Thankful Thoughts

We created Word Clouds to display what we are thankful for in life. We chose our own words, designs, and colours! Take a look at our creations below.

Aaliyah

 

Abeer

                                       

 
Andraya

 Amelia

  Dylan

   Azmied

    Colten

   Dominick

Fatma

  Guneet

Jade

   Jaydee

    Karter

    Keira

   Liisa

 Mohamed

Puneet

   Rayne

Shyan

Skylar 

Highlights and Happenings of September

There has been a lot of learning, collaborating, sharing, inquiring, and memory-making in grade 3 so far! As a class, we are becoming a closer "team" every day, and each one of us are learning the importance of positivity, encouragement, friendship, and team work in everything we do. Please check out some updates on our learning, and feel free to contact me at any time!

• Email: amanda.brace@rbe.sk.ca
• Twitter: @msbracesclass

Literacy

• We have been working on our Daily 5, which is a literacy structure to make us better readers and writers. We have built our reading stamina enough so that we can now read for over 13 minutes without distractions! We have also been working on reading to our classmates and checking for understanding as we read.
• Everyday we work on our writing in our Daily 5. We have been focusing on adding details to our writing and brainstorming topics to write about. Students have the choice to write about what they want, which gets them excited to share their writing! We are not only becoming better writers every day, but we are improving our sharing skills as well.
  
  

Numeracy

• We are currently working on the unit Numbers to 1000. We have worked a lot on the skill of showing a number in many ways, comparing and ordering numbers, and are currently working on skip counting. We have practiced these skills by playing math games online and doing activities on the iPad, playing games with friends, working individually, working in small groups, and doing activities as a whole group.

 

Social Studies

• In Social Studies we are learning about Communities. We have talked about communities in our own lives and brainstormed what communities need in order to run properly. We even went on a community walk around our school to observe the details of our school and Glencairn community. We love using Google Earth to look at the characteristics of our communities and will continue to use this tool as we study communities around the world. We will soon talk about urban and rural communities as well as communities in the past and present by looking at what Aboriginal communities in Canada were like before European contact.

 

Health

• We have been learning about our well-being and the importance of staying healthy in all aspects of our lives. We talked about our shared values; such as responsibility, belonging, learning, and respect, and made goals based on those values and the Circle of Courage. We continue to learn about the importance of keeping all areas of our lives balanced, and our goals help us focus on that. 
• Soon we will be looking more in depth at friendship, kindness, and how to become better classmates and people!

Phys-Ed

• We have been playing a lot of cooperative games that focus on the skills of team work and working together. Our Phys-Ed activities include a lot of loco-motor movements and skills that challenge us and allow us to explore our creativity!

Art

• We had so much fun with our art on Dot Day, which was a day we dedicated solely to creativity and self-expression. We created dot art, which is a picture only made up of painted dots. Check out our blog post that displays our fun experiences on Dot Day. 
• We have been working on an art project called Fall Frames, which incorporates fall colours and characteristics, as well as the students photographs. Stay tuned for the final product!

Science

• We will be switching between Health and Science units throughout the year, and we are starting with Health, which means Science topics will be studied more in depth closer to November. 
• Even though we are starting with Health, we have used a lot of our science skills when we participated in the city-wide egg drop project called Regina Public School Egg Drop Contest. Our class created egg-vessels that allowed eggs to drop from a play structure without being cracked. We were fortunate enough to have CBC News come and tape our experience, and then air it on the 5 o’clock news! Please see the previous blog post about our Egg Drop experience for more details!

French

• Mrs. Turner teaches the grade 3’s French this year.

Cultural Education

• Mrs. Nault teaches the grade 3’s Cultural Education this year.

Technology 

• The integration of computer and iPad technology within the curriculum will be implemented throughout our continued learning. We use technology daily; in the form of Twitter within the class; our use of the iPad for curriculum based activities in  whole group instruction as well as small group and individual, and in our daily computer use for varied curriculum outcomes. 
• Our class learns so many new things by using Twitter in the classroom. We have a lot of questions, and we are able to get some answers by creating conversation  through Twitter! We also love sharing our learning experiences and using our voice to connect with others.

• With technology becoming a staple in our everyday lives, communicating through email and website is a sure way to keep in contact with me. Our class webpage and Twitter page is a way for us to keep updated but also a great resource for your child to use. Our class updates will be posted to our blog, as well as our Twitter account, so please check back regularly.  Feel free to interact with the class when using these tools as well!
  

Our Egg Drop "Egg"stravaganza!

Last week, on September 19th, we participated in an egg drop event with other schools in Regina. Students were asked to create vessels to protect eggs that were dropped from various heights. The egg drop project was shared between classes through Twitter by using the hashtag #rpseggdrop, which allowed students and teachers to share their learning experiences. We tweeted what our brainstorming, progress, and finished product looked like so that other classrooms could connect with us!

The grade 3's did an amazing job creating their egg vessels with their groups. The class was put into 4 groups, and each group worked on their vessels throughout the week. They were only given limited materials, such as straws, Popsicle sticks, grocery bags,and balloons, and were required to create a name for their finished product. They learned that it takes patience, teamwork, and creativity to do a project like this! They did a great job at learning from their mistakes and never giving up.

 

 
















On the day of the egg drop, CBC News contacted our school and asked if they could tape our class doing the egg drop. The grade 3's were very excited to share their experience with an even larger audience! CBC heard about the project through numerous Regina Public classrooms tweeting about it. This was a great way for the class to see the power that social media can have. 

At 12:45 on Friday, the grade 3's brought their egg vessels to the playground and started preparing for the official drop! We were happy to have Miss Lawson live tweeting the event and Mrs. Nenson-Catley and Mr. Phillips watch the drops as well. We dropped all four egg vessels from the senior play structure and all four eggs... SURVIVED! 

The Regina Public Schools Egg Drop was an "egg"celent inquiry project that allowed the students to practice their skills in building, creating, and collaborating. It was great for the students to use Twitter as a tool to connect with other classrooms and learn more about their egg drop experiences as well. We had an "egg"ceptional experience and can't wait to take part in the egg drop again! 

 

International Dot Day

Today was International Dot Day around the world, and grade 3 at Dr. George Ferguson decided it was important to celebrate it!

Dot Day was inspired by the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. The story is about a "caring teacher who dares a doubting student to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to “make her mark”. What begins with a small dot on a piece of paper becomes a breakthrough in confidence and courage." (thedotclub.org)

It was time for our grade 3 class to discover our own creativity and to be reminded how much potential we each have.

We started off the day by reading The Dot and discussing the themes and important messages the story gives us. We then started planning out our art project called Dot Art, which is a picture made up of only dots. We brainstormed what we wanted our pictures to look like, and drew rough sketches.

Later in the day, we started creating our Dot Art by using wooden sticks dipped in paint to create a picture made up of tiny dots. While we were working on our Dot Art,we finished off International Dot Day with the video of the The Dot on Youtube.

We had a great time celebrating our creativity and potential today in grade 3 with International Dot Day, and can't wait to take part next year! Check out the pictures below to get a glimpse into our day.

Week 1 Adventures

          We have had a busy, but great first week of school in grade 3! We spent the first couple of days getting to know each other by playing games like “question ball” and “get to know you bingo” where we answered questions about ourselves.  We also learned everyone’s birthdays by making a “birthday graph”. We wrote our birthdays on Post It notes, and then organized the dates with a graph on the board.

Our theme right now in grade 3 is “Adventure”. To kick things off, everyone wrote about what adventures they are most excited about this year. We brainstormed ideas as a class, wrote our ideas on a treasure map, and displayed them on our bulletin board. If you stop by the school, please come take a look!

               
            Another thing we started in grade 3 is using our classroom Twitter account. We have really enjoyed creating our tweets as a class, and even sending tweets to Mrs. Lawson and Mrs. Smith’s classroom, as well as Mrs. Sakatch’s class. We have made a class “Twitter Wall” to practice making tweets. This week, each of us wrote what we like about grade 3 so far. Please check out our classroom Twitter account and “follow” us. We would love for you to reply to our tweets and interact with the class! There is a link to our Twitter page on the side, as well as right here. 

                This week we also made our classroom rules and acted out scenarios on how to be a positive team player. We also started our Daily 5 reading program and talked about what “Read to Self” looks like!

          Thanks for reading about our first week of school. It would be great if you could reply to the post so that the class can hear about your thoughts! Our first week in grade 3 has been filled with new adventures. We are very excited to see what great adventures next week brings!