Merry Christmas!

Thank you for all your support the past few months, in grade 3! Students have been working hard and deserve some time to rest, relax and have some fun. Enjoy your time together and get outside and play!!!

Wishing you and your families a very merry Christmas!

Xoxo

The students are becoming little artists!! Working hard on their sketching and journalling techniques. 

Please ask your child, what is a 3.2.1 journal?

Our Beakerhead Ingenuit Challenge is still formulating. Our ideas are finally coming together and in the New Year we will finally begin to build prototypes!

Please collect any recyclable materials over the holidays that your child could use to build a device with elastic bands that communicates a message or solves a problem.

Gingerbread Houses were built today! I tried to not let them eat amy candy but it was impossible!!

Hope they made it home in one piece:)

Students worked hard to solve an Elf Problem. Our first stab at problem solving this year and it was a tough one!

In the New Year we will continue to work on problem solving weekly. Please watch for our Problems of the Week!

Goodbyes and Hellos

We sadly said good bye to our dear student teacher Miss.Lowe. I know the students will really miss her, as will I!! Not only am I down a helping hand but now I have 17 sad, sad students to try to cheer up!!

She had a great day with the kids. She read them a story, everyone then wrote Chistmas cards (mostly to her), we shared gifts and to wrap things up everyone participated in a sharing circle, sending her off with well wishes and hugs.

I have a feeling she will be back to volunteer soon!!

Later in the day a surprise arrived in the mail (perfect timing so that Miss.Lowe could be a part of it all). 

Rocky, our adopted Canadian Gray Wolf arrived!!!

Students worked so hard to collect recyclables and raised over $50 through both generous donations and bottle depot refunds. 

Throughout this project students worked on many Alberta curricular objectives through the following activities: opinion writing, persuasive writing, addition, subtraction, animal classification and friendship- my favorite type of learning, as I'm sure your child has already shared with you!! We call it "integrated learning" or "project-based learning".

Our hope for Rocky is that he can do some exploring with our dear friend Frosty the Canadian Polar Bear.

It's been a while...

Since the last post a LOT has been happening around grade 3....

Centers are in full swing; investigating rocks, sewing our stories on a hand-made loom, building our own spinners and testing them! Building towers on the light table and working on our spirit animal puzzle!

Today we visited the Alberta Theatre Projects and were treated to a performance to write home about! - "The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe". It was a performance that touched every feeling; happiness, excitement, adventure and sadness!!

There are many shows running all year, if you are interested in checking them out visit their website for more info.

https://albertatheatreprojects.com/whats-on/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe/

Father Jonathen visited our classrooms this week and the children thoroughly enjoyed him! So personable and enthusiastic! We chatted about Christmas and Advent and how to prepare for this special time of year.

Miss.Lowe has been working with the students twice a day, focusing on Social Studies and introducing students to the countries around the world that we will be focusing on over the year in gr.3; India, Ukraine, Tunisia and Peru.

Robotics Residency

Thanks to Mrs.Strand's hard work we have the privilege of a week robotics residency. Students have been solving puzzles and will be writing their own code by the end of the week!

Check out some images below.

Beakerhead Session 2

Our material for our Beakerhead Ingenuity Challenge this year will be elastic bands. Students must think of a way to solve a problem or convey a message with this material.

Today, students worked with grade 6 buddies to share ideas on what verbs could be used to describe what elastics can do. They then worked to apply this verb to a noun.

For ex.; noun verb

Elastic bands can make ping pong balls fly.

Rocky the Grey Wolf

Today at the bottle depot we raised $7!

THANK YOU to those that have donated their recyclables and dollar bills this past week.

Please continue to send in recyclables.

Students will need a total of $53.64 in order to adopt Rocky, the Grey wolf.

https://shopcwf.ca/5921057/checkouts/7018bf45e019523473c82fe3cebf770a?_ga=2.40763234.197221475.1575172266-1076268017.1573708207

Students voted on the name for our adopted Grey wolf. 

The top three names were Rocky, Howl and Alpha.

Rocky won by ONE point! Some students were upset that their choice was not the winner but we will all probably learn to love Rocky as the year goes on. A valuable lesson. 

Today in the words of Grade 3....

Today we tried out our listening to reading websites for the first time. This is what students had to say...

We've been reading online on the blog.
We had a nice snack.
It was fun listening to books.
There was all sorts of websites on the blog for us to read.
You should go check it out!
Lots of authors were reading for us.

CWF Animal Adoption Update

Thankyou to all who have sent in recyclables or donated money to our adopt an animal cause!!!

So far we have raised $23! 

We need $27 more to ensure gst and shipping is all covered. 

Please continue to send in recyclables and donations. Students will be voting on a name for our adopted Grey Wolf tomorrow.

Thanks for your support!!

Beakerhead Kickoff!

Students in gr3 started collaborating today with their gr6 buddies on a design challenge Beakerhead Ingenuity Challenge 2019.

Students first used sketchnotes to show their interests. Then they were presented with the mystery material that they will have to use to create a design that connects to "movement".

The material we must use is elastic bands!

Above is a picture of what we need to think about next. Over the weekend we have asked the students to think of a problem they think needs solving OR a message they feel is important to be shared.

Using elastic bands we will try to solve their problems or work to help them share their message.

If you are interested in helping out or just coming in to tinker with us, please let me know via agenda message, you are always welcome! Our next session will be Monday afternoon from 12:45-1:45pm.

For more info. check it all out here...

https://beakerhead.com/education

Action Reaction Contraption

Students participated in a program @TelusSpark today called Action, Reaction,Contraption. They learned about different actions, the Rube Goldberg machine and then designed their own devices with set goals to meet. 

Students were engaged and worked hard to collaborate together to create various different machines!

It was a fun day!

CWF Animal Adoption

Dear Grade 3 parents,

We have been learning about explorers in Grade 3 and Frosty the Canadian Polar Bear has been our “Explorer of the Month” for November. We have learned a lot about his adventures on the CanadaC3 Ship and along the way learned that he was adopted from the Canadian Wildlife Federation (CWF).

We became intrigued by this and decided to see what it would take for us to adopt an animal from the CWF. What started as a simple visit to the CWF ended up turning into a research project, a writing activity, a lesson on friendship and even a slight taste of what voting might look like, sound like and feel like! - a full on integrated, project-based journey (Ms.Biffert’s favorite type of learning)! Students also considered that our adopted animal become an explorer like Frosty!

After a days’ worth of researching Canadian animals, and a lesson on friendship, students wrote an opinion paragraph explaining why their animal of choice would be the best fit friend for Frosty. With the help of Miss.Lowe, students wrapped up this project today with a final vote on the top three animals chosen, based on the opinion paragraphs written last week. The vote was close, with Snowy owl at 10 votes and the Grey Wolf at 11 votes.

Now, we would like to adopt the Grey Wolf through the CWF and would like to ask for your help 😊

Students brainstormed various ways we could raise this money and it was decided that collecting recyclables to take to the bottle depot would be the quickest and most environmentally friendly way to raise this money.

We are asking you to please help us raise enough money to pay for the adoption of a Canadian Grey Wolf. By helping us raise the money to adopt this animal we will be supporting the CWF in their efforts to protect the habitat for Grey Wolves. By helping to protect the habitat of the Grey Wolf we can help to increase populations across Canada.

Please send recyclables to school with you child TOMORROW, Wednesday, November 27^th.

We thank you in advance for your support and encouragement!

From ALL of us here in grade 3 at St. Rita School!

Grey Cup Festival

If you haven't already heard we had a blast on Friday down at the Grey Cup Festival!

Down to the Stampede grounds we went, welcomed with a delicious pancake breakfast, served up by many Stampede volunteers followed by an activity filled day; tube rides, football tosses, military style obstacle course, mechanical horse rides and much more!

See below for some photos. Enjoy the game tonight, if you are watching😉

What's been happening in Gr3!?

It has been a while since the last post. A LOT has happened since then. See below for a few highlights and snap shots of what has been happening....

Students have started working on descriptive writing; painting a picture with their words!! 

First students sketched a turtle (a main character from a story we read in class) based on what they could remember from the story. Then students sketched the turtle a second time after writing about the main character, using specific detail generating questions. They than compared sketches. Students found their sketches were very different!!

In honour of Metis week students have wrapped up our Metis study by showcasing the final product of the " Metis Sash" or "La Ceinture Flechee".

Students collaborated on this art piece and created a visual legend to explain the story that the Metis sash tells. Students then wrote their own version of the Metis sash story using chrome books. The whole school has enjoyed learning from their work as it has been showcased in the hallways this Metis week.

We were lucky enough to get outside on the warm days we've been having. We have read a story called "If you Find a Rock" which lead us to some very special finds outside. We found resting rocks, fossil rocks, climbing rocks, wishing rocks, chalk rocks and memory rocks!!

We then participated in centers inside where we investigated what type of "scientific" rocks we may have found; Igneous, Sedimentary or Metamorphic.

Students continue to translate the lyrics to our favorite song, "River of Nations".

We have learned that we are a nation of many groups of people and that we are all interconnected!

Stay tuned as this story continues to unravel.....

Students have been working hard on sketching. We have focused on shape, size and texture. Students continue to practice daily for 15 mins and are currently working on size/proportion.

Welcome Mrs.Lowe and a little from last week.....

Welcome to Mrs.Lowe!

Mrs.Lowe is a students teacher who will be working alongside myself, observing within the classroom, assisting as I see fit and even teaching a lesson here or there!

She started today and will be with us until  December 12th. We welcomed her today with a big GOD BLESS YOU and wrapped up our day with some kind, reflective comments. 

In the words of Grade 3 students.....

She is our new teacher!

She is a kind and generous teacher.

She is nice!

She is a helper around the class and she is very mindful of other people.

And a little snap shot from last week...

We did a fair amount of work to remember the veterans of our country. We read short stories about soldiers, sketched poppies, read a picture book written by children from around the world about what peace feels like, and then created our own rendition showcasing our sketching techniques.

In sketching students are working to create realistic representations of objects (living and non-living). Students are focusing on shape, size, texture and colour. In our Rememberance sketches we focused on shape, size and texture.

We then took our learning about patterns this past unit and applied it by searching for patterns within an addition chart of 0+0 up to 12+12.

Students colour coded increasing and decreasing patterns and any repeating patterns, using a legend to explain what they found.

Math and Metis needs

Math Talk

In math students have been working on recognizing shapes and lines through a daily geometry activity called "Quick Draw". We engage in math talk and reproduce the same image 3 times, trying to notice more each time. After we have created our images we use geometric math language to explain/discuss what we see.

We have also been working on creating, reproducing and explaining increasing patterns within objects and numbers. We learned a new game called "Gaps!" We have to use our math talk to explain the rule of the increasing pattern. It will be coming home this weekend, please ask me to play it with you!

(if your child has not returned their games duotang to school, please do so ASAP)

La Ceinture Flechee

Students have also been working on researching and exploring the story of the Metis Winter Sash. Students are collaborating on a Metis sash creation and are currently working on retelling the Metis story using their own words on chromebooks.

Check in soon for our finished product and some of our stories....