Wednesday, October 7

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today! The students have a ton of work on the go right now, so tomorrow and Friday will have plenty of work period time. I'm trying to structure the weeks a little different this year, and overload the class with work for the first couple days, and then give them plenty of time to finish it for the rest of the week. I've noticed this group seems to take a while to get started, but once they're in the zone, they actually work really efficiently. 

We've been talking a lot about 'character traits', and the students have created characters that could be friends with Wilbur (the pig from Charlotte's web) in some alternate version of the story.

Today we went a step further with this work, and the students were tasked with choosing four character traits they didn't know the meanings of, looking up the meaning, and then writing a sentence about a person, real or fictional, that embodies that trait. For example, "Spiderman is altruistic because he puts himself in danger to protect others. Malfoy is arrogant because he think's he's better than other wizards and picks on Hermione."

In math, we're working on addition and subtraction with whole numbers. For example, 94 - 30, or 250 - 70. Ideally these questions should be pretty easy for kids in Grade 3/4, but not everybody has had that moment where the pattern 'clicks'. I'm hoping with some explicit practice, it will happen for everybody very soon. :)

In Social Studies, the students labelled cities and towns on maps of Alberta and Canada.

Parent Teacher Conference Bookings are now open (for real this time), so please book a spot soon!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Monday, October 5

 Hi parents,

Picture Day went great today. I've never had so many students get so dressed up, it was awesome.

For writing, we built on the theme of last week's Spelling Sentences Twist, in which the students had to write sentences with adverbs, verbs, adjectives, and nouns. This time they had to write sentences about things they were thankful for. I think being forced to include adverbs and adjectives made this writing a lot more unique than your average gratitude journaling. 

We went over this week's spelling words, and talked about the 'or' sound. We read Chapter 5 of Charlotte's Web, and did Daily LA. The students also had Gym and Music in the morning.

In math, I taught the class some mental math tricks for solving problems involving 11's and 12's, by first adding or subtracting 10, and then counting on 1-2 more times.

Parent Teacher Conferences are now open for booking - please book a conference as soon as you can!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Friday, October 2

 Hi parents,

I don't have too much to write today! We had a long morning work period, then we met up with our buddy class and did some data collection and graphing. Students worked in partners to survey their classmates with 'whats your favourite _____?' questions, and then graphed the results.

In Math, we did some subtraction on a number line. This has been really challenging for the class, and I'm glad they're getting the opportunity to expand their knowledge of math strategies. Working with a number line is a good way to build a sense of numbers' relative positions too. 

We did the Spelling Quiz but I didn't have a chance to mark them yet. I just posted the words for next week below.

Have a nice weekend!

Zac

Monday, October 5 is Picture Day!!

Spelling Words (Week of Oct. 4)

 Spelling List A (Oct. 2 – 9)

or	for	orb	orca	orc
more	form	born	fort	corn

 

Spelling List B (Oct. 2 – 9)

lord	worn	sore	order	short
story	sports	sorry	thorns	sworn

 

Spelling List C (Oct. 2 – 9)

worms	working	sword	scorn	chord
ivory	torch	manor	worst	force

This week's focus is the 'or' letter blend. Every word features it in some way. List C words have some less conventional 'or' sounds (worms, worst, working) and some words meant to expand students vocabularies. Please make sure your child is able to spell the words on List A before trying list B or C!

Good luck!

Thursday, October 1

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today! In the morning, we switched up table groups, awarded a prize to last month's winning table, and had a long work period. Students all finished their 'Smile So Big' Art as well as just about all the work from last week. 

For Spelling Sentences this week, the twist was 'Super Sentences'. This means each sentence must include a noun, adjective, verb, and adverb.This is a pretty challenging twist for spelling sentences, as far as they go, especially at this point in the year where we haven't explicitly learned about adverbs.

We did Daily LA, Music, and French (we reviewed days of the week and counting to 10), and we read another chapter of Charlotte's Web.

In Math, we're working on 'jump addition' using a number line. This strategy can be helpful for mental math. Basically it involves taking a problem like "123 + 112" and thinking" "first, add 100. Then add 10. Then add 2." Students can show these 'jumps' on a number line. 

Since its October, we ended our day with a scary story.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Monday, September 28

 Hi parents,

Today we learned more about Orange Shirt Day. We read the book 'When We Were Alone', and students wrote in their journals about what Orange Shirt Day means to them. If your child has an orange shirt, please encourage them to wear it to school tomorrow!

We've been doing low-stakes 'mad minutes' lately to build fact fluency. Students get 3 minutes, rather than just one, to do as many basic facts as they can. Then, they mark their own work, and keep track of how many they got. The hope is that they can beat their own personal records, rather than competing against classmates, and so far morale has been good!

We went over some of this week's new spelling words. This will be our last week of 'sight words', before we move on to specific spelling patterns.

In the afternoon, we did Daily LA, and then a math lesson on different ways a number can be represented, based on place value. For example, '10 tens and 14 ones' is the same as '114'. This activity helps students build general number sense. I reiterated that it is still important to know and use the common and most efficient ways of writing numbers.

We started reading Charlotte's Web. We're only a chapter in, but the students seem to be pretty into it so far. At the end of the day I handed out some info about Picture Day, which is Oct. 5!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Orange Shirt Day - Sep. 29

 

Spelling Words (Week of Sep. 27)

 Spelling List A (Sep. 25 – Oct. 2)

was	round	say	who	like
want	blue	jump	good	from

 

Spelling List B (Sep. 25 – Oct. 2)

going	any	just	every	where
round	all	yellow	three	some

 

Spelling List C (Sep. 25 – Oct. 2)

orange	white	used	sleep	their
true	wrong	until	without	rule

I dialled back the difficulty of this week's words - last week's were too hard. This will be the last week of 'sight words', and then we're moving on to lists that will be focused on a specific letter blend or spelling concept.

Good luck!

Thursday, September 24

 Hi parents,

We had a mostly good day today, although the class did get in trouble for some unruly behaviour at one point.

Here are the things that went well today though. The students did a fantastic job of getting work done during the morning work period. Lots of students finished everything from earlier in the week. The class met Ms. Phillipa, who is a student teacher from MRU that will be working with our class on Thursdays. We made a lot of progress on our 'Smile so Big' artwork.

The Terry Fox Run was also a big success. The class ran a total of 158 laps! Thanks everybody for your donations. :)

This week's spelling quiz was a lot harder for the class than previous week's have been. Please keep practicing at home, because it makes a big difference!

There is no school tomorrow, so have a great weekend!

Zac

Wednesday, September 23

 Hi parents,

Today we started working on a new orange shirt day-inspired art project, inspired in particular by the book "Smile So Big". The students painted an orange circle on a blue background. Not too exciting yet but just you wait.

In Math, we continued using the Stamp Game for addition with regrouping. Its coming along at a pretty typical pace. There are always some students who actively resist using the Stamp Game because it feels slow. It can be especially hard for kids who already know the standard algorithm, because it feels like a step backward - but in terms of deeper understanding, its almost always a step forward.

In the afternoon we did Daily LA once again, which the students did great with. We also did some more work with ordering cities by population, this time focusing only on cities and towns within Alberta.

Tomorrow is our Terry Fox Run! Please send a toonie with your child, as we're trying to raise $1000 as a school for the Terry Fox Foundation!

Tomorrow will also be our spelling quiz, as there is no school on Friday.

Have a nice night!

Zac

Tuesday, September 22

 Hi parents,

Sorry for the lack of Blog yesterday, we've had a lot on the go with the screener assessments and the upcoming Terry Fox run!

Today was a good day for our class. We did 'Spelling Sentences', as we do most Tuesdays, and today's twist was 'Haiku Practice'. Students wrote sentences for each of their spelling words, and this time, the sentences had to be exactly 5 or 7 syllables. Being able to count syllables in phrases is a really helpful skill for poetry writing - especially haiku poetry.

In Math, we used the Stamp Game to represent and add numbers. This material is my favourite for teaching regrouping. The students sometimes find it a little boring. But I don't know of any better way to help them visualize the inner-workings of the standard algorithm.

In the afternoon, we had our first official Daily LA block, and it went well! I really enjoyed reading with my group, and the rest of the students were on task and engaged.

The last thing we did today was a math / social studies crossover activity, where the students were given a table of Canadian cities and their population, and tasked with ordering them from least to greatest.

Have a nice night,

Zac