This week the students in Room 15 have begun investigating Hearing and Sound. We have collaborated to come up with a scientific hypothesis about what we believe sound to be. We have started to research and experiment with sound in an attempt to prove or disprove our hypothesis. Our reading and writing has focused around reading books and websites about hearing and sound and writing notes to support our research. Students have been learning about the importance of communicating in an effective way. We have practiced communicating our thoughts and ideas by speaking and listening, drawing and labeling diagrams and acting things out. If you are interested in the specific learning outcomes we will cover when learning about hearing and sound, please check out our LINKS page.
Observation is a large part of our day-to-day work. This week, we learned about observing through the lens of a camera. We spent some time outside taking photos so that we may bring our outdoor experiences back to our classroom. Students learned photography skills as well as how to edit a photo to help observe a subject. Outside work is a very important part of our work at Valley View Science program. Please make sure students come to school everyday prepared to work outside. In math we have been working on expressing numbers in different ways. We had a lot of fun finding many ways to make 100. Some of the ways we were able to make 100 were; equations, money, base ten blocks, centimeters and fingers! Next week we will work with number up to and including 1000. Thank you to all the parents who volunteered to come with us on our Community Walk next week! In an attempt to give all parents the opportunity to fulfill their volunteer requirement, we will ask those parents who have not yet joined us on a field study to come with us on this outing. I will be phoning all parents who returned the Field Study form to confirm. Forms for our January 30th field study to Studio Bell have been given out. My apologizes to anyone who emailed between mid-December and mid-January, my CBE email has been giving me problems. I believe it is sorted out now and I will do my best to get back to everyone in a timely manner. Mrs. MacNeil 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. It’s time again for Valley View’s annual food drive! From December 4th to 8th, students will be bringing non-perishable food to school to help address hunger on a local level. Supporting the Calgary Food Bank is the perfect way to participate in the spirit of the season. When making your donation please think about the non-perishable food in your own home. What do you usually buy and use? Those items often make the best donations. It’s helpful for donors to double check the expiry dates on items they bring in. See below for a list of non-perishable food needed:
Cereal Peanut butter Pancake mix Syrup Canned meat (ham, turkey) Canned fish Canned fruit Canned vegetables (corn, peas, carrots, mixed vegetables) Stuffing mix Cranberry sauce (whole berry) Soup (tomato, cream of mushroom, chicken noodle, chunky-style soups & stews, dry packaged soups, canned chili) Pasta sauce (tomato based) Juice Brown Beans Dry Pasta Baby Food In math we have been focusing on mental strategies and problem solving. The mental strategy we have worked on is “Thinking Addition for Subtraction.” When using this strategy students will solve subtraction equations by thinking about the inverse addition equation within the same number family. For example, to solve
18-7= students will think, “What number would I add to 7 to get a sum of 18?” Please click on the link below to see an explanation of the mental strategies we are learning and some practice problems. http://www.gov.pe.ca/photos/original/eecd_gr3math.pdf We have also been working on math problem solving. This week’s problem was: Marcia and Gwen have been earning tokens in class for each time they turn in a homework assignment. Gwen is excited to have 34 tokens until she learns that Marcia has 3 times as many tokens as she does. How many more tokens does Gwen need to earn to catch up to Marcia? We talked about how we can solve this problem by using repeated addition to find the sum of Marcia’s tokens. We are beginning to work on noticing what the question is asking and that there may be multiple steps required to solve the problem. Students are continuing to write paragraphs and this week we have been working on developing strong sentences by adding powerful adjectives and connecting simple sentences using conjunctions like; and, but, so, because. We are really excited to be working on an Ingenuity Challenge from Beakerhead. We have decided to build a structure out of cardboard that would allow us to grow healthy food in our classroom. We have been learning about the importance of eating healthy food and have decided to use our knowledge about building strong structures to build and indoor growing environment. Students are now able to describe the properties of rocks and minerals in regards to their color, shape, hardness, luster and streak. Next week students will have the opportunity to demonstrate their learning about rocks and minerals in a project of their choice. They can create a field guide, an art piece, a video, a writing piece or a digital presentation. This week Room 12 has been continuing to test and investigate rocks and minerals. We looked closely at the shapes of the minerals through magnifying glasses and we created a visual journal page about the many vocabulary terms we can use to identify the shapes. We have also completed scratch testing on our minerals to determine the hardness of each mineral. The students compared their scratch tests to Moh’s Hardness Scale.
We have begun looking at what determines a good quality of life. This is part of our Social Studies curriculum. Our students have been thinking deeply about what are needs vs. wants, and deeper questions about if love is a want or need. In math, we have been continuing to look at mental math strategies. This past week we have focused on ordering and comparing numbers and being able to find the “in between” numbers. Below is an example of the type of work we have been working on. Holly’s class is learning about big numbers. 1. Here is part of the class number line. 650 +++++++++660 Put an X on the number line, on the place that is halfway between 650 and 660. What is the number that should be there? _______________ In Language Arts, our students have been focusing on using their senses to describe our rocks and minerals. We will be writing a rocks and minerals descriptive poem this upcoming week. Our students have also been working on researching thoughtful questions and learning how to go through the proper skills of research. Students are learning how to turn answer their questions in full sentences, and how sometimes their answer turns into more questions. |
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