Curriculum Newsletter part 2

 

Curriculum Newsletter

 

The students did a great job on their animal research projects. They will bring home the written portion of their project on Monday. It was great to see the creativity the students put into the dioramas and the creation of the plasticine animals. The students had the chance to view one another's dioramas as well as those made by Mrs. Burch's students today. All dioramas were sent home today. Thank you once again for your support with this project.

With the weather being so nice these past few days, we were able to do a community walk to the Pirate Park on Wednesday. If time permits, we may go for another walk next week.

We also had the privilege of a one-hour lacrosse session on Wednesday with Dan, one of the players on the Calgary Roughnecks (professional lacrosse team). The kids were able to apply the skills they learned earlier this year with Mr. van Sluys and enjoyed learning some new tricks.

Thank you to everyone for your generosity with regards to the Grade 3 fundraiser. The Grade 3s made $3200 for The Calgary Bridge Foundation! A cheque will be presented to the organization on Thursday during our school's final assembly.

A few notes about next week:

Please ensure all library and Home Reading books are returned by Monday if you have not already done so.

I will be sending home the students' notebooks, Visual Journals, pencil boxes, indoor shoes, etc. on Thursday. Please send a reusable or large plastic/cloth bag for all of their materials.

If your child will be leaving school early for holidays or will not be attending the last day of school, please let me know so that I can get their things organized to go home. 

We will be having a pj day on Wednesday for those children wishing to wear pj's. They can also bring one small stuffy to school with them if they choose. Also, if they have a board game or other non-electronic game they'd like to bring to play with some of their classmates, they can bring that. They will have the option to watch a movie or play games and have centers for part of the afternoon. They may want to bring popcorn or another special snack for the movie/games time. Please do not send candy.

Our Sports Day will be on Tuesday from 1:00 - 2:15. Please remember to send your child with a sunhat, sunscreen that they can apply independently, a water bottle, and good outdoor shoes for running. Also, everyone is encouraged to wear a tropical-themed shirt for this event.

**Our last day of school will be Thursday and dismissal is at 12:00pm.**

Our phonics focus this week was on words with "ui" and "ew". The five words we worked with throughout the week for shared reading practice and writing were: new, chew, threw, fruit, and juice.

The students were very excited to have two blocks of time this week to use the iPads. They were given time to explore the website PebbleGo and choose an animal or insect to research. We also had some time to explore a few of the learning apps for word and number work that are installed on our school iPads. We will have one or two more blocks of time with the technology next week to work on the research project. The students will begin work on their animal habitat diorama Monday and will make their animal out of plasticine. 

** Please ensure your child has their shoebox or similar-styled/sized box from the dollar store at school by Monday to begin their work.**  You may want to talk with your child about other items they would like to include in their dioramas that are appropriate for their animal's habitat. They may want to collect pebbles, grasses, small twigs, Lego or Playmobil trees and bushes, etc. I will provide paints, paper, and plasticine. Thank you for your support of this work. See below for an example of a diorama.

We have been learning the function and importance of the parts of a plant this week. Our classroom garden boxes are bursting with life and it will be exciting to see what's come up when we return on Monday. We planted tomato, zucchini, kale, cucumber, and many other seeds. Every morning, as soon as they enter the classroom, the students go to the windows to see the changes. :)

Today, our buddies taught us how to use the educational program Minecraft Creative on the desktop computers in the library. The students were very engaged as they took instruction from their older buddies. They learned how to navigate the program and started to create treehouses. 

With the weather being so nice these days - and the energy levels so high :) - we will plan to do 1 or 2 more community walks next week. Please ensure your child wears good walking shoes to school each day.

A Father's/Grandfather's Day card came home in your child's backpack today. Happy Father's Day on Sunday to all of the Dads and Grandpas!

MTS News!

We had another great week full of a variety of learning activities - both indoors and out!

On Tuesday, we went on a community walk to the Inukshuk Park with Mrs. Burch's class. We made observations of changes in the neighbourhood as people begin to welcome summer weather to their homes. Many people have started to garden and we noted lots of flowers, bird feeders, and lawn furniture being put out on porches! At the park, spiders and mosquitoes were noted and we could hear the constant chirping of birds. It is nice to see the neighbourhood coming to life with the warmer temperatures!

We enjoyed observing changes in our four ducklings this week as well as they grew and became more animated. We had the opportunity to observe them many times in the classrooms and out in the open area as they explored an enclosure, swam in a small pool, and had the freedom of a larger space - the open area/hallway outside our class. Our buddies joined us today to enjoy our feathered-friends. The ducklings are returning to the farm tomorrow and we were sad to say goodbye today. This has been an incredible experience. Being able to wait patiently for close to a month for the eggs to incubate, witnessing the pipping and hatching of one of our ducklings, and observing the changes in their size and abilities over the past two weeks has been a fantastic learning experience.

As our year begins to wind down, we are reviewing much of what we have learned in Math and Language Arts. This week, we reviewed fact families with addition and subtraction as well as representing numbers using multiple means - tallies, equations, base ten blocks, etc. Our phonics focus was on words ending in y. We learned that when a three letter word ends with a y the y makes the sound of a long i and when it has more than 3 letters the y makes the sound of a long e. We have also been working to identify characters, setting, problem and beginning, middle, and end in different stories. We have started planning our own stories through the use of a Roll and Write story activity. We will complete this work next week.

Shoeboxes Needed! :)

Next week, we will start an animal research project. Students will be using a program called Pebble Go! to learn about an animal of their choice. Each student will need a shoebox to create a diorama of their animal's habitat - forest, marsh, mountainous environment, etc. Please have your child bring in a box by next Friday, They can bring it in earlier as well. Please ensure their name is printed on the lid of the box. If you have an extra box to send, it would also be appreciated.  

Gym will be held outside all of next week as long as it's not raining. Please ensure your child has outdoor shoes suitable for running as Mr. van Sluys is doing Track and Field activities with the students. 

Other school news!

On Thursday June 20, the Grade Three students at our school will be hosting a Global Citizenship fundraiser in support of the Calgary Bridge Foundation for Youth, which supports newly arrived immigrants and refugees. They will be selling various student handmade items for $2. There will also be lemonade and fudge bites available for purchase. If you would like your child to participate, please send money with them and we will help them select their items to purchase. Thank you for all of your support! - The Grade Three Team

It has been great to see all of the students walking or riding to school on Thursdays (and other days of the week).  Every Thursday is a Walk or Ride day, and we are encouraging all students to get to school in an active way.  We are doing this because it is: good for the environment, good for our bodies, and it's fun!  - Mr. van Sluys

This week was an exciting one as we now have four amazing additions to our class! On Tuesday, we were greeted by duckling one - Lemonade. He/she was followed by Bubba and Oreo and then this morning Cookies and Cream was waiting for us in the incubator. All four ducklings are healthy and happy and get along very well. Mrs. Burch and I are sharing evening duck duties by taking the brood home to our families. :) We anticipate the arrival of another duckling this weekend. The students love having the ducklings and are excited to pet them and watch them play and feed in their water. We will be keeping them for one more week and will then return them to the farm.

Lemonade waiting to greet us on Tuesday

Lemonade 

The Brood

Your child's bean plant was sent home with them today. The plants were getting so tall that they were winding up with one another and were moving through our window blinds! You may want to transplant this plant into the ground or into another pot. It will produce runner beans.

This week, we listened to/watched a reading of the book Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens. It is a funny story that introduces students to both root vegetables and those that grow above the ground. We did some root vegetable art after listening to this book. On Monday, we will plant our classroom garden boxes.

Last week, we worked on some art with our buddies to represent onomatopoeia/sound words. Today, the students completed this work.

In Math, we continue to work with addition and subtraction in both equations and word problems. I introduced the students to an online addition game that you may want to use at home. The students really enjoyed it. This would be a great game to play with your child either online or at a table using actual dice. :) . Here is the link: https://www.abcya.com/games/sum_of_all_dice

We will not have any more book exchanges at the library this year as Mrs. McLean needs time to do a complete inventory of our library before the next school year. Please take a look at a home for any library books your child may still have and return them as soon as possible.

Thank you to everyone for sending in a baby photo of your child. I was waiting to receive a few at the end of the week so will be making up the guessing game this weekend.

The students will be doing an animal research project in the next two weeks. Please hold onto a shoebox for your child to use for this project. Each student will make a diorama to represent their animal's habitat. If you have more than one shoebox that you can donate, I would appreciate you sending them in. You can send them in starting Monday. Thanks in advance!

We are hoping to go on a community walk at some point next week depending on the weather. We will be observing changes in the vegetation as well as looking for creatures big and small! Please make sure your child wears good walking shoes to school each day next week. We are most likely to go for our walk on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

I hope you all enjoy some rest and relaxation over the next couple of days. See you Monday! :)

 

This week we worked with the digraphs "wh" and "ph". The "wh' work was review from a month or so ago as many students were not yet applying this learning into their written work. The work with "ph" was new. Our focus words were: graph, phone, what, when, and where.

We are expecting our duck eggs to begin hatching on Monday. It has been interesting to see some developments in the eggs recently, however, it is difficult for the students to see many of these small changes. The excitement will definitely rise once we see cracks in the eggs! Here is a recent photo of an egg when it was out over the light. The eyes and beak are becoming visible.

In Math this week we watched/listened to a book called One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. The book focuses on representing different numbers using feet. A snail has one foot, a person has two feet, a crab has eight feet, etc. The students were challenged to represent given numbers using a combination of animals. It is always interesting to see all the different ways students approach these problems. We will continue this work next week.

In Science, we continued working with our unit on Movement. We discussed pathways of movement and did some line art to represent many of the different pathways including straight, curved, spirals, and zigzag.

We enjoyed a great day at the zoo on Thursday. A big thank you to the parent volunteers who joined us. We could not have gone without you! :) The students had lots of time to explore the zoo in small groups and our class participated in a one hour long program about polar bears and other arctic animals. We learned about seasonal and permanent ice and how seasonal ice impacts the ability of polar bears to travel between Churchill, Manitoba and the Arctic. The students were able to touch a number of biofacts including pelts of a polar bear, seal, and arctic fox.

A friendly reminder re: baby photos:

If you have not yet done so, please email me or send in a copy of a baby photo of your child by Monday, May 27 so that I can put together a "Who Am I?" photo board. The children will be challenged to match the baby photos with their classmates. This is part of our unit on Past and Present in Social Studies.

Library:

This coming Tuesday will be the last time the students will be able to exchange their library books this year. Please make sure all library books are returned by Tuesday, June 4.