March 1st

In Social Studies we are finishing our "Me On The Map" activity and family trees

Students have been planning out Science final projects; Those students whom have chosen to make a game, may need some help this weekend thinking up questions/answers and rules for their game! 

Please use the blog for support to help your child develop questions. 

We had a great Think-Pair-Share session for Math today comparing our two types of patterns that we have been working on in class. Tomorrow will be more practice with growing and shrinking types.

Growing

Shrinking

Feb 28th

I am so proud of all the students for doing a great job at the Virtues Assembly!

Tomorrow we are going to be doing a Family Tree activity, discuss this with your child tonight, so that tomorrow they can create their own trees. 

Don't forget swimming tomorrow for P.E

The students did some excellent Science review and started planning final projects for Plant Unit assessment

Feb 26- Part two

I have made a choice board (see below) for students' summative assignment for our Plant unit. The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against the grade 3 standards or benchmarks. We do this kind of assessment over testing and exams at Sunway International and in Canada.

Here is some good review content:

Life Cycle

Seed Germination

How plants grow

Vocabulary Pocket chart

Life Cycle Chart

Science Centers: In Notebooks

Science: Plant Unit -Choice Board

Art Work Must have the following: parts of a plant, the life cycle of a plant, an image of Photosynthesis, and the germination process, with artistic use of vocabulary words inside the art work	Music Make a song/rap that will help inform someone of what was learned during this unit	Writing + Art Create a booklet of the unit’s vocabulary words with sketches, drawings, explanations/ definitions
Presentation Summary of all the facts/information learned during this unit	Writing Clear directions for how to take care of a plant, how to make it grow, what items it needs to survive. Explain why it needs these parts and items in order to grow/survive	Kinaesthetic Develop/make a game that uses the knowledge from this unit in order to play/win

Feb 26th

Finally settling back into the routine as we do our first full week back after vacation!

Reminder: Agenda's must go back and forth from school EVERYDAY, it's necessary for the students to develop organization skills. 

We are also all going to be wearing Pink on Feb 28th for the Virtues assembly and for anti-bullying awareness!

“The Day of Pink” started in Nova Scotia, Canada as an anti-bullying campaign.  This year Sunway invited everyone to celebrate caring, tolerance and diversity at our school by taking a visible, public stance against bullying. How you ask? By wearing something pink (T-shirt, shorts, hat, etc.)!!! We will celebrate this day on Feb 28^th and discuss it during the Virtues Assembly. Please support each other and let’s make our schools a safer place to be.

Have students practice their lines from the Kelso's skits! They will be up on stage on the 28th presenting!

Working hard on our pattern centers! 

Feb 14th

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone! 

I hope you all have a lovely vacation, here are a few photo's from our Math patterning centers:

The students love these centers are are working hard on each task.

In science, our plants are germinating away!

In Health we have been talking about Kelso's Choices: How to solve conflicts. we added a "FRIENDS" poster to our class and talked about little vs. big problems

Our class will presenting a little drama skit at the Virtues Assembly on Feb 28th, teaching the whole school these strategies, that we are currently learning and starting to practice.

For Art we did Pattern Mosaics with some assorted materials, they are looking amazing!

At the end of the day, the students had time to write a Valentine's Day card/A Chinese New Year card/make a letter/lantern/book. etc. The students were allowed to write in their Native Language and this made A LOT of them excited. I believe that they should have opportunities to use their Native Language inside the English environment. 

恭喜发财 / 恭喜發財 (Gōngxǐ fācái)

'Happiness and prosperity!'

Feb 12th

Monday we are going to be one more Science center rotation and re-writing our Daily 5 letters to the Tooth Fairy. We will begin doing some Math group centers with these 5 activities.

1) Match and extend the pattern
2) Fill in the missing piece
3) Is it a pattern?
4) Sorting the patterns by patter names
5) Matching various pattern types

In Health we will be talking about Kelso's Choices:

The leading tool for teaching conflict management skills for children Pre-K through to grade 5. Home of the beloved choice wheel, this conflict resolution curriculum teaches children the difference between big problems and little problems.

There will be a Pink Day at the Virtues Assembly on Feb 28th, it is in awareness of anti-bullying and discrimination.

Feb 10th

ART DRIVE

I am a very BIG believer in recycling and teaching kids the value of recycling. Not only can it influence creative with the variety of uses for the items but it also helps reduce waste and help make our planet greener. Win, Win in my books :D

This is a list of recycled or gently used materials that I am looking to collect:

MAKE SURE ITEMS ARE CLEAN AND SAFE FOR CHILDREN TO HANDLE 

(NO SHARP EDEGES)

• Vegetable nets
• Bubble wrap
• Magazines
• Sequins/Jewels
• Thread/String (thick and thin and various colours)
• Ribbon
• Washers, nuts, fastenings 
• Pop tabs
• Bread tags
• Aluminium foil
• Corrugated cardboard
• Patterned paper
• Gift wrapping paper
• Textured paper
• Tissue paper
• scrapes of shiny wrappers
• Fabric
• Pipe cleaners
• straws
• buttons
• clothes pins
• Pompoms
• Feathers
• Felt
• Velcro
• Plastic lacing/string
• Makeup sponge
• Loofah
• Packing peanuts
• Cotton balls/pads
• Fake fur
• Q-tips
• Pasta (spiral, elbow, fusilli, cavatappi, rotelle, rigatoni, shell, farfalle, penne, rotini, rocchetti)
• Egg cartons (paper and plastic)
• Yogurt cups
• toilet paper rolls
• Bottle caps (Metal and plastic)
• Loose (mismatch lego pieces)
• shoe boxes
• Juice/drink containers and water bottles (washed)
• Metal cans (NO sharp edges)
• Beads
• Burlap
• paper cups/styrofoam 
• empty cereal, food boxes
• Milk jugs (washed)
• lids from plastic containers 
• Muffin wraps/cups (new)
• Plastic forks, spoons, knifes
• Wine corks
• wood disks, squares, small blocks (smooth, NO rough edges)
• Balloons
• coloured tape

Science Drive

I am looking to collect the following items for Strong&Stable Structures unit:

• Miniature marshmallows
• clay 
• Wooden stir sticks/craft sticks 
• Toothpicks
• Paper cups
• Newspapers
• Cardboard
• Boxes
• Cord/twine/string
• Long bamboo sticks/thin sticks
• paper plates

Feb 10th

Some links for extra support in our Patterning Unit

Moon Rock Patterns 

Two Patterns game  also Skip counting on this site

Unlock The Safe 

For general Math help -Science kids

Some extra Science support!

PBS kids - Plant vegetable garden

How plants Grow

Plants and animals

Feb 9th

Today we did another rotation of our Science Centers! 

It is good to see the students are starting to get into the routine and procedures of how our centers work and we had A LOT of on task and engaged learning this morning :D

The students have been working hard on their letter's to the Tooth Fairy, I am very pleased with how most have turned out! We will be re-writing out edited versions on Monday.

Feb 8th

Sorry it's been a few days! Been so busy planning some wonderful lessons! I have set up a Daily 5 Literacy program in my classroom.

The benefits of The Daily 5:

• students develop independence, stamina, and accountability
• less time consumed by classroom management leaves more for instruction
• improves literacy achievements
• behaviors of independence transfer to other content areas

Working on Writing station will hopefully look like this eventually!

The Data test on Monday went well! All students performed and passed their first test, Yaaayy!

We have started to move into our Patterning Unit and have been exploring where we see patterns in our daily lives and making charts to show what we already know about patterns. 

Next steps will be making patterns with more then one attribute (ex. colour and shape). Then exploring patterns in Addition, Subtraction and Multiplication with Number line, Calendar and our 100's chart.

In Science, Our plants continue to grow! 

We are exploring the process of Germination with this experiment in one of our centers:

Watching as the seed progresses through the stages!

We currently have 7 Science centers

1) Chlorophyll, what is it? making art with it! 

2) Labeling the parts of a plant and writing about these parts

3) Labeling the stages of germination and writing an explanation of the various stages

4) Photosynthesis, what is it? Watch a video and read Anchor cards then write an explanation 

5) Vocabulary practice with our pocket chart and matching cards

6) The inside of a seed experiment

7) Germination experiment  (see photo's above)

Feb 5th

Monday first period will be the Data Management test! 

Then relaxing with some Art right afterwards, students will finish up some "Selfies" and then we will be doing some paper weaving.

Weaving in 1-2-3 steps

P.E --MONDAY!

Seed, seeds...growing everywhere!

We will look into the process of seed germination by watch this YouTube video and observing our own plants and what stage(s) they might be at. On Tuesday we will look into the different stages a little more closely and label some diagrams.