We do this to answer questions and clearly see trends it our results.
We are learning how to organize data. We gathered data by writing the word "signed" (a problem spelling word) as many times as we could in 2 minutes and listed all of our data. We had a lot of data and it was difficult to organize.
My students are asked to watch the Stem and Leaf Plots video (above) and then organize the "signed" data (in grid book) using the information they learn on the video.
How is a Stem and Leaf Plot different to a bar graph?
We will discuss that tomorrow at school.
Tuesday 13 September 2016
Science
Habitats and Communities
What is a habitat?
What is a community?
How are animals, humans, plants, and habitats connected?
This is what we will be exploring in science this term.
Watch the following videos to learn about habitats.
Monday 12 September 2016
ART
We are learning about using shapes and colour in art by enjoying some of the wonderful pieces by Wassily Kandinsky. He could see the colours of the music he listened to, and produced his art from the visualizations that formed in his mind when he listened to music. He is known as the father of abstract art. Please view the videos below about his life and view his impressionistic and abstract art.
The students are working on concentric circles, copying one of Kandinsky's well-known abstract pieces. You will see an example of this piece in the video below.
Now find out more about Wassily Kandinsky.
Thursday 8 September 2016
Cursive Writing
Why should we learn cursive writing?
Here are some of the reasons why I will take the time to teach cursive writing in my classroom.
1. Students learn better through movement and using their senses. Vital hand/brain connections forge new pathways in the brain. (Printing and cursive writing activate different parts of the brain.)
Cursive writing compared to printing is even more beneficial because the movement tasks are more demanding, the letters are less stereotypical, and visual recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation. (Neurologist, Dr. William Klemm)
2. Cursive writing helps students retain information as letters are connected and words are thought of as wholes. Taking notes by hand helps students to digest and reframe information.
3. Research suggests that cursive can serve as a teaching aid for students with learning impairments like dyslexia.
4. Most people like to develop their own pleasing personal style of cursive and perfect their signatures. (A printed signature is not secure and easily copied.)
Below you will find the lessons we are using to practise our cursive skills. Feel free to watch them many times and practise along with the demonstrator. (Lessons from the HEV project blogspot.) Lesson 1 (Short & Long Wave Strokes)
Lesson 2 (Letters i, s, r, t)
Lesson 3 (Words with the letters already studied.)
Lesson 4 ( Small Curved Wave Stroke)
Lesson 5 (Using the Curve Stroke to write a, o, d, g, c)
Lesson 6 (Write words using the strokes and letters learned. - dog, toad, got, coat, cod, rag)
Lesson 7 (Hill Cursive Stroke)
Lesson 8 (above) (Turn Hill Stroke into m and n)
Lesson 9 (Write words using the strokes and letters learned - man, noon, moon, moan)
Lesson 10 (Use the Short Wave Stroke to learn the letters u and w)
Lesson 11 (Write words using the strokes and letters learned - mug, wag, straw, us)
Hello, to my students.On this blog you will find interesting games,useful information, and previewed websites for various school assignments as well as for your personal learning and enjoyment. I hope you enjoy this exciting way we can connect. Your parents can find out about what you are doing at school, too! They can read about some of your homework assignments, and also see pictures and information about the work we are doing at school. If your parents are unable to read English, they can click the drop down menu under Translate (top right) to the language of their choice, and translate anything I have written on this blog.This is my first post to you. There will be many more.
For spelling practise of our lists on Spelling City, Click Here. Check often for new lists to practise.
Active, Healthy Living Testimonial
The value of active and healthy living can not be dismissed in a child's life. Inactivity is the basis for many health issues in today's society. Involvement in a sport has many important physical and health benefits. It also develops discipline, belief in self, and perseverance, to name a few of the important life skills. Having passion, and realizing the value of excellence must be encouraged in our youth. The habits of excellence and self-discipline become evident in all areas of an athlete's life. Kiiri, my daughter, begged to play soccer when she was 6, so we took her to the local soccer club, and there was no turning back after that. She was invited to the Provincial U14 team at 12 years old, was on the Canadian National Team Roster, and has a full athletic scholarship to a Division 1 university in the United States because of her ability to play soccer and her excellent marks at school. She would not have achieved these goals without passion, self-confidence, lots of hard work, and a supportive family. If you would like to watch snippets of Kiiri playing soccer in 2010 with her rep club, you can watch the video below. She is number 5 with the blonde hair wearing the blue uniform, but in some parts she wears a white uniform or a bright orange shirt.
Involvement in school and extra-curricular sports are as important to the development of the whole child as involvement in academics and the arts. I hope this may inspire my students and their parents to seriously consider involvement in sports. Experiencing the joy of watching your child strive to be the best they can be, is one of the most rewarding and pleasurable experiences for any parent! Spending time with your child during the highs and the lows of sports activities will be among your own, and your child's, most cherished memories and character-building moments.
In Science we are learning about structures. We will conduct experiments building with various simple materials to see if we can design and build strong structures that can support a load and withstand forces such as tension, compression, torsion, and shear - forces that tend to break a structure or change its shape.
We will also learn about the stability of a structure and its ability to maintain balance and stay fixed in one spot.
We will identify structures built by both man and animals, and determine how their designs and materials enable them to serve a specific purpose and perform their load-bearing functions. Assessing the environmental impact of structures built by various animals and humans will also be discussed.
Looking at ancient structures helps us to learn about strength, stability, form, and function in building. Enjoy the following videos that focus on strange and fabulous structures around the world.
Our new unit in Language is 'Fables'. Students will be reading fables and discussing the characteristics of fables - what differentiates a fable from other texts such as fiction stories or fairy tales.
Students will also be improving their ability to construct interesting sentences and retain a storyline, by retelling fables in their own words, paying close attention to the sequence of events and important details that need to be included. This will help students improve their story writing and oral communication skills.
Another skill we will practise is inferential thinking. Students will be asked to decide on a moral for each fable based on what they have read and why they think the fable was created in the first place. (Most fables do have a moral stated at the end of the tale, but we have found that most fables have many life-lesson morals that apply to them. Your child's job is not to repeat the stated moral, but to decide on another moral that also applies to the fable being discussed.) Students must not only have good reasons for their answers, but they must also connect directly to the text and draw out evidence to support their answers. (This is a necessary skill for comprehension of a text at a higher level, and of course preparation for the EQAO testing this year.)
Comprehension questions for any reading in grade three involves students supporting their answers with evidence from the text and well as including their own thinking. Ask your child questions about the texts he or she reads. Try using the Q Chart to help guide you to asking higher-level, thinking questions.
Expect a clear answer that actually answers your question, and displays good reasoning and includes evidence from the text. Remind your child to keep the entire answer in one tense i.e., the past tense.
Below you will find links to a number of fable videos. If they do not include text for your child to read, they could be watched in preparation for an oral retelling, or you could use the video as material on which you could focus comprehension questions.
Below, you will find a link to a website that has many simple games and activities to help you practise English grammar and sentence structure. From the main 'Home' page, you will find games, topics, videos, and printable materials. Try going to 'Games", and then choosing one type of activity. I suggest trying, 'Sentence Monkey' and starting with the Past Simple and Past Continuous sentences.
To Parents:
Most of the students in my class are still learning how to write correctly and with clarity. When writing a number of sentences about an event or topic, many students are not able to write the entire piece in one consistent 'tense', i. e., the simple past. This and many other writing skills are being introduced and practised at school.
When using this site, I would suggest not only completing 'the drag and drop' sentences, but also copying the sentences into a notebook and reading and rereading them aloud many times to consolidate whichever skill the sentences are focusing on i.e., the simple past. Suggestion: The sentences could be reread every night during your child's Reading Log time, with the goal that your child will instinctively use the words studied in his or her everyday speech and writing.
This special day is celebrated annually to remind parents that taking time to read or do an activity with your child every day, helps improve your child's literacy skills as well as your own!
What could you do with your child that will help improve their literacy skills, not take too much time, and be fun as well? The following site has ideas for 15 minute activities, facts & statistics, and videos about literacy and literacy tips. Click here to get to the website, then click on Family Literacy in the light blue directory bar at the top of the home page. Next, scroll to the activities e.g. 15 minutes of fun, downloads, and much more.
Make every day a literacy day! Have fun!
Thursday 14 January 2016
Homework January 14, 2016
Click here to watch a video about contractions.
Write the title, Contractions and the date at the top of your page.
Copy the first sentence about the job of the apostrophe, then write each contraction and its long form.
Monday 11 January 2016
Telling Time
In math, we are learning about analog and digital clocks, practising telling the time, and calculating elapsed time. We have just finished a unit on linear measurement and know that telling time is another type of measurement.
The type of measuring tools and units of measure are different for each type of measuring. For linear measurement we use cm, m. and km as units of measure. Rulers, metre sticks, and tape measures are some of the tools we use to measure linear distances. What are the units of measure for measuring time? What are the tools we use?
Below, you will find a few links to videos that reviews how to tell time on an analog clock. Click here to review telling time, click here, too. Click here to practise telling time with words like, "past" and "to" a particular hour.
We have been learning about early communities in Canada. We have learned and talked about the First Nations Peoples and the Inuit People of Canada.
We will now be learning about the early settlers. The following website provides lots of information about early settlers or pioneers. See what you can discover about the way they lived, what their challenges were, and how they affected the lives of First Nations and Inuit Peoples. Click here to read about pioneers.
The following site has various links to other sites where you can further research pioneers and their way of life. Click here to find the sites. Try the Great Upper Canada Pioneer Adventure. You will have to make decisions about various problems and situations just like the pioneers did!
Friday 1 January 2016
Basic Math Operations
Parts of Equations
We will be looking at various math operations such as addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (x), and division (÷). Let's briefly discuss the parts of addition and subtraction equations.
Addition
An easy addition equation may look like this -
7 + 3 = 10
addend + addend = sum
The numbers 7 and 3 are called "addends".
The answer is called the "sum".
10 is the sum of 7+3.
The Equal Sign
The equal sign (=) says that what is on the left of the sign is equal to , or the same amount as, what is on the right of the sign.
Let's look at the equations
6 + 1 = 10 -3 and 6 + 1 = 3 + 4 7 7 7 7
The amounts on either side of the equal signs are the same. Can you see how I could have written many more equations?
Subtraction
An easy subtraction equation may look like this -
10 - 6 = 4
minuend - subtrahend = difference
The 10 is the first number and it is called the "minuend". It is usually the greatest number.
The number after the minus sign is called the "subtrahend". In this case it is the number 6. It is usually less than the minuend, but can be the same as the minuend.
The answer is called the "difference".
The difference between 10 and 6 is 4.
Click here for further information.
The Math is Fun! website has a good illustrated dictionary that explains many math terms. Click here to look at it.
You can also review and practise number skills on this site - click here.
Worksheets can also be printed from this site.
