Category: We are scientists.

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

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

Dear families,

This past week, we had a great opportunity to learn about salmon’s life cycle and paint our own fish through the Stream of Dreams Mural Society. Our fish will be put on the fence for many many years of enjoyment!

Ways to support at home: Ask your child what they learned about salmon and their life cycle. What are some ways we can help fish in our nearby environment? How do we turn what we learned into action? What else are you curious about? Be curious together and do some further research together to model curiosity.

We are mathematicians.

This week, we built on our understanding of patterns and learned how to create increasing patterns. An example might be circles of different colours:

Blue – orange. Blue – orange orange. Blue – orange orange orange. Blue – orange orange orange orange.

Students need to be able to describe the pattern. It would look like this:

“Start with one blue and one orange circle. Add one more orange circle each time.”

The sentence frame would be the same: Start with _____. Add one more (or how ever many more) each time.

How to support at home: Practice creating and describing your own. For example: Fork – spoon. Fork – spoon spoon. Fork – spoon spoon spoon. Fork – spoon spoon spoon spoon.

Another example: Fork – spoon. Fork fork spoon. Fork fork fork spoon. Fork fork fork fork spoon.

We are scientists.

We learned about what an atom is. We watched this video: What is an atom?

Ways to support at home: Feel free to watch it again at home and discuss what you learned. What other things do you wonder about?

We also read a book called “I Wonder” and started our I Wonder poems in our writing books. When you go for a car ride or walk around the neighbourhood, ask, “What do you wonder about?” Model curiosity by sharing what you wonder about.

Thank you for your continued support at home!

With much gratitude, Ms. Chan

From Ms. Kim:

I hope you are having a restful weekend.

This past week, our students embarked on a mini inquiry project, where they chose a country of interest and researched its birthing traditions. They then met with other groups and shared their knowledge with one another. We will continue exploring more inquiry topics related to family in the coming week. On Tuesday and Wednesday, please help extend their learning by asking about the topics discussed in Social Studies and the traditions they have learned. You can also have a discussion about the similarities and differences between these cultures and your own family’s traditions to further enrich their understanding outside of the classroom.

In math, we are continuing our learning on data analysis, focusing on pictographs and interpreting data. Please support them at home by showing them graphs in our day-to-day lives and discussing the information displayed in them.

Our students have been enjoying learning about Keith Haring and have created Keith Haring-inspired family portraits. This week in art, they will be learning how patterns are used in artwork.

Thank you, and have a wonderful rest of the weekend.