Here are the pictures we used for our monster descriptions, can you tell which one your child described??! Hello room 74 families!
We are officially counting down to the holidays in our classroom, under a month to go! I can't believe how fast this year is flying by. Cranston is gearing up for the holidays, stay tuned for more information about how we will be celebrating and spreading the holiday spirit. Don't forget, our class is performing on the evening of December 14 for the christmas concert. Our black Friday didn't involve any sales, but it was an exciting end to the week here at Cranston. We spent the very beginning of our morning writing in our TWAS books. Then we had a special musical presentation from a saxophone player who played music from the era of Bach all the way to the Beatles for us. We followed that with a quick snack break before we headed off to our second round of clubs for Club Friday. With all the excitement we ran out of time for our spelling tests, so we will do them on Monday! To begin our week we did some goal setting, and students have put their writing goals into IRIS, which you can check out at home by having them log into their IRIS accounts. I was happy to see that most students could look at their writing and find things they were already good at and a few things to work on. In Math we continue to do centers each week, which give us an opportunity to practice all of the different skills we have been working on. We have some for place value, graphing, adding and subtracting. We also starting talking about estimation this week, reviewing what it means to make a good guess. Next week we will continue to work on estimation, and look more closely at rounding so that we can use estimation as a strategy for problem solving and computation. We learned more about hardness this week in Science and did an experiment to test the hardness of different rocks and minerals. Students used the Moh's Scale of Hardness to determine different types of rocks. Ask your child what materials we used to test them! In Social Studies we have started exploring different landforms. Students have been learning about the different ways we can demonstrate comprehension during reading. So far we have practiced visualizing, predicting and making connections. There are three kinds of connections we can make to what we are reading, ask your child what they are. This week we have been working on being able to write about our connections and explain our thinking. We continue to build our writing stamina and recognize ways we can make our writing more interesting. Our gym schedule was a bit wacky this week, as we had a really cool opportunity to try out curling. Through the 'Rocks and Rings' program we had curling experts come to our school to teach us about the sport of curling. In music students have been working on our christmas songs and got to enjoy the music of the Spice Girls. The teachers may have even performed a flash mob of "Stop". Next week's Artist of the Week: Miles Davis- For our first jazz artist of the year, we will be looking at trumpeter/composer, Miles Davis. We will be talking about his influence while we explore the overall genre, tying in other greats such as John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and many more. Upcoming Important Dates: November 29 Fun lunch December 6 Fun lunch December 8 PD day NO SCHOOL December 14 Christmas Concert (Evening) December 15 Club Friday December 20 Fun lunch December 21 Last day of classes, report cards go home January 9 Classes resume I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend and enjoys this unusually warm weather! Ms.Brett Some highlights from this week... "When we drew a picture of the castle in Harry Potter" - MW "Making a comic book with a friend" - JG "Doing the math centers and the problem of the week" -SM "My favourite part was the scavenger hunt in Science. I thought it was pretty neat and I wish we could do it again" -AF "My favourite part was when we learned about the Ramones in music." -MB "This week was the scavenger hunt and I liked finding all of the clues and I found a little bit before we started" -QS "When we did bingo math and color by number" - BC "When I got to eat chicken wings for lunch!" -AS "When we did the climbing wall in gym" -MA "When we did stations in gym" - MZ "We did problem of the week and I liked it because it was easy" -CE "In writing when we did the pug writing" -LW "When we did DEAR. I like the books and I like to read" -CZ "I liked when we did Blue Christmas in music" -MA "My favourite part was when we did the math bingo and I'm glad its in our math centers now." -AF "When we did writing" - MZ "When we learned about making connections. Text to self, Text to text and text to world." -MA "We finished our mapping books" - AH "When I got to make a picture for my friends" -MA Hello room 74 families! Today was an important day at Cranston, as we held our Remembrance Day assembly. Every student in our class was involved in this assembly and I was very proud to see everyone's hard work come together in such a beautiful way. A lot of our week this week was spent rehearsing and getting ready for today. Our class made a beautiful poppy wreathe for the assembly. We made pinwheels out of paper to make our wreathe and added paper leaves. Pinwheels are hard to make, but most people got the hang of it by the end! Thank you to all the family and friends who took time out of there day to join us in recognizing this important day. This week our class started to look at subtraction in math, which is tricky when we start using bigger numbers! We are learning a strategy called adding up, which allows us to use some of the addition strategies we learned to help us solve subtraction problems. Here is a picture of what it looks like: This is one of many strategies we will learn, but it allows students to do what makes sense for them. There are many ways to add up to the bigger number. If you want to practice this at home feel free! 2 and 3 digit numbers is what we have been working on and what is expected for grade 3. I have been encouraging students to add with number that make sense to them. For example, adding by ten might make more sense to some people than adding by 20 or 30.
We started talking about how to make our writing more interesting by using different sentence starters. Instead of starting each sentence the same way, we brainstormed how we can start each sentence differently. Check out our TWAS writing this week, can you notice a change in how we are starting our sentences? We have also been focusing a lot on printing neatly, with capital and lowercase letters in the right places. New spelling words will be coming home on Monday, thank you to everyone who takes time to practice them at home. I can tell who is practicing often! Constable Mattice visited us the week again and did a lesson on community and how we contribute to our community. I think students are beginning to see how their strengths and talents make our school community better, and how their actions and choices contribute to our classroom community. On the note of bringing things to our class, I just wanted to share our new sharing policy in our class. I have a class of sharers! Which is awesome, and very welcome, but I have been finding that people are bringing things to share every day, sometimes many times a day, and sadly we just don't have time all the time. I have designated a time Wednesday afternoon for sharing and I have told the class that if they have things to share, this is the day and time to do it! Coming home today: - TWAS books - school photos (if you ordered them) - library notices for late books (please check at home if you get one!) - spelling tests Upcoming important dates: November 16 Movie Night November 17 PD Day (no school) November 24 Club Friday November 29 Fun lunch December 6 Fun lunch December 8 PD Day (no school) I hope everyone has a great weekend, and finds some time for quiet remembrance tomorrow. Ms.Brett A note from Mrs. Thomas: Artist of the Week: The Ramones The Ramones almost single-handedly invented what we now know, as “punk rock”. Originally made up of Joey, Tommy, Dee Dee, and Johnny, each member adopted the surname “Ramone”. This name came from Paul McCartney who used to use the surname to check into hotels at the peak of his fame. Their musical style consisted of 60s bubble-gum pop, beach boys melodies, and chain saw guitar chord progressions. We will be using the Ramones as a spring board to explore the influence that punk had on pop music. Brrrrr! Our winter weather has arrived and seems to be sticking around, at least for now. Please remember to always send students with appropriate outdoor clothing, as they still do go outside for lunch recess. This means sending the works: snow pants, snow boots, mitts, toques. Thank you in advance for helping keep us warm on these chilly days!
Our week started out by finishing up our place value robot projects. I hope everyone gets a chance to take a peak at them during interviews because everyone did a great job. We have also finished looking at addition strategies in math and will be moving on to subtraction next week. For our addition strategies we have now reviewed and practiced: doubles, near doubles, place value, friendly tens, landmark numbers and an open number line. We also continue to practice graphing, and did a halloween graph this week. We have finished up our peace poems, and they are displayed in the hallway along with our poppy art for Remembrance Day. We also got new words their way sorts this week. Students are encouraged to practice at home with their parents. In Social Studies we are continuing to work on our mapping unit. This week we talked about the countries in North America, as well as the provinces and territories in Canada. On Halloween day we watched a Magic School Bus episode on erosion and students were surprised to learn how much water can change rocks. We also started learning about the difference between igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. As our Science unit slowly comes to a close, students will be spending more time looking at rocks and using their new knowledge to identify them based on how they look and feel. To understand more about how and where rocks turn to liquid, we are also learning about the layers of the earth and volcanoes. Ask your child if they can remember which layer is liquid rock! Our preparation for the Remembrance Day assembly are in full swing. Our class is one of the classes that is hosting the assembly, so we will have a lot to do next week to get ready. The class is learning a song with the rest of the grade 3's, which they will preform. We also have a few students who are part of special clubs that a working on different performances for the assembly. If you are able to make it, the assembly will be at 10:30 next Friday, November 10. Thank you to everyone coming to interviews this week, it is always great for me to be able to sit down with each family and talk about each child individually. We have a lot of great kids in our class, and I enjoy sharing that with you! I hope everyone stays warm this weekend, see you Monday. Ms.Brett Upcoming important dates: November 8 - fun lunch November 10 - assembly @ 10:30 November 17- PD day no school for students November 24 - club friday November 29- fun lunch Scholastic Book Wizard: The website below can be used to search most books and find the reading level. You will want to look at the level that is a letter (A-Z). Scholastic Book Wizard |
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