Mrs. Stringers Blog

  In Literacy this week, we focused on a new 'walking story' topic about our favourite toy.  On Wednesday, we drafted our plan using our 'organizational drawers' to keep track of our ideas and make sure they are organized when we are writing.  The grade 3's did a wonderful job planning their ideas and then drafting them into sentences to make their story.  We focused on using our 3 scoop words to increase our vocabulary as well.  In word work this week, we reviewed long I sounds, focusing on the patterns i-e, igh and ie. In math this week, we concluded our unit on patterns and skip counting.  The students in room 6 completed a Show what you know quiz on patterns. In Science this week, we continued our work with Rocks and Minerals.  This week we focused on the rock cycle and the 3 different kinds of rocks.  We cut apart starburst into many different sediments and then used heat and pressure to turn them into a metamorphic rock and then into an igne...

In Literacy this week, we began our work writing our Walking Story, our personal narratives.  This week, we read an anchor book, The Best Part of Me, and wrote about which body part was our best and why.  We planned our ideas in a web, drafted our paragraph and revised our writing.  Also, this week, we learned about changing up our 'boring' words and adding 3 Scoop Words to make our writing more interesting. In math this week, we focused on skip counting by 3's and 4's.  First, we explored and discovered patterns on a 200 chart when we skip count by 3's and 4's.  Then we practised counting our collections in groups of 3 and 4.  Later in the week, we learned about Ordinals and how they are the order or position of objects or numbers. In Science this week, we began our Rocks & Minerals unit.  We brainstormed a bunch of wonder questions that the students wanted to learn about Rocks & Minerals as they looked through a variety of non-fiction books....

  In Literacy this week, we worked on discovering poetry.  Together we read a collection of favourite poems and created a list of how poetry is different from other forms of writing.  Then we explored writing 2 different poems this week, an acrostic poem about Remembrance Day and a limerick.  We also read a short novel, 'Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes' together as a class, discussing the importance of Peace and several other Remembrance Day picture books that sparked class discussions about why we celebrate Remembrance Day. In word work this week, we reviewed long 'a' patterns and long 'e' patterns. In math this week, be continued our study of patterns.  This week we focused on shrinking or decreasing patterns and how some patterns in our world are infinite (can go on forever) and finite (have an ending point).  The grade 3's built shrinking patterns with coloured tiles, and then we did a gallery walk around the room, exploring the different patterns....

In Literacy this week, we completed our first school wide write based on a picture prompt.  The grade 3's used a picture to spark an idea for a story.  Then they wrote quietly for 45 mins, putting their ideas together into a story.  We will use these stories to guide our writing throughout the year. This week in math, we began a new unit of patterns.  On Monday, we reviewed what repeating patterns are and vocabulary such as what is the core and attributes in a pattern.  Next, we build growing patterns and discussed the pattern rules and began using a T-table to record our patterns. In art this week, we began to create some poppy art to help decorate the gym for our Remembrance Day Assembly next week.  We drew 3 to 5 poppies on each paper and then drew a grid line of over top of our poppies.  Finally, we used red, black and white to create colour to our art without the colours touching each others. In gym this week, we started a new unit of basketball....

  In literacy, this week we continued with our writing cycle of Plan-Draft- Revise, with a focus on our experience In-Line Skating.  The grade 3's did a wonderful job revising their writing, adding, erasing or replacing words they were not happy with or wanted to change to make their writing sound more interesting.  In math, this week we did Pumpkin math activities.  On Monday, we estimated how many seeds were in each pumpkin before cutting them open and pulling out all the seeds.  Once the students saw the seeds, they decided they needed to write a new estimate.  Then on Day 2 we counted the seeds.  Each group decided if they would count y 2's, 5's, or 10s.  On our last day, we discussed our findings and compared the number of seeds that would found in each pumpkin and graphed our data.  The grade 3's had lots of good questions about why the pumpkin with the most lines, which means it was on the vine the longest, didn't have the most seeds....

  In Literacy this week, we completed our an advertisement for a Haunted House.  Through this assignment, the students were introduced to the writing cycle we will be using through our the year.  We will use plan-draft-revise cycle as we work on our writing throughout the year.  We will be posting our art work and our writing in the hallway to share our writing.  In Math this week, we finished up our first unit on Place Value and Number sense by completing a quiz on Thursday. We also worked on our first word problem and talked about math mindset and how tying something challenging will help to grow our math brains.  We finished our week on Friday, with our Fluency Fridays working on making our subtraction skills quicker and more fluent. In Art this week, we worked on blending colours using cool colours to create a nighttime background.  Then the grade 3's created their haunted houses they were writing about in their advertisements out of black constru...

  In literacy, this week we continued with our Autum theme.  We read and listened to some mentor texts about the season of fall and used our senses to write about how Fall makes use feel, see, taste, hear and smell.  Later in the week, the grade 3& 4's wrote about Thankfulness and gratitute for the many things that they have in their life.  We continued to practice what writing staminia looks like and sounds like in our classroom. In math, this week our focus was on learning and practicing some math games.  This week we learned Addition War and Lucky 13.  Throughout the year we will continue to learn ways to increase our speed and accuracy of our basic facts through a varitey of games.  On thursday, we begin working with money and discussed the different values of coins and how you record money using dollars and cents.  Each group was given a bag of money and had to fiqure out the total amont of money they had.  Then we ordered and compar...