Happy Holidays Everyone! We hope you are enjoying your time off and remembering to explore and create while away from the classroom. All of this beautiful snow makes for great opportunities to get outside and observe all the amazing changes that happen around the winter solstice.
Parents, please encourage children to keep reading and writing over the break. When we return in January we will dive right back into our Inquiry work. Some dates to keep in mind are: -January 25th: Community Walk -January 30th: Field Study to Studio Bell Have a wonderful and curious Winter Break. Mrs. MacNeil and Mrs. Montgomery cannot wait to hear all about your adventures when we return. The students in the Grade 3 Science Program have all been working on problem solving skills in math. Our entire school has been given a math assignment, specifically chosen by grade teams. These graded math assessments will be sent home today. This is only one assessment. For the purpose of report cards, many assessments and observations are used in order to come to their report card marks. This problem will be used as a tool to help inform us of next steps to help your child. This math assessment may not necessarily reflect the report card grade your child will receive.
Students have been working hard on their Rocks and Minerals final project. Many students chose to show their learning through a PowerPoint Presentation. We have enjoyed learning how to use a mixture of visuals and written work to demonstrate what we know. During Exploration Time many students have been curious about imploding structures. We became curious about this after seeing a video of a stadium in the United States that was meant to implode but took days to fall. We discussed why this might happen and then tried different ways to breaking structural supports so that the "building" falls in on itself. Our math work has continued to be based around problem solving and reasoning. Students have been learning how to defend the answers to the math problems they solve. We have been using the sentence frame, "I know my answer is correct because..." An example of a problem we enjoyed working on is; Sarah had 32 minutes of homework. She ate baby carrots while doing her homework. She decided to eat a baby carrot every 4 minutes. How many baby carrots did she eat while doing her homework? Click on the link below to see a template that could be used for problem solving. PROBLEM SOLVING TEMPLATE-click here On Monday, we will send home a completed problem on this template. This will provide you with a small sample of your child's work and give some insight into how they are doing in this area of mathematics. Students will continue to be encouraged to choose "Just Right" books from the library. It is important that students continue reading over the Winter Break. After reading, students should be encouraged to talk about what they have read. The link below provides some questions you could ask after reading. probing_questions.docx I am creating a new section of our blog to save all the helpful links are and will be posted. To access this area of the blog you can click on the LINKS section near the top of the page near the HOME and BLOG sections. This week, the students in Room 15 have been doing an AMAZING job of working hard and following classroom expectations during a time of year when it can be very hard to do this! I am very proud of all their hard work. Our Winter Concert is tonight at 6:00pm. Please have students at the school between 5:40-5:50pm. When you have arrived, all Science Program Grade 3 students can proceed to Room 15 (Mrs. MacNeil's classroom). Parent's/Carers can find a seat in the gym. See you tonight!
Students in Ms. MacNeil’s Grade 3 at Valley View Science program have been thinking, there has got to be a better way to ensure healthy food is accessible to all children. We have been learning about children’s rights and why some children in our community may not have a lot of healthy food to eat. We decided to use our knowledge about building and material to design and build an indoor growing environment so that we can grow healthy food in our classroom and share amongst our class and our school community. We have discovered that growing food is a cheaper alternative to buying it in the grocery store and it is often times even more healthy!
There were many things we need to consider when designing our growing environment; -What do we want to grow and how will that impact the size of our growing environment? -How can we make the structure strong enough to support the force placed on the structure by the soil and plants? -How will we ensure that our plants have all of their needs met? -How can we share our learning with others? Our design was a collaborative effort, as well as the building process. We used aluminum foil to make the tray that will hold our plants and soil so that it is water resistant. We decided to add a roof so we can hand a grow light. We added a handle so we can move our plants around our school so others can learn from there as well. We are really excited to help our community and share what we have been learning about in Grade 3! Dec. 13th – Winter celebrations Grades 3, 4, 5 @6pm-7pm
We hope to see you there. |
Mrs. MacNeil &
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