Religion: Starting on Monday the grade six students will be launching their "We Scare Hunger" canned food drive for the Barrhaven Food Cupboard. This is truly an awesome example of how can be the good news to those in need. We welcome as many canned goods as you can spare as we work to bring hope to those who are hungry. The canned food drive will run until October 31st and there will be other "spooktacular" activities during this time. Each class will get a pumpkin to carve and then students will be able to buy tickets for the carved pumpkin they would like the chance to bring home for Halloween night. All proceeds from the tickets sold will be donated to the Barrhaven Food Cupboard. This is a wonderful opportunity for our St. Cecilia school community to serve those in our community who are in need of "good news!" Our "We Scare Hunger" food drive is similar to the story in our Growing in Faith, Growing in Christ book, where students in a grade three class decided to reach out to people in Haiti who were in need. Students will find out just how good it feels to "be the good news" through the We Scare Hunger food drive. Last week students wrote beautiful Thanksgiving prayers and reflected on the Gospel from last Sunday where Jesus healed ten lepers and only one returned to say thank you. Students believed that the message of this story was that it is important for us to always take time to thank God for the many blessings in our lives. On Friday we took time to look at artwork from the artist who created the cover of our Religion program Growing in Faith, Growing in Christ," Fernando LLort and students had the opportunity to create their own piece of artwork inspired by this talented artist who devoted all of his artwork to the glory of God. On Monday, we will gather as a school community to celebrate our first Gospel Value assembly for "Community" in our gymnasium. This week, students will hear about Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta and will explore and respond to some of her most famous quotes. Students will also reflect on the message from the Gospel from this Sunday. Literacy: Our focus with our word wall words continues to be on homonyms. Last week during independent reading time, students looked for the homonyms from our word wall word list (to, too, two, right, write) in the texts that they were reading and recorded the sentences in which they found these homonyms. Students spent much of their literacy station time working on detailed recounts of their Thanksgiving weekends and had their peers give them valuable descriptive feedback about their writing, before handing it in for teacher feedback. Students also read a poem entitled "Fall is Here" and added their own lines and illustrations to this fun fall poem. On Friday, students heard the first story of a Global Read Aloud (See video below) by Lauren Castilla entitled "Nana in the City." They started a short response to this story about what wearing a cape would make them brave enough to face. They will finish up this response on Monday so that we are ready to hear the next book in the Global Read Aloud "The Reader." This week we will spend time reading a variety of descriptive texts, focusing on the features of descriptive texts and how descriptive texts allow the reader to visualize the vivid details that an author is writing about. Students will work to use their five senses to help them write down or draw what they are visualizing while listening to and reading descriptive texts. Math: This past week, our focus was on representing numbers in a variety of ways (place value charts, base ten blocks, expanded notation, words, numbers and words). Students also worked with partners to build numbers in different ways using base ten blocks. On Friday during Math stations, students saw a document filled with interactive place value activities that we shared out with them in the Math folder within their Google Drive. We encourage students to visit this document, as a new and exciting way to explore place value while they are at home. Looking ahead to this week, we will focus on adding base ten block groups together and explore strategies for putting two groups of base ten blocks together to build a given number (e,g, if I have 5 tens and 7 ones, what other base ten blocks do I need to get to a total of 75?). Students will also solve problems that involve ordering large numbers in different ways.
Science: We had our first official Science knowledge building circle! Before we began we brainstormed as a learning community what a knowledge building circle was and what it should look like, sound like and feel like. We will post the success criteria we created under the resource section. During this knowledge building circle, students shared the knowledge they acquired from farmer Jen from Growing Up Organic during our workshop in the garden last week. Students certainly had a lot of knowledge to share about soil, plants and the earth. They got to see first hand that they can learn a great deal from each other, which is the purpose of a knowledge building circle. Our first knowledge building was a huge success. We look forward to many more across all subject areas. This week in Science, students will work through a variety of plant and soil exploration stations in order to further build upon the knowledge they currently have. One document is already in the Science folder of their Google Drive. During these stations, students will document new learning, along with any wonderings they have. That is our week at a glance. Thank you for all that you do to support your child on their grade three journey! October is here! We have a short but action packed week of learning ahead! Read on to find our what we will be up to this week on our journey of learning! Religion: This week we will spend some extra time reflecting and writing prayers about the blessings we are thankful for in our lives. As a school community we will gather for a Thanksgiving Mass on Tuesday, October 4th at 1:15 in our gymnasium. All families are welcome to attend! Students will also hear the Gospel from this past Sunday about Faith being like a tiny mustard seed. Last week we discussed what it means to belong to a Catholic Community. Students discovered that members of a Catholic Community bring hope to those who are sick,poor, vulnerable and lonely. Students have many ideas about ways that we can "Be the Good News" through our St. Cecilia Catholic School Community. What a fortunate community we are! Math: Last week in Math students had the opportunity to put our "Creating Graphs" success criteria to use by creating a bar graph and pictograph for a set of data given to them. They also put their addition and mental Math strategies to work in order to add up the number of people who were surveyed in the data that they were given. On Thursday and Friday students revisited ways that they can represent a number, thinking carefully about place value (e.g. 65 = 6 tens and 5 ones or 60+5 or six ten rods and 5 unit cubes) This week we will continue to explore ways to represent a number and students will use the feedback given to them on their bar graphs and pictographs from last week when they are working on creating a bar graph and pictograph for another set of data. The students certainly are blossoming mathematicians who are hard at work! Literacy: Students have been listening to and reading several recount texts. Last week they worked with a learning partner to read a text and determine whether or not it was a recount, based on the "Must Have" list that we created for Recounts (must have past tense verbs, must have time order words, must have events, must have an opening, must have a closing). Students also used our Recount Success criteria to write a recount of their own about our gym class, their night or a recess. Pleases check out our resource section for a copy of our shared writing recount on our gym block! We are really encouraging students to use a variety of time order words and on Thursday, we shared a variety of different types of leads (opening sentences) that students can use to "hook" the reader when writing a recount. Our focus this week will continue to be on recount writing. Students will be engaged in a mini writer's workshop about varying the ways in which they start sentences in their writing. Science: We are very excited about our "Composting in the Garden" workshop with Growing Up Organic this coming Thursday, October 6th at 10:40 AM in our St. Cecilia Garden! We will be going into the garden rain or shine! So please make sure your child is dressed for the weather! This is also photo day. We will be getting our photos done first block. Please send a change of clothes with your child, as we will be digging in the garden during our workshop. Thank you so much for your support with this. We want to make sure that students' photo day outfits remain in good condition! After our workshop, students will work on creating short presentations about what they learned in their workshop, that they will share out with the other grade three classes. What an exciting way to learn about plants and soil! That is how our first week in October looks. We wish you and your families a blessed Thanksgiving! Below are some Thanksgiving prayers and a video for your and your family to enjoy about Gratefulness. God Bless! |
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April 2020
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