Persuading In grade 3

Our current writing focus has turned to persuasive writing. When we persuade someone we are trying to convince them to do something. During Earth Week we worked on a shared-task with partners focusing on the benefit of keeping and taking care of our trees. We read The Lorax by Dr. Seus and then wrote a persuasive letter to convince the Once-ler why trees are so important.

Students researched on wonder websites like The Kid Should See This and Wonderopolis. We also tweeted directly to Wonderopolis and they replied back to us! Some students used their reply to help us come with persuasive reasons why trees are so important.

The students collaborated on a shared document to gather ideas and share what they learned. We find this to be very helpful for our learning and to gather information for our persuasive letters. The students completed their letters and we have posted them in the hallway. If you would like to read their letters, please join us at our Open House taking place next Thursday May 7th form 4:30-7:00!! More information and more persuasive letters will be coming your way soon...stay tuned!

@MrsCiampaClass We're thrilled that you are spending part of your #EarthDay2015 WONDERing with us! Way to go! :-) @thekidshouldsee

— Wonderopolis (@Wonderopolis) April 22, 2015

@MrsCiampaClass You may want to check out Wonder #937: WHY DO WE NEED TREES? http://t.co/uqTFodk5M0 :-)

— Wonderopolis (@Wonderopolis) April 22, 2015

EQAO Practice Workbook

Dear Parents,

Today your child came home with an orange EQAO workbook. Inside you will find EQAO practice questions for both math and language. Students have been working on similar types of questions all year long. The EQAO assessment will take place a month from now. Students are strongly encouraged to practice reviewing for this test by working on 2 pages of the workbook each night between now and the start of the test. 30 minutes of nightly math and language review is recommended. The work in the duotang will not be evaluated; it is simply for you and your child to review each night prior to the start of the assessment at the end of May. For more information, please see the note inside of the orange workbook in your child's agenda.

Here is an online copy of the note for your reference:
https://docs.google.com/a/ocsb.ca/document/d/1MVDEJO9ms2w1iSHbNvQQE7oBHqNtog_yMpEiQRFvuWo/edit?usp=sharing

Narratives

Last week we completed our Narrative stories. Students had the opportunity to write their own Narrative stories and referenced a checklist to help keep them on track. We used the Padlet that we created together with Mme. Erskine's Grade 4 class to recall what Narratives must have.

We participated in the 5 Sentence Challenge for homework where we were challenged to write a narrative paragraph. Students really enjoy this challenge. They get to receive comments from participants from around the world!

For our final Narrative task, we came up with our own story line and tried to be as creative as we could when writing our own stories. We worked with a partner to read and edit our work. We wrote our good copies on our KidBlogs. Our goal was to share the story creatively with our partners on KidBlog so that after we read the stories, we could offer comments. The students love reading one another's blog posts. It is powerful to receive comments from our friends. The comments help us become better writers. They also give us a real life audience!

Please go to our KidBlog accounts to view or read the Narrative stories of our classmates. We always welcome anyone to comment on our blogs!

We used some tools to share our writing in a creative way after writing our good copies. Some students recorded themselves reading. Others used an app to draw  a picture and narrate their story.

Homework April 20-24: Commenting on Narratives

This week for homework students are strongly encouraged to read and comment on their friend's narrative stories that we wrote last week. We worked really hard on following the Narrative Must Have list and to create an interesting narrative story. The online comments we receive on our blogs allow the students to see what their classmates think. This exposes them to a wider audience with a wide range of thoughts, opinions and questions. The goal of the homework this week is to Bump Up our dialogue on the comments, and to ask questions to expand our thinking. Parents are more than welcome to leave positive comments as well!!

For Homework this week:

1. Log into your KidBlog account
2. View the Narrative stories of at least 4 friends.
3. Read and give a LEVEL 4 comment to your friend.
4. Make sure to keep checking back to see if they replied to your question!

If you would like to comment on more narrative stories, please continue to post a comment on the Five Sentence Challenge Website. Our friends at St. Anne School in Kanata have written wonderful stories that you can comment on here: http://fivesc.net/2015/04/09/prompt-13-2/#more-1719

Homework April 13-17 - Five Sentence Challenge!

This week for homework students can focus on writing a narrative story just like we are working on in class! There is a brand new 5 Sentence Challenge prompt on the FIVESC website. The current writing prompt is .....climbing a mountain.....

For homework:
1) Stuednts can write a 5 paragraph story using the writing prompt  .....climbing a mountain.....

2) Post your 5 paragraph narrative story on your KidBlog account

3) Comment on your friend's blog!

4) If you'd like to comment on students who are writing their own stories from around the world...follow this link!! http://fivesc.net/2015/04/09/prompt-13-2/ Click on any of the links to view and comment on their stories!!

Happy Writing.

Math Centers

In Math we continue to focus on addition and subtraction of 2 and 3 digit numbers. In class, students are getting better adding and subtracting numbers without using their fingers. Our mental math strategies really help us to solve our math problems. Our math minutes help us to review our strategies and improve our scores each day. To review how to add and subtract using strategies we learn in class, please review our previous Blog post with great charts and information.

http://mrsciampaclass.blogspot.ca/2015/04/addition-and-subtraction.html

This week we introduced a few new math games to help us practice our mental math strategies with partners. We used many manipulatives, tools and devices to help us to add and subtract. Working together with their friends students got the opportunity to practice the skills we work on in class and teach and learn from their peers.

We played an adding and subtracting game using a deck of cards, a dice and dominoes. If you have any of these materials at your home, it is easy to play math games with your child! Simply make 2 or 3 digit numbers and play some fun adding or subtracting games using dry erase markers, or pencils! Ask your child how they play these games and try them at home. If you try a game, please share it with us on your KidBlog account!

Students also created their own subtraction posters at the Math Writing Center to teach their friends how to subtract numbers. The posters will be added to our Math Vocabulary Wall. You can comment on their Subtraction Blogs on our KidBlog accounts!




Students are reminded that they can access our DreamBox Math Account from home. Please continue to play fun DreamBox math games for homework to practice some key number sense concepts that are important for your child's success in grade three.

Narrative Writing

Our newest writing focus has turned to Narrative Writing. We were going to focus on Persuasive writing but we had to change things. During our Literacy Centers, a very popular activity the students enjoy is writing their own books. As a result, we decided to focus on writing our own narrative stories.

A few weeks ago, we got the chance to work with Mme. Erskine's grade 4 class. We shared our writing and created a Padlet to teach one another about our writing. Our class taught the grade 4's about Procedural Writing and they taught us about Narrative writing. To recall what narrative's must have, we read a narrative story and then looked at our shared Padlet again. The Padlet helped us to make our own checklist. Have a look at our checklist and our Padlet from before. We are lucky to have had that sharing session. It gave us a good opportunity to learn about how to write narratives before writing them ourselves.

Created with Padlet

The neat thing about focusing on narrative writing is that students are so excited to write their own stories. They are referencing our must have list to add important narrative details such as quotation marks, describing words and more! Next week students will be using their brainstorm ideas to help them write a rough draft of a story. We will then make a good copy to publish our stories. Students will be able to choose how they make their good copies (on an app, on KidBlog, etc).

Check out our KidBlog accounts. Students are writing their very own narrative stories. It is very exciting to see that students are remembering how to write a narrative and including the Must-Have's. Please add comments to our narrative stories by following the links below!

http://kidblog.org/MrsCiampa/ed3a68a5-b5d4-4f65-b47c-e40e6a70cbe0/princess-sophia/

http://kidblog.org/MrsCiampa/432a55d9-206f-4448-88d1-688431e33b0d/1293/

WN: Today we are thinking about ideas for our narrative writing like a shy mermaid gets bullied by merman BECAUSE she's shy.
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) April 9, 2015

WN and NAN says this is what narrative story's must have. pic.twitter.com/2rwbzzHAmr
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) April 9, 2015

Homework Question: April 7th-10th

Happy Easter! I hope everyone enjoyed the Easter weekend break with their families. The Easter season calls us to celebrate Jesus' resurrection and new life. Perhaps if spring finally arrives, we can start to notice the new life that spring brings around us!

This week students will be looking at some Easter vocabulary words. We worked on a making words vocabulary game today where students had to make as many words as they could with the letters  E A S T E R T I M E.

For homework this week, students can:
1. Make a list with all the words that you can make with the letters: E A S T E R T I M E
2. Post your list on your KidBlog.
3. Make some sentences with your new words.
4. Comments on a friend's blog...did they find words that you didn't?

Addition and Subtraction

Over the past few weeks we have focused on Addition and Subtraction. We are working to add and subtract 3 digit numbers in grade 3. Students are learning many different strategies to help them to add and subtract without using their fingers. We are activating mental strategies by playing many different games. 

We begin each Math lesson with a 2 minute math drill where we see how many facts we can solve in 2 minutes. We are also looking at some math images and finding addition and subtraction in pictures. Students are having fun looking at pictures in new ways to answer the simple question: What Math Do You See? Ask your child about it!

In addition, we came up with a few mental strategies to help us add numbers without using our fingers. Students are very comfortable with adding 2 digit numbers with and without carrying. 

With subtraction, students learned a catchy poem to help them recall how to subtract numbers. They understand subtracting much better when they are reminded of this poem. Please review this math poem with your children. This will really help them to remember how to subtract numbers! We will be moving to adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers next week, as well as focusing on money. The weekend homework practice will help them to review what they've learned this week. If you would like to challenge your children, you can give them 3 digit numbers to add or subtract and see if they remember what to do (for example: 123 + 421 OR 512 - 438).

We are also solving addition and subtraction problems using real life situations. Below are some key terms that you may see in a problem which will help students determine if they should use Addition or Subtraction. We will add more words to this list next week!