of Fall Break this year, we are celebrating Métis Week this week in our school division. Métis Week celebrates the heritage, history and contributions of Métis people to Alberta and Canada with events held across the province. Our class learned about Métis culture, heard from some Métis elders, and read some stories about Métis communities. We're lucky to have some students with Métis connections in our class as well, so it was an extra meaningful topic!
With the arrival of colder weather this month, we’ve started a new unit on Matter in science. We've been exploring natural versus processed materials, different states of matter, and how Indigenous people use materials from the natural environment. In this unit, we will be learning:
Stay tuned for our further learning about matter! The staff and parents at Millgrove's Remembrance Day Ceremony yesterday were so proud of the students' respectful behaviour. They truly brought pride to Millgrove School! We were privileged to have many special guests at our school yesterday, and the students learned a lot and reflected thoughtfully on the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers and veterans, and the value of peace. We read books about veterans and peace in class this week, including our favourite Finding Winnie, and the students had many meaningful reflections about these topics. This week our class, and many other classes at Millgrove, wrote postcards to members of the Canadian Armed Forces to express our gratitude for their important work. The students had many thoughtful and reflective messages to share, and it was meaningful to think of the many ways our armed forces help our citizens and other places around the world. Especially these days, we're grateful for the women and men in those roles who help keep our country, and others, safe.
We've started a new writing genre in Language Arts this month on biographies! Currently we're focused on researching the life story of a notable person. The students have been very enthusiastic about finding out all sorts of interesting facts about their chosen person, and the biography research is coming along nicely!
Our class had a wonderful first field trip of the year yesterday at the Royal Alberta Museum! We learned lots about glaciers, geology, Indigenous peoples, Alberta's history, Albertan animals, and all sorts bugs. A big thanks goes out to our wonderful volunteers who led groups, and the students did a great job trekking around the large building. Our very expert educator Kevin had a wealth of knowledge, and created some rich learning experiences for the class. When we chatted as a class after the trip, it was neat to see all the different things that stuck out to them during our time at RAM.
We had a splendid day celebrating Halloween in 3SB! Students got to wear their costumes all day, and we had quite an array of book characters, video game stars, conniving villains, and many other clever costumes in 3SB. We enjoyed doing some Halloween-themed activities in the morning, and then this afternoon we took part in Millgrove’s annual Halloween Parade and enjoyed some delicious snacks from our class' generous families. The students enjoyed playing their board games as well, and there were some highly competitive games going on in the afternoon. From the sounds of it, there were many successful trick or treaters as well that night!
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)! |
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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