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

Spelling Words (Week of Sep. 20)

 Spelling List A (Sep. 18 – 25)

funny	ride	may	once	with
they	said	she	fly	of

 

Spelling List B (Sep. 18 – 25)

before	first	which	only	anyway
upon	should	watch	street	raining

 

Spelling List C (Sep. 18 – 25)

picture	finish	someone	serve	near
heart	body	shopping	Tuesday	turned

Some pretty challenging words this week - we'll do one more week of 'sight words' after this, and then move on toe specific letter blends. I've been quite impressed with the quizzes so far!

Friday, September 18

 Hi parents,

Today Room 3 was taught by Ms. Suzee as a guest teacher, as I was doing literacy / numeracy assessment stuff in the library. The students met with their buddies and helped them with patterns outside, using chalk on the compound. They had a lot of work time to finish up their short stories and other work from earlier in the week. They also worked on some 'math mystery' problems, which are fun, algebra-type problems in which pictures are used to represent numbers. We didn't do this exact problem today but we did do similar ones.

I've found the literacy and numeracy screener assessments to be really interesting and informative. If there's one thing I could suggest to parents, its that a little bit of math practice every day goes a long way. Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division Flashcards are a great way to build confidence and fact fluency. This is the kind of thing that is difficult for me to consistently teach at school, as it works best as a 1-on-1 activity, but even just five minutes a day at home can make a huge difference. In class we will use the Montessori materials to make sure students have a deeper understanding of math concepts, but regular, repeated practice is important too. 

Stay tuned for next week's spelling words, and have a nice night!

Zac

LBS School Merch!

 

Terry Fox Run - Sep. 24

 

Wednesday, September 16

 Hi parents,

We had another great day today. The students did some story writing based on picture prompts, similar to what we did as a whole school last year. I was happy to see that their creative writing skills are at an awesome starting point for Grade 3 / 4. 

I've been spending a lot of time doing these numeracy and literacy screener assessments, and getting a good idea of the students' math and reading abilities. Because we've been spending so much time on these, I haven't introduced anything new in math this week - instead we've been doing review and practice of last year's concepts. Today I did the Grade 3 numeracy assessment and I was really happy with how it seemed to go. :)

In the afternoon, we visited the library for our first Library book check-out of the year. The kids were really enthusiastic about this.

They've also been really enthusiastic about the Canada Map 'contest' we started yesterday. I am in the process of choosing the Top 3 Canada Maps, and its a tough choice! They all turned out pretty well!

Around the World - Basic Fact Practice Math Game

Canada Map Challenge

We watched a video about Terry Fox, and students added a little Terry Fox icon to their maps to show where he started his run, in St. John's Newfoundland. Our class is taking on a few roles related to the Terry Fox Run, including making an announcement, making banners, and counting out Terry tattoos for each class.

Have a nice night,

Zac