IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Volunteer Callout! We still need a couple volunteers for our field trip to the Weaselhead Preservation for next week Wednesday. Please email me or Jodi if you can make it! Dead Battery Drop Off! The Prince of Wales We Club is asking for dead battery donations. Did you know that zinc deficiency in our diet can have a huge impact on brain and body growth? One battery has enough zinc to be processed into vitamin pills for 6 children! Send any non-leaking batteries down. They are collecting them until end of May. IMPORTANT DATES May 2: Fun Lunch (Booster Juice) May 2: Elder Shirley Hill May 7: Music Monday May 9: Weaselhead Preservation Field Trip May 9: Grade 3 presents to School Council!! (Come see what we are doing!) May 14: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Fun Lunch (Wok Box) May 18: PD Day (no school for students) May 25: Volunteer Tea OUR DAY 140 days down, 40 days left. Our Thank-You Story Sticks are almost done, and they are such beautiful artifacts. We started our day with writing the barking copy (ask your child) of the reflection piece to go along with the Story Sticks. Students were given guiding questions to help plan their piece, such as: What is the story your want to share? When did it happen? (time, time of day, what program/event, …) Who was with you? (only add if the person helps move the story along) Where did it happen? What was involved? What did you learn about your animal or conservation from your experience? A tricky thing when giving guiding questions is that students will answer each question separate instead of weaving in the ideas in a story. Students received feedback, and there were many “AHA!” moments. The biggest “AHA” moment for me came when introducing interesting beginnings, a Grade 3 literacy outcome for writing. In the past, this concept did not immediately click for the majority of the class, and it would take lots of practice, then role-playing, to get it going. BECAUSE of Zoo School, many students understood the interesting beginnings concept right off the bat! Why, you ask? Experiential learning. Interesting beginnings could be a sound effect, a question/worry/wonder, an action, or dialogue (the main four). This is a hook to compel the reader to keep on reading. WOW! There are some fantastic ones that came out after two minutes! This is a great start to bringing this into our narrative non-fiction writing. After recess, and a story about trying to like spiders, we looked at bridges. We have a guest speaker in tomorrow (my mum), who is a retired structural draftsman, with a particular love of all things bridges. She will be sharing her story, as well as knowledge about bridges with the Grade 3s. She will also help our class come up with a project and criteria list for our bridge design project. Students watched a video, and recorded observations in their journal, as part of a Daily Double. The second part is “inferences”, and then, in true Douglas Adams 4 book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, we added a third section for “wonders”.Students will continue to add to this page as we look at more videos, books, and pictures. After lunch and a read to self, we played a game called Circles and Stars. One student immediately recognized it as multiplication (huzzah to you!). Students roll the dice, and draw that many circles. They roll a second time, and this is how many stars they need to draw in each circle. They then need to (preferably) skip count to find their total. Once they have that, they record their total in a chart. This will become a support as we continue on with multiplication. After gym, we almost finished up the story sticks and akan-you panda head cards. Those that were finished went on the computer to play some more math games. I am truly excited for the next few weeks. I am very oh so proud of each student, and the perseverance they are building in their learning. Cheerios! Ms Lauf IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Volunteer Callout! I’m dropping a bug in the ear of you gentle folk that we will need some volunteers for our field trip to the Weaselhead Preservation. Please email me or Jodi if you can make it! IMPORTANT DATES May 2: Fun Lunch (Booster Juice) May 2: Elder Shirley Hill May 7: Music Monday May 9: Weaselhead Preservation Field Trip May 9: Grade 3 presents to School Council!! May 14: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Fun Lunch (Wok Box) May 18: PD Day (no school for students) May 25: Volunteer Tea OUR DAY 139 days down, 41 days left. A combined Thursday and Friday! Our focus has been tying up loose ends in the class. We have been practicing our subtraction, continuing on with our Harry Potter Reader’s Response, finishing up the felting of Ukrainian flowers, reflecting and creating an event map of the felting process, and coming up with our Tunisia Slam Project ideas. We will be tackling these next week. Students will have two days to research and create a presentation on their topic they want to learn more about. We wrote our Thank-You Letter to Chevron and The Calgary Zoo, which will go along with our Class Story Sticks. Most students have added onto these sticks, and those that were not here this week, will have an opportunity to catch up next week Monday. We are also heading into our final writing project of the year - the Zoo School Animal Non-Fiction Narratives. Students will be using all their observations from the zoo to help build their story. We will also be doing closed reading on their animals to help fill in any gaps in the different areas (Habitat, Diet, Physical Characteristics, Parental Care, Threats, Defenses/Adaptations, Predator, Prey, and Life Cycles). Our end goal is to create stories about our animals that will promote empathy and compassion for animals, nature, and conservation, which was our focus at Zoo School. Cheerios! Ms Lauf IMPORTANT INFORMATION Volunteer Callout! I’m dropping a bug in the ear of you gentle folk that we will need some volunteers for our field trip to the Weaselhead Preservation. Please email me or Jodi if you can make it! IMPORTANT DATES April 26: PoWer Hour begins May 2: Fun Lunch (Booster Juice) May 2: Elder Shirley Hill May 7: Music Monday May 9: Weaselhead Preservation Field Trip May 9: Grade 3 presents to School Council!! May 14: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Fun Lunch (Wok Box) May 18: PD Day (no school for students) May 25: Volunteer Tea OUR DAY 137 days down, 43 days left. Students did their final round of Tunisia research, which leads us to tackling our Tunisia Slam Project. This is where students will select one thing they want to learn more about, present it to the class, come up with a plan, and then do/build/make. We will discuss which Social Studies outcomes their projects will tie into. This will all be done over 2 days. SLAM! After Music and Recess, we headed to the Idea Lab to finish our felting. THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL! While they are eager to bring them home, they will stay in the class for a spell, as they will be doing some writing about process, and how the flower they picked is important in Ukraine. As a support, they will be using a Felting Word Bank (a list of topic specific vocabulary words, categorized into nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs). Ask your child how they made their felting. After lunch, we looked at how we are going to proceed with our Story Writing. Students watched a video of Grade 2s creating a non-fiction narrative piece, with particular focus on how the students were gathering evidence and working during class. Here is a link to the eBook that this class created, and that we are using as an exemplar for our work. Tomorrow is our first day of PoWer Hour!
Cheerios! Ms Lauf IMPORTANT INFORMATION
A reminder that Spring Picture Day is tomorrow. Volunteer Callout! I’m dropping a bug in the ear of you gentle folk that we will need some volunteers for our field trip to the Weaselhead Preservation. Please email me or Jodi if you can make it! IMPORTANT DATES April 25: Spring Photos April 26: PoWer Hour begins May 2: Fun Lunch (Booster Juice) May 2: Elder Shirley Hill May 7: Music Monday May 9: Weaselhead Preservation Field Trip May 9: Grade 3 presents to School Council!! May 14: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Fun Lunch (Wok Box) May 18: PD Day (no school for students) May 25: Volunteer Tea OUR DAY 136 days to go, 44 days left. Fist off, students were informed of their PoWer Hour selections. We are conserving paper, so the students were verbally told, with the encouragement to remember so they can tell you. Today, Mrs Ferrari came in and introduced our class to the beautiful world of felting. We are tying it in with flowers of Ukraine. To prep the students, we learned about important flowers, trees, and birds of Ukraine, including any legends. Mrs Ferrari showed the students how to gently stretch out the felt background, and then build from background to foreground. We discussed how you use small pieces, learned how to blend the Merino wool pieces, and then place them on the wool background. Students then planned out their designs, picking from one of the following flowers: malva (Мальва - malva) poppy (мак - mak) cornflower (волошка - voloshka) marigold (чорнобривці -chornobryvsti) sunflower (соняшник - sonyashnyk) periwinkle (барвінок- barvinok) The students studied the flowers, looking at the shapes of the petals, and the different colours of the flower. The considered the composition, and drew their design. As the students worked, they were given feedback, and made many iterations of their design. This can be sometimes hard to take in when we are learning a new skill. Gentle reminders were given to students to always to constructive feedback as “I am learning how to do something, and I will always get better when I keep practicing”. It is always about the “…yet”. I can’t do this, YET. Tomorrow, we will felt! We also worked on our subtraction skills practice. Some students are bringing their booklets home, so check their backpacks. They have been given instructions to compete 1 or 2 pages of their choice (as was the expectation for the hour of practice), and then to bring back tomorrow to go over, and continue. We finished off our day in this glorious weather, first skipping ropes, and then playing on the playground or soccer on the compound. It is GOOD to be in the sunshine. Cheerios! Ms Lauf IMPORTANT INFORMATION
A reminder that Wednesday is Spring Picture Day!! Volunteer Callout! I’m dropping a bug in the ear of you gentle folk that we will need some volunteers for our field trip to the Weaselhead Preservation. Please email me or Jodi if you can make it! IMPORTANT DATES April 25: Spring Photos April 26: PoWer Hour begins May 2: Fun Lunch (Booster Juice) May 2: Elder Shirley Hill May 7: Music Monday May 9: Weaselhead Preservation Field Trip May 9: Grade 3 presents to School Council!! May 14: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Elder Shirley Hill May 16: Fun Lunch (Wok Box) May 18: PD Day (no school for students) May 25: Volunteer Tea OUR DAY 135 days to go, 45 days left. What an amazing day! Today, I was with the Grade 3 Team for a Team Planning Day (BIG things coming in the next few weeks: a bridge slam project, and our animal non-fiction narrative stories), and the students were in the very capable hands of Ms Perry. The students began their day winding up their Tunisia research for our final project on this country. We will go over what they want to do tomorrow. Students also worked on their addition and subtraction, as well as some brain teasers and word problems. The class also finished up their illustrations of their Zoo School story sticks (with labelling). We will use these as inspiration for our non-fiction narrative stories. After gym, students added to their Harry Potter Reader’s Response, up to Chapter 4. Tomorrow, we continue on with this tale, constantly looking for critical information that develops character and moves the story along with setting and problems/solutions. I can’t wait to share what we planned today with the class tomorrow! Cheerios! Ms Lauf That's right!
CRAZY HAIR & HAT DAY! THIS MONDAY! Wear your hair With lots of flair! Add barrettes, or pipe cleaners, Braids, or bedhead, Curly, or crinkled, or why not flat instead? Sticking straight up, Or all to one side. Why not try a hat, If you want your hair to hide? Be zany, Be kooky... Be... Be... Be... Be... Wait. Did someone say cookie? IMPORTANT INFORMATION
There is no school tomorrow! IMPORTANT DATES April 18: Fun Lunch (Little Caesar) April 19: Student Led Conferences (3:30 pm - 7:00 pm) April 20: No School for students April 25: Spring Photos April 26: PoWer Hour begins OUR DAY 134 days to go, 46 days left. Today was a day to get organized and tie up some loose ends. Most students are finished their Pen Pal Letters to the Grade 3 students at Piitoayis School. We can’t wait to hear back from them! Most students are also done their Six-Room Poetry, which means a good copy in their Visual Journals with illustrations. We also hammered out our Zoo School Bulletin Board. Come check it out! We will add things as we go along. We will begin our Story Writing next week. The stories will be based on the animals the students observed. We will begin first with character development, and then look at problems and solutions. A big focus in Grade 3 is Interesting Beginnings, meaning How do you hook the reader? A reminder that there is no school tomorrow. Cheerios! Ms Lauf IMPORTANT INFORMATION
The kangaroo cannot walk backwards. IMPORTANT DATES April 18: Fun Lunch (Little Caesar) April 19: Student Led Conferences (3:30 pm - 7:00 pm) April 25: Spring Photos April 26: PoWer Hour begins OUR DAY 132 days to go, 48 days left. Today, the kids went to school. The end. Just kidding. Mrs K was in for me this morning. The students worked on a reflection for the Musk Ox Enrichment Bashing Toy. They looked at a journal page of notes, and then groups got a paragraph about musk ox facts (appearance, habitat, predators, seasonal behaviours, and diet). They pulled out nouns, adjectives, and verbs for their Word Bank. This is a longer process and we are specifically discussing what a noun, adjective, and verb is. Once we have this done, the students will write a reflection about their Bashing Toy, what worked, and what they would change for a better result. After recess, they had chose centres: spelling game, Read-to-Self or -Buddy, journal work, math booklet, or step-by-step drawing (follow instructions, fine motor control). The classroom was still standing, so a good morning. In the afternoon, students did a Read-to-Self with a quick reader’s response, picking an object to represent something critical in what they read. This opened up to a discussion of representation and symbolism, and how we can figure out critical information. After gym, we decided what we are going to put on our Thank-You Sticks & drawings. We finished the day off with subtraction. You know it’s an engaging conversation that when the bell goes, many students don't want to go home. (Love.) We are looking at expanding the number, and then regrouping so we can subtract from each place value. We had a HUGE talk about value, where my bracelets got involved, and then students got a history lesson of digits (fingers), ten fingers, and why we call numerical digits, digits. Oh! Also how we can then place value on our personal digits, based on the value of the place value digits. I think I might ban the word finger(s) in my class for a spell, and only the word digits can be used. Tally-ho until tomorrow! Cheerios! Ms Lauf Our class is missing one of the volunteer journals from Zoo School.
If it has followed you home, and is batting its eyes at you, begging for scraps and a belly rub, can you please shoo it back to our class? Or put it in your child's backpack to bring back to school? Thank-you! IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Glaciologists say that the next ice age begins when the snow doesn’t melt over summer. IMPORTANT DATES April 18: Fun Lunch (Little Caesar) April 19: Student Led Conferences (3:30 pm - 7:00 pm) April 25: Spring Photos April 26: PoWer Hour begins OUR DAY 131 days to go, 49 days left. Word by the bike racks is that there were some tired students this weekend…TIRED FROM ALL THAT LEARNING! And maybe walking. Which helps with the learning. Today, we began with Math Morning. Students were given a variety of addition problems. As always, they are encouraged to SHOW THEIR WORK and ORGANIZE THEIR INFORMATION. So far, looks good; I will go over their work and provide feedback for corrections tomorrow. In the rabbit hole that is Pinterest, I found a fabulous resource called Word Banks. Now, I have used them before, but the structure of these make sense in the following ways:
I will provide a word bank list to refer to, so they can add to their own, AFTER they have given an honest effort to theirs first. After our Observation Animal Word Bank, the students got into their animal observation groups, and created a poster of what they learned. They were given 9 specific questions/topics, and then whatever else they wanted to add. They had to have the following:
After lunch, we discussed our story sticks, and the thank-you “cards” we will be sending Chevron (the corporate partner who helps fund Zoo School), Andrea (our Zoo School coordinator), and the Calgary Zoo, as well as volunteers. We discussed how we can incorporate our leanings of story sticks into our thank-yous. After gym, we tackled subtraction, buy watching 1.5 videos from Khan academy. These are wonderful videos that explain concepts using colour, and a variety of ways to represent numbers. The students are always reminded that the classroom is their safe place where they can always share misunderstandings and confusion, because really I will rename our classroom as their clarity space. There were great questions that lead to deeper understanding. The biggest takeaway is ALWAYS READ THE QUESTION, and the biggest strategy is to READ IT OUT LOUD, like you are quietly talking to yourself, as this forces yourself to listen. For instance, the way the problem was worded was this way: Take 659 from 971. In my experience, a number of students will only look at numbers, know they have to do subtraction, and put the numbers in order as they see them. Well, that just won’t do! I wrote it out as 659 - 971 = ___ , and asked them to talk with their elbow buddy why this was not true. Through our discussion, and having a few students read the statement out loud, they heard the instructions, and switched the order of the numbers. (Proper vocabulary is: minuend - subtrahend = difference) I will introduce these words to them this week to help support their understanding. We will continue tomorrow. Then it was the end of day. The End. Cheerios! Ms Lauf |
AuthorMs Lauf Archives
June 2018
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