Colour House Day and a Brain Bike

This week we got to enjoy one of the new brain bikes, right in our class room. We will have the bike for a couple of weeks before it is moved to another classroom. The students take turns rotating through the class list for their turns. They can work, listen to lessons at the carpet, and even eat while on the bikes. While it was a little disruptive at first, everyone has gotten used to the system and I don't even notice when they switch up.

We also had another Colour House Day on Wednesday. I love seeing everyone in their house colours showing their school and house spirit.

This week in language, we read "Le loup qui enquêtait au musée" for our read aloud. This was the last of the loup series that I have so we will be moving on to other books for the rest of the year. The students really enjoyed the series and often sign out the few loup books that are available at the library.

For our shared reading, we read "Horace" and "Une graine voyageait".

Most guided reading groups are working on understanding descriptive text. In guided writing, groups are either finishing up their animal descriptions or are working on a description of an object. They are learning about writing paragraphs: indenting, one idea per paragraph, and when to switch to a new paragraph.

In math, we finished up our unit on measuring mass and capacity, counting money, and temperature. We began our next unit on telling time. The grade twos need to read time to the quarter hour while the grade threes need to read time to the five minutes. This week we focused on reading time on clocks and showing a given time on their own individual clocks. Next week we will have our usual daily 3 math centres for time before we move on the following week to our next unit on multiplication and division. Time is something that students will need as a life skill and is a great one to practise at home.

In science, the grade threes did an experiment on static electricity using a plastic comb and some cut-up pieces of paper. For some, it took a few tries before they were able to have enough charge on the comb to pick up the paper.

The grade twos learned about the difference between transparent, opaque, and translucent. They checked out a variety of objects and listed which of the three the objects were.

In social studies, the grade threes began their new unit on early communities in Ontario. Given a kit about the Métis of Ontario, they had a prompt and had to come up with questions that they had as they looked through the artifacts in the kit.

The grade twos learned about communities in Australia and about some distinguishing features of Australia (landscape, animals, people, language...)

In drama, we reviewed steps to take when the students have a conflict. They worked in partners with puppets to practise using words to communicate about the problem and resolve it.

Coming up in April, the school will be collecting old cell phones as a fund raiser. We will accept the chargers too but they are not required with the cell phones. If you have any old cell phones that you no longer use, working or not, please consider donating them to the school for this fundraiser.

Please check Bloomz and agendas regularly for school/class communication. These last few months are busy with lots going on.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. 

Colour House Challenges and Earth Hour

This week we read "Le loup qui découvrait le pays des contes" for our read aloud. We focused on two decoding strategies and one comprehension strategy.

For our shared reading, we reviewed the "ur" sound/spelling in "La caricature". We also read "Le premier vol de l'hirondelle".

Some students were still working on the good copy of their written retell. Others are working on responding to descriptive text.

Reading to self

Reading to self

Listening to reading

In math, our math talks have been focused on mental math strategies for 2-digit subtraction. We continued to complete activities on money and measuring weight, capacity, and temperature.

In science, the grade threes continued to look at different types of forces: flotation, friction, and magnetic force. The students did an experiment to test which materials were attracted to magnets.

Experimenting with magnets

The grade twos participated in an experiment to see which objects will float or sink after making a hypothesis about each object. Afterward, they had to summarize which types of materials float. They also did an activity similar to what they have been doing in math, where they had to look at a variety of objects and place them in order based on weight.

All ready to test whether objects floats

In social studies, the grade threes finished up the unit on living and working in Ontario with an activity on the geography of Ontario. We looked at the geographical regions and the students are creating a 3-d map of the regions. (St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario lowlands, the Canadian Shield, and the lowlands of the Hudson Bay)

Since St. Patrick's Day was during March Break, we looked at it this week. We read about why it started and the students completed a written activity about what they had learned.

In drama, we did some activities on working in groups. We looked at all of the components of group work, speaking, listening, and doing one's share of the work. After discussing each, the students took turns pairing up with a different partner each time to practise what that would look/sound like by discussing what they had done over the March Break with a partner.

On Thursday, the students participated in a secret Colour House Challenge in the classroom. Today we held Earth Hour and all of the lights and technology was turned off during that hour.

Coming up in April, we will be doing a cell phone drive at the school. If anyone has any old cellphones lying around, even if they do not work, please consider sending them into the class over the next couple of weeks.

Our school yard is extremely muddy at this time with all of the fluctuations in weather. Please consider sending your child with rain boots, splash pants, and ensure that they have a spare change of clothes over the next few weeks.

The last few months of school tend to fly by with all of the many activities that come up. Please check the agenda daily and check Bloomz regularly to ensure you are receiving all school and class communications.

Have a great weekend!