Miss Kowal and Mr Neiger Grade 3

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Literacy  Today we began developing the Main Idea of our narrative stories.  We started with planning out what action our characters will take to solve the problem in their story,  so that we don't have the problem of getting to the end of the story and not knowing how to end it.  We also planned out two things that the character will try that are unsuccessful, before finally solving their problem. Math:  We are continuing to explore division and how it relates to multiplication. We are learning how to show our mathematical thinking in a variety of ways and learning different ways that we can check our own work to ensure we know we have successfully solved the equations. Ask your child to show you how to solve 12 ➗ 4 using more than 1 strategy. Science:   Our student teacher, Mr. Spackman, introduced new scientific vocabulary related to our new science unit, Testing Materials and Designs.  Students explored Compression Strength and Tensile Strength by exploring a variety of mat

Literacy:  We are continuing our work on Narrative Writing and working on fleshing out the main even of our story.  We introduced the idea of having a character try unsuccessfully to solve their problem a couple of times before solving the problem.  While we have been looking at all the different pieces of a story, we are now trying to put those pieces together to create a complete short story. Math:  We are working on applying our multiplication skills to solving problems. We are also going to begin looking at division this week. Science:  Mr Spackman (our student teacher) has started teaching us a new unit about Testing Materials and Building Things. Social Studies:  We complete an art project that we started on Friday recreating Peruvian Arpilleras (a quilt type art piece that depicts daily life in Peru). Later this week we are going to write a descriptive paragraph explaining what is being shown in our Arpillera. Our Peru Feast is on Friday. If you have contacted Miss Kowal a

Literacy: We are beginning to look at how to build suspense in our writing.  We are working on giving the reader clues in their writing before providing a big reveal. Math: We are going to continue learning about multiplication and learn how multiplication is connected to telling time on an analog clock. Science:   We are wrapping up or Hearing and Sound unit and just finished a Show What You Know assessment of all the things we have covered this far.  This week we are going to start a short research project on amazing animal hearing. Social Studies: We are going to wrap up our research about a trip to Peru. Ask your child to login to their google account to show you their trip plan! Other: Wednesday is Pink Shirt Day to promote Anti-Bullying. For more information please check out  https://www.pinkshirtday.ca/about  . As as school, students are invited to wear a pink shirt on Wednesday to show their support. Our student teacher, Mr Spackman, started in our class last we

Literacy: We are wrapping up our study of creating paragraphs with elaborative detail.  We are looking at when to pause our writing and to add elaboration and how doing so too frequently or too sparingly can both equally take away from the quality of our writing.  Next, we will look at how to build suspense in our writing, getting the reader to read between the lines to give the reader clues without having to explicitly state what might be coming.  Math: We are continuing to explore multiplication up to 5x5. We are learning different strategies to solve multiplication problems. We emphasize being able to explain how they got their solution. Students are not expected to memorize any multiplication facts in grade 3, but are learning to explain their strategy of how they know what the answer is. Some strategies we have explored so far include: repeated addition, equal grouping pictures, skip counting and arrays. Social Studies: We are planning a pretend trip to Peru. Students are le

Literacy: This week we are continuing to look at how to write with elaborative detail.  We are looking at when the best times to use elaborative detail are, specifically when we introduce an important setting, character or object to our story.  We discussed how pausing to write a descriptive paragraph is like adding a spice to a recipe.  It should be used sparingly but a little bit helps to make our stories delicious!  Math: We have been learning different thinking routines that help students to learn to explain their mathematical thinking. Last week we learned about 'always, sometimes, never' and 'prove it'. Today we learned 'disappearing Dan'. Ask your child to explain one of the thinking routines to you. We are also exploring what it means to multiply using equal groupings. Art: We practiced doing perspective drawings from still life.  Students acted as living models to hold a pose while students used charcoal sticks to try to capture the shape and movem