Category: ADST

Dear Division 11 Families, 

We hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend so far! 

Family Reading on Tuesday
This coming Tuesday is our first Family Reading session! Please join us in the classroom on Tuesday morning until 9:15 to read with your child. We will be holding Family Reading every Tuesday and look forward to seeing you there! 

Here are some of the fun learning activities our students explored this week: 

World Kindness Day
We celebrated World Kindness Day on Wednesday. Our students brainstormed words, phrases, and actions that spread kindness. Then, we partnered with Division 18 to decorate the undercover area with words and pictures to brighten someone’s day and remind everyone to be kind. 

Social Studies
Our students reflected on their learning from the past few weeks. They practiced self-reflection as learners by: 

• Identifying what they are proud of as learners 
• Sharing interesting or memorable things they’ve learned 
• Considering what they would do differently next time 
• Writing down any wonderings they have 

Developing the ability to reflect on their learning is something we are working on in Grade 3 across all subject areas. Through guidance and modeling, our students are making great strides in becoming reflective learners! 

We are writers.
We continued working on descriptive writing this week. The students wrote about their homes, focusing on adding details, examples, and emotions to make their writing more vivid and engaging. 

We are readers.

We also reviewed letter sounds: short vowels (with hand signs to remember) and long vowels, blends where you hear both blended sounds (bl, cl, sl, br, cr, st, sw), and the difference between digraphs where the combination of letters changes the sounds (ch, sh, th, wh with hand signs to remember).

It is common for many readers at this age to set goals to read bigger words successfully. When readers look at longer words, sometimes they don’t know the strategy for how to break up the word into smaller chunks. So we learned one strategy by looking at the consonants and vowels in the words. Look at this example: carpenter

What we know: Every syllable has a vowel sound. Label whether each letter is a vowel or a consonant. Split the longer word in between the two consonants:

car – pen – ter

Now, they can see the word as 3 smaller combinations and it makes it easier to sound out.

Ways to support at home: When you are reading with your child, have a piece of paper at the ready to write down words they may struggle with sounding out. Ask them to figure out the consonants and vowels like we did with carpenter. Ask them to split the word in between letters where there are two consonants. Then ask them to read each syllable at a time. We know this is just one strategy but it gives them another tool in their toolbox.

We are artists.

Our students learned about how perspective is used in art to make drawings on a flat surface, like paper, appear more realistic. We explored the work of Patrick Hughes, an artist who creates reverspective (reverse + perspective) art. The students were fascinated by his work! Currently, they are sketching their own rooms, and in the coming week, we’ll begin transforming these sketches into three-dimensional artworks. 

We are mathematicians.

We continued learning about fractions and learned how to compare numbers using our place value place mats. Next week, we will review how to order numbers from smallest to greatest and vice versa.

We started learning about number concepts and place value. Each number has a value depending on where they are placed.

How to support at home:

Set aside deck of cards specifically for math games this year. Remove the Jack and King. The Ace = 1 and the Queen = 0 (zero) because it looks like a 0.

GAME: Create two place value charts like this to practice comparing numbers to 1000 (and later ordering numbers to 100):

1. Divide the deck into even piles. One for you and one for your child.
2. Sit side by side so it’s easier to compare numbers. You may wish to place one place value chart above the other one so it’s even easier to compare.
3. Both flip over 3 cards to make a number on your own place value chart placing the first card in the Ones place, the second card in the Tens place, and the last card in the Hundreds place.
4. Compare the numbers in the hundreds place. Which number is larger? If it is the same, then compare the number in the Tens place. Discuss why you compare the number in the hundreds place and not the ones place.
5. Whoever has the bigger number gets to keep all of the cards.

Help your child see that these numbers also represent: 823 = 800+20+3 and 409 = 400+9 so 800 is greater than 400 even though the 9 is bigger than the 3 in the ones place.

We can reflect.

Students worked so hard last week on their self-reflection on their learning this first term. We had an opportunity to think about their work habits, how they contribute to our classroom community by being good listeners, helpful, and kind. We also reflected on what we are proud of, how we improved, and set specific goals for further development.

ADST

We used the laptops on Friday. To streamline our log in experience, please help your child memorize their login username, email address, and password. It takes up valuable time to troubleshoot and look up IDs and passwords which affects their experience and that of others who have memorized theirs. Please send Ms. Chan an email if you need it sent to you again. Thank you so much for your support!

SpacesEDU

Thank you to parents who filled out the SpacesEDU online form. If you haven’t yet, you will be receiving an email reminder. Thank you!

Ice Skating

We are so grateful to the families who volunteered to help drive our skaters to Bill Copeland on November 26, December 3 & 10th. It truly is incredible to see how first time or beginning skaters step on the ice for the first time go from feeling fear to skating around in just 3 sessions! It’s a great lesson on growth mindset!

Thank you for your continued support. To see the number of people reading our weekly blog posts makes us feel valued for our time to share about the fun, engaging, and meaningful things we are learning in our classroom. We appreciate you!

Sincerely, Ms. Kim and Ms. Chan

Dear families,

We hope you enjoyed your extra hour today!

We are writers.

On Monday, Ms. Kim and I had our second opportunity to team teach. We carried on with our lesson about paragraph writing (about gratitude) to learn about how to reflect on our writing to make it better. We introduced DYRIO? This stands for “Did you read it over?”

This is something I created many years ago when I was on Staff Development teaching writing strategies. I noticed that when I taught it to other teachers, many would message me the next day telling me they tried this and loved it because it worked immediately! In my own practice teaching grades 1-5, I noticed that student writing greatly improved with this one small change: Ask students to re-read their writing at least three times before handing it in.

Click on the DYRIO image to view the full PDF.

On most days after Heart Time (soft start), we review a morning message where we fix Ms. Kim’s or Ms. Chan’s mistakes. We practice editing so they are developing editing skills when they look at their own writing.

When students hand in work, they are asked, “DYRIO?” This is what it means:

• Read – 1st time: Read it like a reader as if you are reading someone else’s writing. The key to any writing is clarity. You can have the right spelling or use proper punctuation but if the message isn’t clear, it is difficult for your audience to understand.

• Read – 2nd time: Read it like a revision expert. Your job is to look for ways to improve your writing. We have many mini-lessons planned to help with this like learning about adjectives, adverbs, synonyms, word choice, etc. Often, I will ask them to show me what they made better. Last week, Ms. Kim taught them how to write “super sentences” to learn how to add more details and “triple scoop words”. “Triple scoop words” is a term used to encourage students to choose rich, descriptive vocabulary, similar to getting a “triple scoop” of ice cream instead of a single. These words go beyond basic language (like “good” or “nice”) to provide a fuller, more vivid picture, adding “extra flavor” to writing.For example:
  • Instead of saying “happy,” students might choose “ecstatic” or “overjoyed.”
  • Rather than “big,” they could use “enormous” or “gigantic.”

• Read – 3rd time: Read it like an editor looking for capitals to start sentences and for names, proper punctuation, spelling and grammar.

This process is actually what publishing companies do when they edit books to be published. Check clarity, make it better, and lastly, editing.

Ways to support at home: For all students, we have a goal to improve written communication skills so writing at home is a great way to improve. Students can keep a journal or write a letter to someone (This is so novel now!). You can have fun co-writing a story together! Bookmaking is one of our student’s favourite activities in school so try it at home with them! Then after they write, ask them to DYRIO to reinforce reflecting on their message clarity, working on improving it, and then editing. Read it with them and talk through your thought processes. You are modelling what a writer thinks during revision and editing stages.

Comfort zone circles

I have been wanting to teach this lesson since September. This is one of my signature lessons on growth mindset! Teacher2Teacher loved my story that they interviewed me and published a blog post about my Comfort zone circles lesson. Feel free to read the blog post. It is titled “A Simple Way I Show Students They’re Growing Every Day.”

I don’t call the red zone the panic zone anymore. It’s now called “Not Yet Zone” which is more appropriate for a growth mindset approach.

We played a game where I moved the carpet to the middle of the room to represent our comfort zone. Then I called out different scenarios for them to decide how comfortable they were doing it. Then they had fun taking turns to come up with scenarios for their classmates. For example:

• riding a bike
• going swimming in a pool, lake, or ocean
• speaking in front of the whole school

Afterwards, students created their own comfort zone circles listing things that were in their comfort zone, stretch zone, and not yet zone.

The key to this lesson is learning that we want to be in our stretch zone. This is optimal and where most learning happens. When things are too easy, we don’t feel challenge and we don’t grow much. But in our stretch zone, we experience productive struggle, take risks, and overcome the hurdles and learn that we can do hard things. We talked about affirmations and shared ideas about what affirmations we can say to ourselves:

• You can do this!
• I am doing my best.
• You can do hard things!

Follow up story: We read a story that one of my friend’s wrote: Cannonball In by Tara Martin. From Amazon:

From the shallow end of the pool, Olivia watches the flippers, the graceful divers, and her favorite—the cannonballers! Wave after wave, she wishes she could make a splash.

But she’s afraid! In the deep end of the pool, she can’t reach the bottom. Plus the dabblers are there, sitting on the side of the pool and laughing at her!

With a little encouragement from her dad and a whole lot of gumption, Olivia heads to the diving board. But will she be brave enough to take the leap?

In this beautifully illustrated picture book, Tara Martin inspires young readers to find their courage and cannonball in—no matter what the naysayers (and the voice of fear) are chanting.

Ways to support: Have a conversation about being brave to take risks.

Diwali

We greatly appreciate Ziya who shared how she celebrates Diwali with her family. We learned about who celebrates around the world, when, why it is celebrated, what it means, and how they celebrate while also learning some variations depending on where they are in the world.

Diwali, the “Festival of Lights,” celebrates the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil. Families decorate with oil lamps and colorful rangoli, light fireworks, share sweets, and exchange gifts. It’s a joyful time of gratitude, reflection, and togetherness.

We are mathematicians.

Students finished up their personal pattern books by doing their self-reflection on their learning. They are proud of their books!

This week, we will begin our unit on number concepts and place value. There will be opportunities to play games and support at home. Stay tuned!

From Ms. Kim:

Dear Division 11 Families,

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend so far!

Here are some of the fun learning happening in our classroom:

Math: Our students have been practicing reading fractions. We took our learning outside, where they drew fractions on a large number line and then jumped to each fraction after reading it aloud. Some were so proud of how long their number lines were and how they could divide them into so many equal parts!

Social Studies: This week, we explored how different cultures honour the passing of loved ones. Many students shared how their families or friends’ traditions they know connect to the traditions we’ve been discussing. I love when students make connections to the real world, so please continue having conversations with them about topics we discuss in class.

Art/Writing: For Halloween, our students were asked to create the “best pumpkin in the patch.” They then worked on descriptive writing about their pumpkins. We were so impressed by their creativity and the detail in their writing!

We are always so grateful for your support too. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Warm regards,
Cailyn

Patterns Art with Ms. Kim:

Field Trip: Ice Skating!

The field trip notice was sent home on Friday, November 1. Please consider helping us out by being a volunteer driver. If you can skate, it would be very helpful if you can go on the ice to support. Thank you!

We are so grateful for your continued support at home. We are always available to speak to you about how we can work together to better support your child.

With much gratitude, Ms. Chan

Chunk Spelling

Students were introduced to Chunk Spelling to solidify their understanding of beginning letter sounds, blends, and digraphs. They are given a sound board, a word family (we started with “at”) and we use this to create words.

For example:

• Beginning consonants – bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, vat
• Beginning blends – brat, flat, scat, spat
• Beginning digraphs – chat, that, what

They were also encouraged to come up with other words that have “at” in them. For example: pattern, attitude, gratitude, attention, caterpillar

We are mathematicians.

We reviewed decreasing patterns and practiced number patterns like counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, and 100s.

Ways to support at home: Practice skip counting. As we will be moving on to number sense and place value, any practice at home will help them in their learning at school. For grade 3s, they will need to know how to skip count starting from any number up to 1000.

We are scientists.

We watched Science for Kids: Exploring Matter and Its Properties and added another page in our Matter books.

Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies

Thank you so much for helping your child memorize their username, email address, and password. It made a difference when we logged in on Friday!

Upcoming is our District Digital Citizenship Week where we will be introducing lessons on the following:

Reminders

• Friday, October 25 is Pro-D day; students do not attend

We appreciate your continued support.

Grateful for you, Ms. Chan

Dear Division 11 Families,

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

We are continuing our focus on family, and this week our students will be exploring different wedding traditions around the world. Please have a conversation with your child about some wedding traditions from your culture or other cultures you have experienced. Since we are focusing on “aspects of life shared by and common to people and cultures,” discuss the similarities and differences in wedding traditions from your experiences. We will continue using a Venn diagram in class to help illustrate our thinking.

In math, our students are becoming experts at analyzing graphs. They are starting to show more confidence when interpreting bar graphs or pictographs and sharing what they have learned. This week, we will be wrapping up our data analysis unit. Students will go through the entire process on their own: coming up with survey questions, collecting data using a tally chart, representing their data with either a bar graph or a pictograph, and sharing their findings.

In art, our students have been learning about warm and cool colors and have created two watercolor paintings using patterns. This week, we will dive deeper into how patterns are used in art by weaving these two paintings together to create one unique piece!

Thank you, families, for your continued support!

Warm regards, Ms. Kim

We are grateful.

There is so much to feel grateful for. We have many opportunities throughout our day to consider what we are grateful for. We worked on our Thankful Poems inspired after we read The Thankful Book by Todd Parr and Feeling Grateful: How to Add More Goodness to Your Gladness by Kobi Yamada. Watch this book here.

One of my most favourite videos on YouTube is titled Gratitude. This video reminds us to find beauty in the simple things in life like how each day is a gift and the beauty in our world. “Nature’s beauty is a gift that cultivates appreciation and gratitude.” We started watching this video at 4:30.

Many happiness researchers found that practicing gratitude and focusing on the positive aspects of life can enhance happiness. This leads to an improved sense of overall well-being and a mindset we can cultivate. One way we can develop our social awareness and build positive relationships is by noticing and expressing gratitude.

This also reminded me of how Indigenous People honour the land and have a deep sense of place. Louie Schwartzberg stated, “We protect what we fall in love with.” Imagine if everyone fell in love with nature and the unceded land we have the privilege to live on.

Ways to support at home: Regularly practice gratitude by modeling what you are grateful for. I wrote a blog post called The Gift of Gratitude if you are interested to read it and if you’re curious about how gratitude is taught and modelled in the classroom, I wrote a post that was published on Edutopia called Teaching and Modeling Gratitude in Elementary School. These posts may provide you with some ideas on how our gratitude practice at school can be aligned with what you do at home.

We are mathematicians.

We continued to learn about patterns. Last week we reviewed increasing patterns and learned about decreasing patterns. Here are some examples during play and in our Patterns Books.

Students are expected to know the following:

• increasing and decreasing patterns using words and numbers, based on concrete experiences
  • creating patterns using concrete, pictorial, and numerical representations
  • representing increasing and decreasing patterns in multiple ways

Repeating patterns

Increasing patterns

Decreasing patterns

Ways to support at home: Reinforce their learning about patterns – repeating, increasing, and decreasing at home by creating their own and asking them to describe their pattern.

We are scientists.

This week, we learned about the three states of matter.

We watched this video and then practiced being molecules. On the carpet, we were solids where we (as particles) are in a fixed position. Then we were liquid particles moving around on the carpet area only. Finally, we were free to roam around the room in a completely random and much farther apart like in a gas; they loved this one the most!

Students were given the opportunity to add to their Matter Science Books to show understanding in their own way.

Applied Design, Skills and Technologies (ADST) Curriculum

Your children are fast learners! On Friday, we logged into the laptops for the first time. They quickly learned how to login and shut down. All students brought home a blue sheet to memorize their login information and password.

Ways to support at home: Please help your child find a strategy to memorize their username, email address, and password. The next lesson will be to learn how to communicate through email so it will be important to learn how to login to Office 365 with their email address. Thank you!

Stream of Dreams

Have you had a chance to look at all of the fish students of Kitchener painted? They are now on the fence at the front of the school. Enjoy finding the fish your child painted!

Kitchener’s Family Movie Night is this Friday, October 18 at 4:00 PM! Doors open at 3:30 PM.

Please click here to learn more. If you plan to attend, CLICK HERE to RSVP. Hope to see you there!

If you ordered apples, you can pick them up before the movie.

Reminders

• Friday, October 25 is Pro-D day; students do not attend

We are excited to share that starting next week, Ms. Kim will be in our class on Mondays as well! I am looking forward to having some opportunities to be in the classroom to team teach with her on Monday and Wednesday. Thank you for your continued support at home. Should you have any questions, please feel free to ask. We are here as partners and we appreciate you!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan