Hello Everyone,

I hope you are enjoying this beautiful weather while it lasts!

Yesterday was the Manitoba Teacher’s Society Professional Development Day (MTSPD Day). Each October all teachers in Manitoba are given the choice of PD they’d like to receive and learn from other educators, authors and public figures. Our grade 3/4 team chose to go to the Science Teachers Association of Manitoba (STAM) PD. Our day consisted of listening to our local meteorologist, John Sauder, speak about his job and also about climate change, doing a session with the Wildlife Haven Rehabilitation Centre, a session with Prairie Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre and a session with the Science coach from Frontier School Division called Big Ideas with Superhero Science. It was a day full of learning and making plans for some of our upcoming Science themes.

What Happened Last Week At School?!

-We did two sessions of our third round of Common Learning Times. On Tuesday we will wrap up the final session of that round and then begin the final round on Thursday (yes we know it’s Hallowe’en!)

-We finished Bat and the End of Everything! That’s it for Bat…for now at least. We are unsure if the author is working on another book for the series, but we are moving onto our next series…the Fitzgerald Trouts!

*Please take a look at the Ask Me question this week as it is about our thoughts about the Bat books!

P.S.-I met an actual Saw Whet owl on Friday and had to share with your because of Bat’s school…Saw Whet School!!!

-We made and revealed our fossils! I hope you enjoyed the video reveals! The students are getting good at using our technology in the class as a way to community and share what we are doing at school!

-Wednesday was Global Take Me Outside Day and we sure did celebrate! It was chilly, but that didn’t stop us from spending about 2 hours outside together for our Outside-a-Thon! There is no bad weather, just poor clothing choices! Great job bringing in your pledges…we still have some time to get them in before the final tally 🙂

-We read all about Super Flex and his experience with Rock Brain! We are just finishing up our backgrounds for a new green screen project….read all about it in the next section of this post!! The students are using the language we have learned from the Social Detective book and from Super Flex. We continue to refer to expected and unexpected behaviours throughout the day and also to some of the “Unthinkables” that come to visit. The project is going great so far and I  look forward to developing things further as we learn more about using the tools we need to be our own Super Flex hero!

-We have started our “Word Work” for spelling. Together as a class we created the document below. This will help us to be organized as we all have different spelling words. Once students have completed 4-6 tasks, and done a ‘pre-test’ with a friend, they can do their assessment with me. The next step will be to get 10 new words. The students might have these words ready to go because they had more than 10 errors from the First Hundred list, or they may need to move onto the Second Hundred words (which I will assess them on). Once we have learned the words they become part of our “No Excuse” words and should be spelled correctly in our everyday writing.

What To Expect This Week:

-New book orders will be going home this week!

-Monday we are doing a special Hallowe’en craft/project! A Montrosian grandmother from the community has gifted us spider plants to repot! Since they are called Spider Plants and since we have Ginny (the greatest crafter in the world!) we are making a spider craft to go with our plant! We will be using washed out milk cartons as our ‘pots’ as a  way to reuse materials. Hallowe’en is on a Day 6 and that is our busiest day of the school cycle, so we wanted to get this in early and not feel rushed on Thursday.

-On Monday we will also be starting our STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) time with Murray and one of the support teachers from the division. They will be working on coding with us! Our time slot is from 9:00-10:30 on Monday. We will have 3 sessions in total (once per cycle).

-We will be using the green screen to put ourselves in our Super Flex backgrounds! If your child brought home their background to finish, please send them back to school on Monday so we can begin the green screen process. On green screen days (Monday and possibly Tuesday if we can’t finish), students cannot wear green (or even blueish or yellowish green) clothing, or they will disappear in the photograph! Since Super Flex is really “US”, we are creating a background that has a Super Flex situation and then using the green screen to put “US” into the image! Some students have expressed an interest to bring in something to wear as part of their superhero persona (capes, etc.). That is fine with me (within reason-which we have talked about as a class), but am leaving the details up to you as a family.

-Hallowe’en Celebration…Students are invited to wear their Hallowe’en costumes in the AFTERNOON on the 31st. In the morning we have business as usual, except Mr. Strachan is turning the gym into….a haunted gym! After that the students have Performing Arts with Erin. In the afternoon the students have French at 1:00 and then we can do some celebrating in the class. We will have some treats that the kids are going to “mine”! Inside the treats there will be precious gems and the gems will be worth different values and they will have to determine how much value their treat has! This is connected to our Rocks and Minerals unit and also gives us a nice chance to have a treat together. For this celebration we are asking families to not send in extra treats as we will have our mining treat and some juice as a snack. We are not having a “party”, but infusing some activities throughout the day/week instead.

Have a really great weekend!

Until next time,

Danielle

Hello Everyone!

This weather seems more like Fall to me! It might be a stretch…but I’m hoping with a few warm days my grass will dry and I can cut it one last time!! Think it’s possible?!

We had a shortened…but great week. Let’s take a look back at what happened in 123!

-Due to some unforeseen circumstances we didn’t do Common Learning Times this week. No worries though, we will pick things up again next week!

-We played in the snow until it literally was all used up in the field! Now we have green grass with bits of random snowfalls spread around the field!!

-We continued to work on place value in math and did practice within our place value books. One of the things we are learning about as we do practice pages is that we NEED to read the instructions! Most of the errors throughout the week came from simply neglecting to read and follow the instructions and examples. We’ve been trying to associate the importance of reading the instructions to how we follow recipes when we bake or steps to build things.

-We completed our initial assessment of the first 100 Fry spelling words. I am currently working on individualizing each student’s word list. On Monday I will give the students their list and we will establish our routine and expectations for practicing words at school. I will also be posting their word lists to Seesaw to you are able to work on practicing the words at home as well!

-Leah came in to do her first lesson with us about being “Social Detectives”. She also introduce “Super Flex” to us. Super Flex is inside all of us! It serves as a reminder that we have the tools and strategies to deal with the “Unthinkables” who come to visit us sometimes! More to come next week! Leah will come back again soon and see what we’ve learned from the Super Flex story!

-We ended up going to Pam Am Park for a little Friluftsliv Friday! As we’ve learned from last week…we need to take advantage of the good weather when we can!

-I made an “oopsie” and accidentally deleted our Alphabet Alliteration Poem 🙁 Good things we are great poets and were able to write another one together! This time we saved it, printed it AND wrote it out for our poetry bulletin board! This is part of the Ask Me question this week! Choose a letter and write a line of your own to share! First word=Adjective, second word=noun and third word=verb! Have fun!

Looking ahead to this week!!

-Common Learning Times will be on Monday and Wednesday

-We will begin our spelling routine, also known as Word Work!

-Monday we are making…..fossils!!! Please read the Seesaw Family Announcement sent on Friday to see what we are up to!!!

-I think we can finish Bat and the End of Everything!

-Wednesday is Global Take Me Outside Day and we are celebrating as a school by doing our annual fundraiser! This year’s fundraiser is the Outside-a-Thon! The Outside-a-Thon will take place on Wednesday afternoon. The pledge forms went home on Friday and the details are all on the note! We are motivated to win the grade 3-6 class prize!!! Go Team 123!!!

-There is no school on Friday!!

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the sun and warm weather!!!

Until next time,

Danielle

Hello Everyone!

Well my Thanksgiving plans changed in a hurry! Instead of going to the family cabin in Ontario and closing it up for the year I am here at home thankful that I haven’t lost power and that I don’t have to drive anywhere for the foreseeable future! It can be challenging to remember to show gratitude at times like these, but I still am trying to put things into perspective so remind myself that things could be much, much worse.

Besides getting more snow than October should ever get, we did do a lot of fun things at school this week!

-Mrs. Duncan, our amazing sub, was in for me on Monday and wrote some Boom-di-yada poems/songs for Thanksgiving. The Boom-di-yada song/video  is one of my favourites. Maybe we should work with it more this year!

-We finished our second round of our Common Learning Times with 122 &126. That means we are half way through our first cycle! Next week we will only have Common Learning Time on Thursday and will finish the round the following week

-We started Bat and the End of Everything, but haven’t read too much yet. We didn’t want our friends who were away yesterday to miss out, so we will wait until Tuesday to continue!

-We have read You Are a Social Detective and look forward to working with Leah on Tuesday. She will be helping us realize that we are all social detectives and have the power to have a growth mindset. Some of the language we will be using is “expected” and “unexpected” behaviours. Stay tuned for more info!!

-Alena and Patrick both came to talk to us about rocks and minerals! It was great having experts come in and share their passion. We wrote them both thank you letters to show our appreciation since they volunteered their time with us. That is something we often do. Saying thank you goes a long way with building relationships with people 🙂

-We continue to work on place value and building number sense. If you feel your child could use another reminder, or you haven’t watched the video yet, maybe check out the Math Antics video on Place Value (ignoring the commas!)

Place Value Video

In the above photo, the number 123 is written in its standard form. There are non standard ways to represent it too…

For example: There could be 12 groups of ten and 3 groups (Expanded as 120+3=123) of one OR 123 groups of one (expanded as 0+0+123)! See if your child can show you how to make a “PVC” and fill it with the standard form and a few non standard forms. In order to know if we’ve done the non standard correctly, just expand the numbers and see if it equals the original value!

-We wrote a great Alphabet Alliteration Poem to share…but someone forgot it at school (whoops). We took ideas from the poems we were working on independently and combined them to make a fun poem! This was a good exercise because the model was to use an adjective followed by a noun followed by a verb and it offered the students a chance to either learn or be reminded what those were!

Example:

Angry Alligators Argue

Bossy Bears Bite

Chatty Chickens Chirp

-We played outside for Friluftsliv with Erin and it was sooo fun! I think being with the students made me accept the snow a bit more. It was mild out and perfect snow for building! Now to remember to dress for the weather!

-We did another spelling “check in” for the Fry List (most commonly used words). This time we did List 1, words 26-50. For any student who made errors, I have posted the words to Seesaw. This allows you to see what words we will be working on at school, but also to give you a head start if you want to practice at home. Once we have the first 100 words assessed, I will generate a personalized spelling list for each child. Then we will work on this at school (and hopefully you will want to at home too). Afterward, I will be able to reassess each student. Since these are commonly used words we are asking that once we learn them they belong in our “No Excuse” word bank. We should be able to spell these words correctly on a consistent basis. The goal is to have the grade 3s complete the 3rd Hundred list and the grade 4s complete the 4th Hundred list by the end of the year! More info to come after all the initial assessments are done!

What’s Happening Next Week?

-Tuesday is School Photo Day!!! (There has not been an order made, but the N/K classes usually go first)

-Wednesday is our “Kick Off Assembly” for the Outdoor-a-Thon that is coming up soon!

-There is no Friluftsliv with Erin or library scheduled for this week as there is no Day 4 on the school cycle, but we will go outside on Day 1 (Wednesday) for our teacher led Friluftsliv gym time! I do believe that Phys. Ed. classes will be outdoors on Tuesday as the gym will be used for school photos

-We will assess the Fry words 51-75 and maybe even get 76-100 done too. Once we have those word lists established you will receive a copy for home and a list of ideas you can work on if you need some assistance!

As always if anything comes up I will let you know via Seesaw.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Until next time,

Danielle

Hello Everyone!

We’ve made it through another busy and amazing week!!

Here is a recap of what went on this week at school! It is my hope that by knowing what’s happening at school, the connection between home and school becomes and stays strong and you have plenty of things to talk about at home!

-Monday was Orange Shirt Day. We continued our conversations about the meaning of wearing orange and posted our thoughts on the bulletin board outside of the room.

-It was a bit too rainy on Monday, so we did our Terry Fox Run on Friday. Ask your child who they ran for and why we will always run to support Terry’s dream.

-We’ve started Round 2 of our Common Learning Time with 122&126. I’m excited to work with all the students in 3/4 and continue to build community through teaching as a team!

-Our Petroforms field trip was great!! The bus ride was long and a bit bumpy at the end, but it was also very worth it! It was amazing to hear our guide Ron’s stories and to see and feel the history of our beautiful surroundings. We did some great follow up stations on Thursday to help move our learning forward 1) Rock Representation Art 2) Petroforms and Poetry 3) Field Trip follow up and Wonderings. Stay tuned for a new bulletin board with some of our work!!

-We’ve finished Bat and the Waiting Game!! Take a look at this week’s Ask Me question on Seesaw to share your thoughts and also to let me know if we should continue reading the series!

What’s Happening Next Week…

-Book order is due on Monday. If you have an order please get it in ASAP!

-We will do our second and third lessons in our Common Work Time

-We will either continue to read about Bat or start a new read aloud book

-We have a guest speaker coming to talk to us about rocks and minerals!!

-We will put up our new bulletin board about “Petroforms and Poetry”

-We will continue working on writing poetry!

-We will talk about gratitude and things we are thankful for as we head into Thanksgiving weekend

Have a wonderful weekend!!

Until next time,

Danielle