This week seemed even busier than last week's short week. Maybe because it was the second short week in a row, maybe because I was off sick one day, I'm not sure. I felt like I was trying to cram so much into the 3 days that I was with the students. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the four-day weekend they had. Unfortunately there are still lots of bugs going around, and many students at school have been getting sick. Thank you to everyone who sent in a box of tissues this week, they'll definitely be used up quickly over the coming winter months.
In language this week, we have finished going through the French alphabet with the sounds "w", "x", "y", and "z". We discussed that "w" was not originally part of the French alphabet so that words with "w" are borrowed from other languages or even sometimes pronounced as "v" like in "wagon". The grade threes read the short story "La famille de Rachel" and responded to comprehension questions. We read two new fall poems which are going home with next week's homework to be shared at home. We worked on making predictions this week, both as a class with a read aloud, and in the guided reading groups. We discussed what information we use to make predictions: title, subtitles, information on cover, images on the cover and throughout the text. We also discussed reviewing a prediction and assessing whether it was a good prediction or not. This helps with comprehension of a story. We will continue to work on this next week. The students brainstormed ideas for a writing piece about what they do with their families while I was away on Wednesday. They completed the task yesterday with me. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of writing I got from so many students. The students worked very hard to use the word wall and to sound words out instead of asking for most words as they have been doing up until now. They had several models of sentences with a variety of ideas up on the board to help them as well. Several students just did the minimum amount of sentences that I asked for while others attempted to complete the entire page or even pages! So great for this point of the year!
In math, we finished up our unit on representing numbers to 100, and 1000. The students did a written assessment on the unit today. Next week we will begin a unit on graphing, although we have already done several graphing activities in our daily math problems as Friday questions are from the Data Management strand. We will look at several types of graphs, Venn diagrams, pictographs, bar graphs. We will also look at tally charts and making surveys. The emphasis will be on comprehension of the information in the graphs and charts, amounts of each item, totalling, and making comparisons between items on a graph/chart. Students will need to be able to present information in a graph with appropriate labels, title, and numbers placed in their graphs.
In Social Studies, the grade twos worked in groups to read an informational text about food and clothing in different countries throughout the world. The worked together to find the answers in the text to multiple choice questions about what they read. The grade threes continued to complete information about the communities in which they live.
As the school year continues, I'm constantly trying to find new ways to improve my classroom organization and teaching. (Thank you Pinterest and professional teacher blogs! ) I've found some great sound blend strips that I have taped to the students' desks to help them with their writing. Also, I've put up a visual schedule, unfortunately, due to space and finding a magnetic surface to post it on, it's only visible when our door is closed, or nearly closed. I also added more magazine boxes to hold our duo tangs. We now need to have two bins for each subject as they add more and more work to them.
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