Spelling Words (Week of Jan. 25)

Spelling List A (Jan. 23 – 30)

rice	once	face	ice	nicer
pace	mice	laces	dice	racer

 

Spelling List B (Jan. 23 – 30)

since	places	price	forced	space
twice	dancer	scene	spices	notice

 

Spelling List C (Jan. 23 – 30)

voice	piece	sauce	decent	recent
except	parcel	cancel	cement	fence

 

The theme this week is 'ce' words where 'c' sounds like 's'.  Good luck!!

Friday, January 23

 Hi parents,

Sorry about the missed blog posts this week - I ended up having meetings after school every day and didn't get to them. 

We had a pretty good week all around. The kids worked a lot on their 'special place' paragraphs, which we mostly finished up today, and I was quite impressed by their descriptive writing. 

Yesterday we had the addition and subtraction quiz re-do, and it was a huge improvement over the last one. It is clear that we're ready to move on from adding and subtracting. We'll still practice these skills daily as part of morning math, but we won't be focusing on them specifically anymore. On to multiplication. After we finish geometry that is.

We met with our buddy class and did a shape scavenger hunt, followed by a graphing activity. We reviewed some lesser-known quadrilaterals, like rhombus and trapezoid.

The spelling quiz went well from what I could see but I haven't marked them yet.

Have a nice weekend,

Zac

Wednesday, Jan 21

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today. In the morning we finished reading A Rovers Story. The ending was actually really moving, I don't remember liking it this much the last time I read it. It left just enough up in the air that the kids started making plans for a sequel.

Our Guest Speaker, Godard, taught the class all about space, rockets, satellites, and gravity. It was super cool.

In Math, we learned more about parallel lines and right angles.

We spent a lot of time working on the good copies of our 'special place' paragraphs.

The Addition and Subtraction Quiz Re-Do is Tomorrow! 

Have a nice night,

Zac

Monday, January 19

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today. In the morning, the students took their notes and planning from last week and wrote detailed, sensory paragraphs. Often these paragraphs are almost cringey in how descriptive they are. But its a good writing skill to learn - when it comes to description, it's generally easier to dial it back when writing than to come up with more.

We had Music and Gym, and in the afternoon we learned about how to measure angles using a protractor. This is a Grade 4 skill technically but I don't think there's any harm in the Grade 3s getting a little extra practice.

We will be having our Addition and Subtraction Re-Do on Thursday, Jan. 22! I'm going to give this quiz to the whole class because I think most kids could benefit from a re-do. If anyone happens to score lower the second time around, I'll use their original score for marking. There's really nothing to lose.

The quiz re-do will be the exact same as the first one, but with different number values on each question. The one word problem about 'days until Christmas' will be completely different.

We have a Guest Speaker coming to talk to the class about space, forces, and inventions on Wednesday! 

Have a nice night,

Zac

Spelling Words (Week of Jan. 18)

 Spelling List A (Jan. 16 – 23)

now	how	owl	downtown	frown
slow	bowl	crow	blowing	glowing

 

Spelling List B (Jan. 16 – 23)

power	brown	growled	shower	crown
known	below	lowest	flown	shadow

 

Spelling List C (Jan. 9 – 16)

growth	borrow	narrow	tomorrow	burrow
coward	scowl	somehow	sundown	download

 

This week we are looking at the two sounds that 'ow' typically makes in words.

If you're practicing at home, it might also be helpful to challenge your child to do a word sort, and arrange the words in columns based on whether they sound like 'clown', or 'snow'.

Good luck!

Friday, January 16

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today but I don't have a whole lot to write about it!

Most of the morning was just spent on work period. We'd started a few bigger tasks yesterday, and everyone needed a bit more time to finish them.

The spelling quiz went well - I forgot to hand them back, but they're all marked, and the scores were higher than usual. :)

In math, we learned the types of angles. Students did a simple worksheet to reinforce these terms. I was able to work with about half the class to teach how to use a protractor. 

Stay tuned for next week's spelling words (probably not until Sunday - sorry for the inconvenience!), and have a nice weekend!

Zac

Thursday, January 15

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today and got started on a whole bunch of new work. My ipad is having issues so unfortunately I can't post pictures of any of it...

But in the morning we revisited sensory writing. The kids chose a familiar place and jotted down all the things they heard, smelled, felt, etc. when visiting that place. We're going to take these ideas and turn them into sentences tomorrow, and then combine all those sentences into super descriptive, sensory paragraphs.

For cursive, we learned how to write 'n' and 'y'. The students went to music, and when they got back, we reviewed the colours in French, and they started making little French cartoons, in which characters (usually fruit) were saying "Je suis _______" and declaring what colour they were.

In social studies, we worked on natural resource tables, that showed how the main natural resources of Alberta could be turned into useful products.

In math, we started to learn about angles.

Tomorrow is our spelling quiz - we've only practiced a couple times this week, so any practice at home would probably be great.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Wednesday, January 14

 Hi parents,

We had an okay day today.

In the morning we talked about sensory writing. That is basically descriptive writing that focuses on the five senses and uses powerful words that activate the senses of the reader. This lesson didn't go all that well because it seemed like we got stuck on the same basic words over and overs - so tomorrow we're going to try to expand our vocabularies a bit more.

In Math the Grade 3s did a numeracy check-in, and the Grade 4s did some coordinate plotting.

In the afternoon we had Daily LA, and then in Social Studies we learned more about Alberta's natural resources.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Monday, January 12

 Hi parents,

We had another good day today in Room 3. We started off with a paragraph writing task, in which the students wrote a descriptive paragraph about our classroom. This is kind of a warm-up for a bigger writing task we've got coming up, in which the students will write vivid descriptions of a special place in Calgary. Even though this was just a first draft, I saw some really exceptional writing today - the kids seem to have a pretty good idea of how to write clear, well-organized paragraphs. Now its just a matter of really cranking up the descriptive language and vocabulary.

In Math, we learned about the different ways that triangles can be classified. The main ones we focused on were equilateral, isosceles, and scalene. But you can also classify them by angles, as acute, obtuse, and right.

We read more of A Rovers Story, and its getting pretty exciting now. I've seen a lot of improvement in the Grade 3s addition and subtraction skills, but I think we'll spend another week working on it and then do the quiz re-do sometime next week.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Spelling Words (Week of Jan. 11)

 Spelling List A (Jan. 9 – 16)

time	cake	use	huge	like
tame	poke	name	note	here

 

Spelling List B (Jan. 9 – 16)

smile	these	state	whole	pure
vole	fuse	scale	theme	crime

 

Spelling List C (Jan. 9 – 16)

argue	clue	move	while	phase
acute	ignore	estate	debate	extreme

The theme this week is the 'e' ending. Bossy e, Silent e, Magic e, 'e' controlled vowel, it has a lot of names. I tried to pick the straightforward ones where the e just makes the vowel 'say its name'. 

Good luck!!

Thursday, January 8

 Hi parents,

I don't have much time for a blog tonight, but let me just say we had yet another awesome day today. 

We learned a bit about Alberta and its natural resources, reviewed 2-D polygons, did some 'favourite shape' graphing, learned the letter 's' in cursive, and learned how to count to 10 in French.

The spelling quiz is tomorrow!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Wednesday, January 7

 Hi parents,

We had yet another fantastic day today - the year is really off to an excellent start!

In the morning, we had Music, and then a lockdown drill. The students handled this exceptionally well and stayed quiet the entire time.

We continued working on our '2026' writing / art project. The students added some blurbs about things they're grateful for, and things they hope will happen in the new year. This was also an opportunity to practice using commas, as they wrote in the format: "I am grateful for _______, ________, and _________. 

Here's how they turned out:

In the afternoon, we continued piling on new geometry terminology, and discussed quadrilaterals, such as trapezoids, parallelograms, rhombuses, squares, and rectangles. Reviewing these at home would probably be helpful. We still have a bunch more to cover.

Hoping tomorrow is as good a day as the rest of our week has been. :)

Have a nice night,

Zac

Tuesday, January 6

 Hi parents,

We had another great day today. In the morning, we learned about commas, and how they can be used to separate items in a list. The students wrote their own sentences using commas, and did an excellent job of it. I really hope they apply this skill to their regular writing work, it really makes writing sound more professional and skillful.

Our bulletin board was recently reorganized. There are a concerning number of Wanted posters.

In math, we learned more about polygons. We learned that there are two types of polygons - regular, and irregular. Regular polygons have all equal sides and angles. Irregular polygons don't.

I also reviewed addition and subtraction using the standard algorithm with the Grade 3s separately. 

We started a '2026' art / writing project. I'll upload pictures when its further along. Its hard to explain.

Have a nice day,

Zac

Monday, January 5

 Hi parents,

We had a fantastic first day back. Honestly it was really nice to be back in the classroom. The kids were happy and positive and worked hard.

As you probably guessed, we wrote about our winter breaks. I challenged the class to start with the topic sentence, "The one word that best describes my winter break is _______".

We went over the new spelling words, which are in fact old spelling words, and reviewed the oi, oo, oa, ai, and ea vowel teams.

The students went to Music and Gym in the morning too.

Over the break I had this idea of how to improve Daily LA, in particular, the 'creative writing' station, and I was really excited to try it out today. I've noticed that students on the 'creative writing' station often end up sitting around with writers block, or 'brainstorming' (read: 'sitting around') with other students, and very little actually writing happens. So I introduced this writing bingo card to hopefully give them ideas and motivate them.

Now, when students are on writing, they can pick one of the options above. When they complete four in a row, they get free-choice for their next day on writing. When they get a blackout, they earn an indoor recess with a friend. 

Since I just introduced this today, every student in the class got to do creative writing today, and I was so thrilled by how it went. I hope the enthusiasm continues!

In math, we started our new unit, which is on polygons. We learned that polygons are 2-D, closed shapes, with only straight sides. There are two types of polygons, regular and irregular, which depend on whether all of the sides and angles are equal.

This whole geometry unit is basically just a ton of terminology memorization. The concepts aren't actually that hard, its just a matter of knowing what each term means, and applying it in the right way.

I sent home the addition and subtraction quizzes from before the break. Don't worry - I am a big believer in re-dos. I'm going to keep working with the class on addition and subtraction in small group lessons every morning. We will study geometry at a different time. If you are looking to practice at home, I hope the quizzes give you an idea of the types of content and difficulty level that we're working at!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Spelling Words! (Week of Jan. 4)

 Spelling List A (Jan. 5 – 9)

come	with	said	walk	fail
each	soap	oil	sooner	toys

 

Spelling List B (Jan. 5 – 9)

they	wanted	know	without	again
beard	toasty	spoil	bamboo	lights

 

Spelling List C (Jan. 5 – 9)

would	many	sigh	guess	explain
yearly	throat	rejoin	foolish	warmth

We're going to start the second part of our school year off with some review words. Each list is comprised of words from all ten of our previous spelling lists. In class we will take this opportunity to review all of the letter combinations we've covered so far, as well as some essential sight words that come up all the time.

Good luck!