Last week students worked collaboratively in all subject areas! From Math stations to Literacy stations, students are truly growing in their ability to collaborate with one another on a daily basis. We accomplished many learning goals last week and look forward to working towards the learning goals that cross our paths this week.
Last week in Religion, students heard daily prayers and reflections about the importance of sharing their God given gifts and talents. Students were engaged in a couple of visual arts activities where they had to highlight some of the gifts and talents that they will share within our classroom and school communities this year. This week, students will hear the Gospel reading from this past Sunday according to St. Mark and will think about and discuss with partners what the quote "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all" means. Students will also hear a story about God's Dream for the world. Our Literacy focus this week, will be to get our Reading and Writing work stations up and running. When we brainstormed for ideas for Word stations, students came up with many creative tasks they can do with our weekly word wall words. To get our writing stations up and running, we will begin by reviewing all of the types of writing author's can do and will read some samples of these types of writing. During independent reading time students will be reflecting on the author's purpose for writing a text (PIE-persuade, inform and entertain) and will also be thinking about what the author's message was (what was he or she trying to tell/teach us?). We are deep into our Math inquiry about ways we get to school. Students have finished surveying the grade three population here at St. Cecilia and have started to graph the data that they collected with their partners. Our next step is to work with the numbers on these graphs and use them to represent numbers in different ways and to develop our addition strategies. Later this week, students will decide which grade(s) they are going to survey next, as we move through our inquiry about finding out how all 870 some students get to St. Cecilia each day. It's a huge job, but our students are excited about the Math journey they are on! That is how our week looks at a glance. We look forward to seeing many of you this Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015 at 6:30 PM in our gymnasium for Program Night. This is a parent night. It is an opportunity for you to see where your child is growing and learning academically and spiritually in grade three each day. See you then! God Bless! Our first week as a collaborative grade three community was a huge success! Students in 3A and 3B had many opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations with each other during turn and talk times about how different routines within our classroom should look like, sound like and feel like, as seen in the "Y" charts posted in the last blog. In order to organize our classroom libraries, students worked collaboratively to sort through an astounding number of different genres of books. During this collaborative task we video taped students and let them watch their collaboration in action. After viewing the footage, they were able to identify what collaboration should look like, sound like and feel like. We are already working very well together as a collaborative learning community! In Math, students shared the ways they get to school by filling in a google survey, as well as by adding their information to a pictograph created on our Smart Board. Once the data was gathered, students were able to give several conclusions about what the different graphs had shown. They even came up with our first Math inquiry question! Students in 3A and 3B now want to find out how all of the students at St. Cecilia get to school! We are going to begin this inquiry this week, by sending our students around the school to gather the data they need to find out the answer to their inquiry question. They will start by visiting their other grade three friends out in the portables. Once we have gathered some numbers, students will work to display the data they've found using different graphs and will be starting to work with the numbers they have in their data to represent numbers in different ways, as well as to share strategies for adding numbers on their graphs together. Our Math learning is off to an exciting start! During Literacy time this past week, students learned about how reading is thinking, as you may have already read or heard. Students listened to several read alouds and had opportunities to share what they thought the author's message was, as well as share what they were thinking about while listening to the book being read to them. This week students will be asked to continue to share the thinking they did while reading (sharing connections, making predictions, asking questions, inferring and visualizing). Students will also be introduced to our first set of word wall words (look for these words in his/her agenda), as well as be involved in the process of developing learning tasks for our reading, writing and word wall literacy stations. Students should review their word wall words nightly along with their nightly reading. On Monday of this coming week your child will bring home his/her Homework Duotang. Inside of the duotang is a detailed note regarding our weekly homework routine. Please take the time to read through this note and collaborate with your child about what their nightly homework routine will look like. Finally, to end our first week together, all of the grade three students gathered in our outdoor classroom to sing some songs of praise. Their voices were angelic and it was so nice to see all of the grade three students gathered together on such a beautiful day. Below is a Youtube video that your child saw in our classroom, as we gathered as a small faith community to talk about the prophet Isaiah's words "I have called you by name." The students thoroughly enjoyed hearing the song and watching the accompanying video. After listening to the song, students talked to each other about what the message of the song was. Many of them concluded that the message was "we are never alone because God is always near" and "that He knows each one of us by name". A truly comforting message. Enjoy viewing this video with your child. We are looking forward to another engaging and exciting week of learning with your child, as we continue on our journey of wondering, learning and growing in our faith in grade three! God Bless! We worked together to develop our 'must-haves' for eating and playing on the yard. We examined what it looks like, sounds like and feels like. Here they are::
Our first day has been a huge success. It was lovely to welcome many of you on the yard this morning before school started. Today your child will have brought home an agenda inside of an agenda bag, a school year calendar and a welcome to grade three letter. Please take a few moments to read through these items, as well as the first few pages of the agenda for important information about our school and school policies. Have a look at your child's agenda nightly and sign it before sending it back to school with your child.
Tomorrow a technology agreement and a student information verification form will be sent home for you to look over and sign. We are excited about the spiritual and academic journey we have begun with your children today and look forward to a year full of inquiring and learning. |
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