Welcome to the open house.  Use your finger on the Smart Board to scroll up and down to check out our class blog!

Tomorrow is the school open house from 5-7 p.m.  I am looking forward to meeting families!

When will the spelling program start?!!  I have been doing diagnostic spelling tests with the students over the past few weeks in order to create individual spelling lists for each child in the class.  Now that we are done this step, we will be starting an individual spelling program next week.

This week we have continued working on recounts in writing.  Yesterday we filled out an organizer to plan our GNE recounts.

Today we created a list of success criteria to help us write a good recount.  Tomorrow we will use the success criteria and our planner to write.

In math we are continuing working on number sense.  We played a game with a partner to create the largest digit after rolling a number cube 3 times.

We have also continued working on place value, representing numbers, and comparing numbers.

We had a great time at the GNE on Friday!  Thank you to the volunteers who came with us.  We really appreciate your help.  Here are some of the things we saw.  On Monday we will start writing a recount about our day.

We saw some antique machinery.

We saw a cow being milked and learned a lot of interesting facts!

One dairy cow produces about 30 litres of milk each day!

We learned some fire safety tips and practiced exiting a room through a window.

This is a sheep being sheared!  He sure made it look easy!

Tomorrow is our field trip to the GNE!!

Students are asked to bring a packed lunch and proper outdoor clothing/footwear.  As of right now, the weather forecast is for quite warm weather, but also for rain.

In the morning, we will be lining up outside the school when the bell rings.  After the bell, we will come in, do attendance, put on bus tags, go to the washroom, and then load the bus as soon as possible.   We will be back to the school with some time to spare at the end of the day.

I am looking forward to a great day!

Hello!  The students should have 2 sheets in their agendas tonight.  The pink sheet is the permission form for our field trip to the GNE this Friday.  The second is a green sheet, which is a homework sheet for the week.  I will be sending home one page of homework each week to reinforce concepts being taught at school.  It gives you a chance to see what we are up to and to work with your child at home together.  I ask the students to bring it back by Friday (or earlier if they want!)

Scholastic book orders are due tomorrow.  Please make cheques payable to Scholastic Canada.

Science-- Today we started a unit on plants.  We looked at a picture of all the ways we use plants, from furniture, to food, to clothing!

Social Studies-- Last week we started a unit on rural and urban communities.  This week we will be comparing and contrasting features of urban and rural communities.

Language-- We have been busy writing recounts.  We will continue this type of writing for the next couple of weeks.

Math-- We are working on representing numbers in different ways, ordering numbers, and comparing numbers.

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend!  I won't be posting every day, but here is a peek at today so you know what kinds of things we are learning!

Please send in student information forms, insurance forms etc. that were sent home the first week of school!

Today we started a new way to recognize the good things that happen in our classroom and on the school yard.  Since we read the book about filling others' buckets, we each have a bucket on our desk.  When a student demonstrates traits of a good classmate by making another person feel special, showing good character, following instructions, or is working hard, they may get a pom pom to fill their bucket.  Students can trade in pom poms on Fridays for tickets to put in a draw. Many pom poms were handed out today!

This morning all of the students received a personal dictionary filled with words that grade 3s often use in writing.  It is a working dictionary, meaning words can be added to it throughout the year.  We talked about how the dictionary is organized alphabetically and practiced finding words as a class and with a partner.  Many students were already making good use of their dictionary today!

Today we learned how to pick a book using the acronym I PICK.

I pick a book.

P urpose - Why am I reading this text?

I nterest - What am I interested in?

C omprehension - I understand what I am reading.

K now - I know most of the words.

The students then picked 3 books to store in their personal book boxes.

Today we read A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue.  We learned the difference between tattling and telling.  It is telling if someone is in danger, or a situation is important and an adult needs to be involved. It is important to tell an adult in these situations.  It is tattling if the problem can be solved without an adult, it is not important, or the purpose is just to get someone in trouble.  When faced with a problem situation, I am encouraging students to express to others how they are feeling and make attempts to solve problems independently when appropriate.

In math we worked on using math language to discover a mystery number between 1 and 100.  Each student got a hundreds chart and had to ask questions using math language (odd, even, greater than, less than, tens).  Based on the answer, they had to eliminate all of the numbers that it couldn't be until they knew the mystery number.  After a few practice rounds as a whole class, the students partnered up and played again, picking their own mystery numbers.  We have also been working on representing a number in different ways. 

Today was another busy day!  Today we focused on what we need to do to make sure our classroom runs smoothly.  With a partner, students talked about the rules they thought were most important.  After that, they wrote their ideas on sticky notes to share with the class.  Here is what they came up with:

To reinforce how we treat others, we listened to a wonderful story called, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  We practiced filling each person's 'bucket' in class today.
Ask your child to explain what it means to be a bucket filler and a bucket dipper.

We continued working on our time capsule today, and most are ready to seal it up! We worked so hard on these this morning that we earned a well deserved brain break.  Ask your child what we did!

This afternoon was a great way to end the day because the students played drama games with Mrs. Hammond, and then we went up to the library to see Madame Thompson.  She showed us how to use the laptop cart and read us a story.  We have to wait until next week to sign out books because the computer wasn't ready.

Thank you so much for the tissues, ziploc bags, paper towel, and other supplies coming in!  Much appreciated!  I am also enjoying reading all about the children in my class through the eyes of their parents and guardians.  Thank you so much for sharing :)

Hello students and families!

Today was a pretty great first day!  After being called to our classes in the morning, we went into our classroom and did a little exploring.  We walked around the classroom and noticed things that were the same and different from the students' previous classrooms.  We also discussed a little bit about ourselves and found out that we have 4 students in our class who are new to Admiral this year.  Welcome!

Next, the students received name tags and were allowed to choose a desk to sit in.  After that, everyone received their student agenda.  We wrote our first note in the agenda and put 2 newsletters in it to take home tonight.  Both have information sheets attached to the back to be returned. Then it was time for us to make our way down to the gym for our welcome back assembly, where we met all of the staff, sang O Canada, and practiced our student pledge.  We also listened to a read aloud of the book called One, which had a very important message.  Ask your child to see if they can remember it!

After nutrition break, we read another book called Amelia Bedelia's First Day of School.  It was a funny book because Amelia misunderstands what others say and gets mixed up a lot.  We know everyone makes mistakes!

To celebrate the first day of school, we made a time capsule today.  Some of the things each student  put in it were a piece of yarn to represent height, a painted handprint, a page all about favourite things, and a self portrait.  Tomorrow we will add a writing sample and a photograph from the first day of school.  We will seal these shut and keep them until the last day of school to see how much we change during grade 3.

To end the day, Ms. Garbutt came to teach us music.  What a busy day!!  I'm looking forward to seeing all those smiling faces again tomorrow!