We can't believe that there are only 3 days of school left! For our last TWAS, we decided to write one together as a class. This week was a very busy and fun week for us! Here are some of our highlights:
- "Yesterday in the afternoon we watched Wonder for the whole afternoon. It was pretty long and my neck started to hurt from looking up." -SM - "My favourite part about this week was our art that we were doing. We are finally doing one about India. We got fabric to make an elephant in the middle of it. Ms.Brett and Mrs. V were thinking about having a buffet and bringing in foods from all those countries." -AF - "We went to the water park on our bikes and rollerblades. I saw some of my friends from the day care. My second thing is that we are writing stories and I like writing stories." -BC - "I was happy that I finished my typing on the computer and now I am working on my drawings and my book cover." -AS - "This week on Wednesday the champions club went to the spray park on their bikes. On Thursday in the afternoon we watched Wonder and had popcorn. On Friday we had an international buffet and Ms. Brett and Mrs.V brought in food from the four countries we are learning about which is Ukraine, Tunisia, Peru, and India." -MA -"This week we are learning a rap song. I was a D'jambe person. " -QS -"After this blog gets posted at music we will have had the talent show." -JG -"In gym we are doing summer olympic sports. For art we are making our elephants and designing them." -LC -"We are doing rangoli designs for our elephants." -MZ -"The other part of the art is batik. It's where you get a cloth and the real version you put wax but we are putting glue and we might paint it today if we have time." - SM -"In music we learned a rap that Mrs.V and Mrs. Jackson made so that we can do at the end of the school year for the assembly." -MB -"In gym we were doing shot put and archery in gym." -CE -"Today we are doing a buffet and then after that we are going have dessert." -SB -"My favourite part was watching Wonder" -MW -"We watched Wonder and there were some funny parts and some sad parts." -AH -"My favourite part was watching Wonder. I liked it but a lot of the movie was sad." -LW -"For the buffet I brought some brownies and we also started writing stories." -CZ -"For the buffet I brought some apple strudel for dessert and I think that is going to be really popular because it is really really good." -KN Thank you to everyone who brought in delicious treats for our buffet- it was a huge success! I am so impressed with how many students tried new foods. Our last week is a short week for students as Wednesday is their last day of school. Here are a few important notes for next week: Monday- Sport Day (PM only) - Send students ready for outside (sunscreen, hat, water bottle) Tuesday- Clubs (PM only) - Last day of SPARK Wednesday- Assembly 10:00am, Board Games (PM), Report cards go home - Students are welcome to bring their favourite board game, we will spend our last afternoon playing them together. I can't believe the last week of the year is already here, it has been a wonderful year and this group of students has been such a perfect group to begin my time at Cranston with. I hope everyone has a great weekend! Ms.Brett Our week started with so much excitement as we realized that we had surpassed our fundraising goal! Congratulations again to all of the classes that put so much work in to this wonderful initiative.
Literacy this week has been focused on story writing. Students planned their stories and began writing their rough drafts. We will continue working on this next week as we move through the writing process and finish by publishing their stories. We also continue to read daily, both independently and as a class with our class read aloud. We are almost done reading Wonder and we will be watching the movie along with the other grade three classes next week! Parents please be advised that the movie is rated PG. If you have any concerns or wish for your child not to watch the movie, please let me know! We learned about India this week and explored some of the different aspects of the Indian culture. Students were especially fascinated by the Elephant festival that happens in Jaipur every year. Ask your child to describe what the elephants look like during the festival. We will continue to explore India next week and we will work on an art piece inspired by the Indian culture. In culmination of our learning about cultures around the world, and as a bit of a celebration of all the hard work put in to the water fundraiser, we will be hosting a 'international buffet' next Friday. We will be serving some traditional foods from the four countries we learned about. Students will have the chance to try some new foods if they would like, while eating their regular Friday snack. We would like to invite students to bring in a dessert that is important to them to share with the class. This could be a favourite family recipe, or something that is a family tradition. Please let me know if your child will be bringing something, and if there are any specific dietary restrictions we should be aware of. Our Science focus on animal life cycles continued this week. Students have been working on a research project on an animal of their choice. Last week students looked for information and took notes on what they found. This week they took all of that information and created a google slide presentation. We began sharing their projects yesterday and we will continue sharing them next week. As students share we are discussing what each animal's life cycle is and we are trying to see if there are similarities between them. So far we have noticed that mammals all seem to have similar life cycles and reptiles, birds and fish seem to have similar life cycles. Patterning was our math focus this week, along with time. For patterning we looked at two new kinds of patterns: increasing and decreasing. Students practiced creating these patterns, interpreting patterns rules and extending these patterns. We also learned about the Fibonacci sequence, one of the most famous increasing patterns in the world! I was SO impressed that so many students were able to figure out the pattern rule all by themselves. We are also looking more closely at the passage of time. Students created a 'daily life' project to represent what their average day looks like. They had to think about when and for how long they do different activities, and record them on to a 24 hour clock. Music: Artist of the Week- For the last days of the school year, we will be reflecting on all of the artists that we have learned about this year. Additionally, we will be touching on a handful of other artists that we did not have time to cover this year, and we will be connecting them to our prior learning. Thank you for all of your support in the Artist of the Week program this year. I hope everyone has a wonderful summer and finds a way to incorporate our artists into their holiday tunes! Upcoming Important Dates: Wednesday, June 20 Champions Field Trip (AM) Fun Lunch Thursday, June 21 Watch Wonder (PM) Friday, June 22 Talent Show International Buffet Monday, June 25 Sports Day (PM) Tuesday, June 26 Club Day (PM) Wednesday, June 27 Assembly @10:00 Report cards go home Last day of school I hope everyone has an excellent weekend! Ms.Brett Today was the big day! The culmination of weeks of work put in by all of our students was a great success. Thank you SO much to all of our awesome parent volunteers and students who worked hard in the sun to sell all of the goodies we had. Our sale was almost entirely sold out by the end! I also want to commend all of our students on doing a great job with the water walk. Everyone carried a milk jug of water around the field for almost 20 minutes. I think everyone quickly realized how much work it is, and how unimaginable it seems to think of kids doing this all day long just to get water to drink. On Monday students will work together to count up all of the money we have raised and it will be added to our total. Fingers crossed we reach our goal!
*** Our donation page will be live until June 30, so anyone still wanting to donate is welcome to do so! *** This week we also managed to squeeze in making fraction pizzas, learning about writing dialogue, animal research, literature circles and exploring Tunisian culture. We learned how to write our names in Arabic, one of the official languages of Tunisia. Next week we will continue on with our narrative writing and animal research. We will also start exploring patterns and time, as well as explore India a bit more deeply. As we approach the end of the school year (a bit too quickly for my liking!) please ensure you are sending any library books back to the school that may be still at your house. Notices will be sent home next week for any books still missing. I hope everyone has a great weekend! Ms.Brett We have officially entered the last month of school and as we approach summer the word bittersweet has come up in our class. We are all excited for summer break, but not looking forward to saying goodbye! Our last month will be jam packed as we finish science projects, math units and write stories. Oh, and raise $3000 for clean water! Our wonderful students have already raised $603, and have been working hard to advertise the fundraisers we are holding next Friday. This week students went to each class in the school to share information with students and encourage them to come to our fundraising sale next week. Just a reminder for everyone: On Friday June 8 from 11:15-12:30 we will be selling baking, lemonade, popcorn, used toys and books and student artwork on the compound. Our students will also be participating in a water walk in the morning of June 8. Here is some more information about the water walk and the pledge sheet that came home this week: Each student will be walking around the soccer field, carrying jug of water. If you (or family members or neighbors or your independently wealthy dog) would like to sponsor your child, please complete the pledge sheet. Pledges can be made as a flat amount or per lap the student walks. You may send in a cash donation, or you may donate directly to our campaign page online at: https://my.charitywater.org/cranston-kids/operation-cranston-clean-water We started learning about fractions this week. In grade three students need to know that fractions are part of a whole, be able to identify them and compare them. Today we started a fraction project that involves pizza! We also worked on problem solving this week and we specifically looked at problems that require reasoning and logic. I was very impressed at how well everyone did! In literacy we continued to look at different parts of narrative writing. This week we learned about setting and plot. I have loved seeing how creative everyone is with their ideas to make these different aspects interesting and engaging for the reader. We continue to work on the book Fantastic Mr. Fox for our literature circles. This week we were summarizing, illustrating and predicting. Students are also learning to use dictionaries to look up new words they come across while reading. Our novel study of Wonder continues, and we are almost at the end! This book has been bringing up great conversation about friendship, kindness and appreciating people's differences. We had a very fun week with our Science units! Students worked super hard on building the bridges they designed last week. It was awesome to see all of the collaboration and perseverance from students as they helped each other trouble shoot and solve problems that came up as they built. On Thursday we tested our bridges and all of them were able to span our gap of 30 cm! We gave each builder two stars (things they did well) and a wish for something they could improve to make their bridge better. On top of all that excitement, our butterflies were ready to enter the wild. We released them on Wednesday afternoon and it was very fun to see them spread their wings and fly away. There are some pictures of our bridges and our very brave students at the bottom of the blog! Upcoming Important Dates: June 6 Fun Lunch June 7 Seussical Jr. Performance at DGS June 8 Water Walk & Fundraiser June 20 Champions Field Trip June 25 Sports Day June 26 Club Tuesday June 27 Last Day & Report Cards I hope everyone has a great weekend, and hopefully the sun will come out soon! Ms.Brett Happy Friday everyone! I can't believe next week is already June!
This week we worked a lot on our water fundraiser this week in preparation for our 'kick off' today at the sharing assembly. We put together a short presentation to introduce our cause to the school. Ms. Thomas also helped us prepare a song to conclude our presentation. Students sang a moving rendition of "Today I'm Gonna Try and Change the World" by Johnny Reid. We also spent time creating posters to hang up in the school. On Monday we are going to continue advertising, and hopefully our donations continue to grow! We appreciate all the support we can get, so feel free to share the following information on any social media sites or with friends and family: Students in grade three at Cranston School have been inspired through their work in Social Studies this year. After learning about water scarcity they would like to raise money to help build a well in a country that does not access to safe water. They have set an ambitious goal of $3000 which would provide clean water for at least 100 people. Donations will go to Charity:Water. To raise money they are planning the following fundraisers: Bottle Drive – a container will be in the school parking lot from June 4-8 and you may drop off bottles during school hours. Yard Sale/Bake Sale/Art Sale/Lemonade Stand – students will be selling used toys and books, fresh baked goods, lemonade, popcorn, and student-made art from 11:15 – 12:15 on Friday, June 8, on the compound. Water Walk – students will be carrying jugs of water around the field on Friday, June 8, in the morning, and will be looking for pledges from friends and family. If you would like to support our students, donations can be made in five ways. 1. Cash donations to the donation jar in the office. 2. Donate online at https://my.charitywater.org/cranston-kids/operation-cranston-clean-water. Please feel free to share this link on social media! 3. Shop at our fundraiser on June 8. 4. Sponsor a grade 3 in the water walk. 5. Bring your bottles to the school from June 4-8. We finished up our mini unit on perimeter this week with a fun art project. Students have done a great job of demonstrating their understanding of this concept. Next week we move on to fractions! In Literacy we continue to work on our literature circles. These have been a great way for students to not only practice reading, but also practice comprehension strategies and have discussions about what they are reading. We are going to be spending the last month of the school year focusing specifically on narrative writing (or story writing). This week we spent time looking at character and developing interesting characters. Our Science unit on building is coming to an end and we are going to use all of things we have learned to build bridges! Please see the email sent home on Friday about bringing in materials for building. It has been awesome to see how many students have been able to make connections to this unit and find real world examples of what we have been learning about. Our caterpillar friends are now all snug in their chrysalids and have entered their pupa stage. We are eagerly awaiting their adult stage! I hope everyone has a great weekend, it looks like it is going to be another hot one! Ms.Brett It was such a busy week that we ran out of time to do our individual TWAS writing! Instead, we decided to write it as a group. Here it is: This week at school.... "We are working on our writing for Mrs. Tuff and Mr.Scout" - MW "We are trying to help people on Somalia by getting $3000 so we can build a well and help get clean water" - MB "We don't get to choose what place they build the well, but it could be Somalia" - CE "We are writing a letter to see if Mrs. Tuff or Mr.Scout will let us do the water fundraiser. If you could, please tell your family and friends to donate money!" -SM Please share our Fundraiser website with all family and friends, even small donations of $5 will help us reach our goal! You can copy it from here: https://my.charitywater.org/cranston-kids/operation-cranston-clean-water "We went on a Zoo field trip and saw the pandas and we learned that they are losing their habitat." -MA "Jamie wore a panda suit because when the zookeepers have to feed the pandas they wear a panda suit covered in panda pee. So they don't get scared or run away. But he wasn't actually wearing a pee suit!" -AH "They wear the pee because they can't just look like a panda, they have to smell like a panda. " -MW "At the zoo they had a new exhibit called the Land of Lemur's and there is a really skinny bridge to cross and a really big one. The lemur's were white and black and their eyes were so creepy." -AF "Some of the lemur's were the color brown and we can't crouch in the lemur exhibit because that makes the lemurs think that we are zookeepers and they are going to come to us." -KN " If you sit down in the lemur exhibit they might think you are a rock and sit on you." - MZ " I almost pet a peacock, but we couldn't because it might get scared. The panda exhibit used to have the elephants in it." -BC " Where the bears were there was one black bear, one brown bear and one spirit bear. A spirit bear is a whitish color." - MW "We did the volunteer tea." -LW "We made flowers out of tissue paper." - AA "I was an MC for the volunteer tea and did great!" -AH "The choir sang Revolution and Space Oddity for the volunteer tea." -MB "We walked to Dr.George and we got to see around the school and the gym and after before we left we got a cookie and juice box and we got to see one of their band practices." - LW "I saw one of my friends from daycare at DGS and also we did a scavenger hunt." - BC "One of the people that gave us the tour was one of my sister's friends." -SM "We even saw the food lab and we also tried to open locks." - MZ "Our caterpillars have grown SO much for the past few days that they are already starting to make a chrysalis." -AF "Our caterpillars are going to turn into painted lady butterflies." -JG We also did some research on the computer to learn more about their habitat, diets, adaptations and predators. "In Art we did a picture where you take a square and you rip it or tear it and turn it into a picture of something else." -MA "In Music the artist of the week was Ella Fitzgerald. She is the second artist that plays jazz music. The first one was Miles Davis." -CZ "In Math we learned about the perimeter of the shape, which means the distance around the shape." -DC To practice measuring the perimeter we measured the floor tiles and some different 2D shapes. Thank you to all the volunteers who made our field trip this week possible! Just a reminder, there is no school Friday, May 18 and Monday, May 21. Please also check the school's weekly message for information about a talent show, outstanding fees and next week's artist of the week. Have a great long weekend, Ms.Brett I guess this year May showers will bring May flowers? Whichever the case, it has been great to see the city becoming more green, and it has been just as great to see how much our kids love to play outside, rain or shine! Thank you parents who have sent their kiddos with rain gear, and allowed us to still enjoy our outside time in the unpredictable spring weather. Our week has been busy with lots of ongoing projects, some just wrapping up and others just beginning. We started and finished a Mother's Day project, which incorporated some of the different things we have been learning in literacy this year. I won't say anymore, so the surprise won't be ruined! I hope everyone is able to enjoy some special time this weekend celebrating all of the moms and mother figures in your lives. In Science we have been talking and learning more about bridges. This week we talked about what a bridge is for and the different reasons we use bridges. We also looked at what makes a bridge strong, and a few of the different types of bridges. We had a lot of fun looking at bridges from all over the world, including some famous bridges like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Confederation Bridge and the Ponte Vecchio. We will continue to look at bridges and their structure in the weeks to come, but we are also going to spend some time working on another unit: animal life cycles. This week we had 18 new class members join us. So far they keep to themselves, are pretty quiet and have grown a lot. We are going to keep watching them grow and change over the next few weeks and then we will probably have to let them go. Have you guessed what they are yet? If you haven't, ask your child and they should be able to tell you! In Math we have continued to learn about 3D shapes and what makes each shape unique. We have learned about edges, faces, vertices, as well as thought about the shape of faces, the length of edges and other features of each 3D shape. To strengthen our understanding we had a scavenger hunt, wrote riddles and tried out some word problems that involved 3D shapes. We have also been using a website to help us practice our mental math and critical thinking. It is called Math Before Bed, you can check it out at home! Our Social Studies weaving project is winding down and I have to say, the finished products are amazing! We are going to display them in our class for a few weeks before sending them home. Everyone is anxious to take them home and show off their hard work so here are a few pictures: We are also starting to get our water fundraiser more organized. This week we met with the other classes that will be joining us in this initiative and decided on a team name. Students chose Operation Cranston: Clean Water as our name and we have set up our fundraising page on the Charity:Water website. Check it out here! The students have set an ambitious goal of raising $3000 because that is how much it costs to build a well for one community. With this well they would be changing the lives of approximately 100 people, and providing them with clean water for many years to come. We are working hard on organizing different fundraisers at the school, as well as creating advertisements for our project. We are going to kick off our Campaign at the end of May, so stay tuned for more information. In the meantime, please share our fundraising page with family and friends, and encourage your child to share with them why we are trying to raise money! A donation jar has been set up in our main office for any monetary donations that are made.
This week we were visited by Quest Theater, who did a performance called "We Are All Treaty People". They shared the story of first contact between newcomers and indigenous people in Canada. Students also had the unique opportunity to participate in a round dance. You can ask your child what that is, and what music we danced to. Next week is going to be a busy one for Room 74:
Have a wonderful weekend everyone! Ms. Brett What an exciting week! I think a highlight for everyone was our field trip to the National Music Center on Tuesday. We started our morning with a hearing and sound program, where we reviewed all of the concepts we learned earlier this year, and built on our understanding of pitch, volume and vibration. Then we had the opportunity to explore different types of instruments. Cam, our instructor, taught us the four ways that instruments make noise. See if you child remembers them! We also go to see a demonstration on the Kimball Theater Organ and go on a scavenger hunt on each of the floors of the music center. It was great to see so many students being able to extend their learning and explore hearing and sound through Canadian music.
Back at school we have been busy as well. We have been combining math and science this week as we learn about shapes in Math and structures in Science. This week we started talking about 3D shapes and how to identify them by describing the number of edges, vertices and faces they have. Once we knew more about 3D shapes we were able to experiment with them and find out which shapes are the strongest, making them the best to build with. We tested cylinders, triangular prisms and rectangular prisms. One was strongest when used as a column, and one was strongest when used as a joist or beam. See if your child remembers which worked best in which scenario. They can also recreate this experiment easily at home with paper, tape and a few books! Keep your eyes peeled this weekend for a small science activity for homework! Social Studies and art also came together this week as we started learning how to weave! Weaving is part of the Peruvian culture and we have been learning about the art of weaving so we thought it would be fun to try it out ourselves! Also in Social Studies we have continued to talk about water scarcity and how we might be able to help people in the world who don't have access to clean drinking water. We brainstormed ideas, and talked about what could help the most people, for the longest amount of time and discovered that building a well in a community can help them access clean water for a very long time. We also discovered that if we raise money we can give it to an organization who will pick a community in need and build the well for us! This project is in the beginning stages as we are just starting to think of how we could raise money, and how much money we would need to raise, but if we are successful it would be a very powerful legacy for our grade 3's to have! Check out Charity Water for details about the organization we have been learning about, and stay tuned for more information! As the warmer weather arrives and summer creeps closer it is becoming harder for students to stay focused, but we are trying our best in room 74 to stay on track. Our last units in science, math and social studies are really fun and can involve a lot of hands on activities, which is great for our restless kiddos this time of year. I hope everyone enjoys another sunny weekend! Ms.Brett Sunshine! It has been SO wonderful to get outside this week and be able to enjoy some warmer weather. Here's hoping it continues! This week we continued to practice the stacked strategy in math. We are also working a lot on problem solving. Students have been working on solving problems as independently as they can and trying their best. We have been trying out different types of word problems, including more open ended problems that have more than one answer. Our building unit continued this week and this time students had a whole class challenge: build the tallest, most stable structure possible using 100 red plastic cups. We worked together and tried different ideas out until we realized it needed a strong base. This seemed to be the winning idea! We discussed that stable structures have strong bases, or solid foundations. I wonder if this will be a helpful part of our future challenges? We spent a lot of time this week on different Social Studies activities. We started our week learning more about history of Machu Picchu and doing a sketch of the Machu Picchu site. To further our learning about Peru we learned about the importance of the llama in Peruvian culture and the art of weaving. We are going to continue this learning next week. This week the grade three's had the unique opportunity to video conference with Naleem, a member of the Dutch government who works with the UN. We learned all about what the UN is and what they do in the world. We also learned about the areas that Naleem works in: climate and water. Students were surprised to learn about how many people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water. It was so awesome to see how engaged everyone was in this and the questions they came up with to ask Naleem were very insightful. We continued all of our literacy routines this week, including literature circles, journal writing and words their way spelling.
Next week will be an exciting one as we head out on our first field trip of the year to the National Music Center! Please keep your eye on emails for more information about what your child needs to bring on Tuesday. Music: Genre of the Week- This week we will be exploring the genre and cultural phenomenon of Hip Hop. We will be taking a look at the five cornerstones of the Hip Hop movement: MCs, DJs, Break Dancing, Graffiti Art, and Knowledge. I hope everyone has an excellent weekend! Ms.Brett |
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