Welcome to our Class Blog. We share our learning goals and the great things we discover. We connect with other classrooms and collaborate on shared projects. We hope you enjoy our learning journey!
This week we spent a lot of time collecting data by coming up with our own survey questions. We collaborated with friends to come up with our own surveys that we posted on our class Twitter page. When we received the results, we worked in groups to try to explain the data using comparative language (example: altogether, fewer than, more than, most, least, etc). We will continue to work on comparing data from our Twitter surveys next week. Below, you can see our results. Ask your child about it!
We also completed our own personal survey questions with a target audience of Grade 1/2 students. We are learning that we need to keep our audience in mind when designing a survey question so that the options are relatable to the people we ask. We had a lot of fun designing survey questions and using our tally chart information to build a bar graph. Ask your child what a bar graph and tally chart must have. Next week, we will continue to work with data and talk about pictographs.
What is your favourite kind of flexible seating option in your classroom? By: Mrs. Ciampa #ocsb_math
In our class, we are working on collecting Data and writing about the information we collect. We created polls (survey questions) on our class Twitter page. Below are each of our Twitter polls. Have your say and vote on each of our 5 survey questions. We will collect the results and analyze our information on Friday.
What is your favourite kind of flexible seating option in your classroom? By: Mrs. Ciampa #ocsb_math
This week during the Global Read Aloud project, we read the story Tough Boris. We talked about character traits and came up with a list of juicy words to describe the character of Boris the pirate. We imagined why Boris grew up to be such a tough pirate by writing our own stories about what could have happened to him when he was younger.
To share our thinking, we collaborated with Mrs. Johnson's class from Dallas Texas. We wrote many reading responses to questions her class posted about the story Tough Boris. I posted a few of them below. You can see more on our Twitter profile page or by following the hashtag: #GRAMem
When my big brother that is 14 tries to trip me I sometimes think I need to be tough
Today students learned about Orange Shirt Day. We learned about Phyllis' story and how the colour orange is a symbol to recall the feelings and the treatments she and others endured while attending residential schools in the 1970's. Read more about Phyllis' story here: http://www.orangeshirtday.org/phyllis-story.html
We discussed why Every Child Matters and wrote about it to reflect how important it is for all kids to live in a comfortable, loving and caring place. This story calls upon us to reflect on the Gospel Values especially to respect the dignity of others. Please review with your child why every child matters. Below are some of the tweets and reflections that our class came up with after learning Phyllis' story, and reading the powerful book: When I Was Eight. Ask your child about it!
As part of our current religion focus into digital citizenship, we continue to have conversations on the importance of being positive digital citizens. Last week we had a conversation about the many different digital platforms we use at home and at school. We made a list and discovered that there are many platforms that students use in common and some that only a few of us use. The most important message we agreed upon was the importance of making a positive digital footprint. Students wrote about how they will make sure they are making positive and safe choices on the digital platforms they use most. This was our first time using the green screen this year and our first time practicing our reading fluency. Students have an important message to share about their social media use. We hope they inspire others to make better choices when they post, share or connect with others online.
Students watched the video today and reflected on their writing and their reading fluency. They had a lot of great suggestions for what they want to change for next time. Have a read at our goals for next time we made on Twitter:
In Science our current focus is on Forces that Cause Movement. We are exploring different types of forces found in our environment. We talked a lot about what push and pull forces are around us. Students are learning that forces in nature like wind or water have an impact on the environment. Many of our students are members of the Makerspace club at our school that meets a few times a week. They are using what they know about Forces when experimenting with different STEM projects.
This week we participated in an #HourofCode together with the grade 4/5 class. We collaborated with our friends in the class to learn how to code our very own video games. Students loved participating in this coding activity. We all received our very own certificates after completing the Hour. It's cool to see programmers in our Grade 3 class.
After the coding, students made connections between forces that cause movement and the coding activity. We talked about how altering the speed on a code or our own tapping on the keyboard impacts various push and pull forces in a video game. We also made connections between our knowledge of forces that cause changes in movement to the coding activities we did this week. We coded a few games this week like Flappy Bird, Minecraft, Frozen and Star Wars games on code.org. It was fun to put what we've learned into practice this week on our very own video games. Ask your child about their coding adventures. We will continue to talk about Forces and Coding next week. See our fun from this past week below.
We had a blast with RBC Blues in the School over the past few weeks. The students worked with Blues performances named JW-Jones and Laura Greenburg all week long to prepare for their performance in front of our school. A huge thanks to RBC Bluesfest who sponsors this program for schools in our area. They gave us the amazing opportunity to plan and write our own original songs and our school got to see our performance. We posted many Vines and links to some of the songs we sang today. A huge thank you to the parents and friends who joined us today to watch us. It was a pleasure to have you in our audience today. Also a big thank you to the artists JW Jones and and Laura Greenburg for your patience and for sharing your creativity with us. Also a thank you to Mr. Tim Walsh from our local RBC branch on Montreal road for your generous donation of $500 to our school's music program. We can't wait to use that money for more musical experiences at our school this year!
For the past few weeks, students have been collaborating to promote and raise awareness about our Lent project. Our mission is to raise as much non-perishable food as we can as a school. We want to spread kindness in our school and in our Vanier community. We are collecting food to help families who are in need to benefit our community food bank the Partage Vanier Food Bank. It is amazing to see the generosity and the kindness that our school has shown. Together, our contributions are growing steadily. A huge thanks to all families who have donated and especially to the grade 6's who are challenging us to bring more each day.
Students have been writing announcements each day. This week we planned and filmed Green Screen videos to promote what students in our school can donate and to share the purpose of our mission. We used our school green screen and the Do Ink iPad app for the first time. We posted our videos on YouTube and now they are live and ready to view on our KidBlog accounts. We are really proud of our hard work and are eager to share them. Please follow the link to our class Kidblog account to view each of our videos and share a comment to show support.
We worked on our Lent Project Green Screen promotions today. Stay tuned to our Kidblogs for the finished videos! pic.twitter.com/zzKWeeStmh
Our current reading focus is on Asking Questions. Students are working to recognize how questions can help us when we read. Students are using these words to stop and ask themselves questions about what they are reading. When we stop to ask questions while we read we are learning more information, adding more details and understanding how to retell what happens in the story.
Please continue to use these words for your Word Wall Homework for the week. In addition, when reading with your child this week, stop and model a question you have about the story. This will help them to use this strategy on their own when reading independently.
In class we are working on this strategy before, during and after we read. We read The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg. We had many predictions and questions about who the stranger was and what his purpose was for visiting the farm. Below are some Book Talk tweets we shared. We used the #blktlk hashtag during this activity.
We read this story and have many questions. Grade 3, can you tell me what makes the stranger father nature? #blktlkpic.twitter.com/bumlMmqFw8
CR's beautiful drawings of the 6 books we read during the #GRA15
We have really enjoyed participating in The Global Read Aloud Project over the past few weeks. Students looked forward to finding out about the newest book in the author's study each week. We read 6 books in total. We used the books to increase our vocabulary, to become better writers and to connect and share on a global scale. Thanks to the project, we got to collaborate with a number of classes around the world via Twitter, Padlet, Google Hangout and Google Slides. The students loved seeing how they could interact with a story in so many different ways. We learned a lot about collaborating with friends in our room, and with new friends we are meeting online too.
Students have become better writers as a result of the author study. They are comfortable with answering questions on the books that we read. We used the books to work towards writing descriptive paragraphs that had at least 5 sentences. The students worked hard to write about their best memories and built on the strategies that they've been learning about to write a descriptive paragraph.
Students loved that creating their own OK Book on Google Slides. They are hoping to use the tool again to create books that they can share with the world. They are many blooming authors in our classroom. This book inspired some students to create their own book at the Writing Center!
One of the highlights for many of us was the Google Hangout that we got to do with Mrs. Mason's Grade 1/2 class in Kanata. Our classes chatted about our favourite books in the author study. We shared our OK Books that we both wrote on Slides and took turns answering questions and sharing our learning. It was such a great way to open our classroom and chat with a class who read the same books as us!
I am grateful to a wonderful teacher who lives in the United States named Pernille Ripp. For the past few years, Pernille has organized and ran The Global Read Aloud Project. Her concept has quickly spread across the world and continues to be a Global Project that many teachers (like me) look forward to teaching each year. She tweeted a thank you on Friday and asked us to share what were our best memories. Students went to the Writing Center during our centers time to reply to Pernille's Tweet with some of their best memories. TC received a response from her and he was SO excited about it. Have a read below at some of our best memories!
EB saya; my favourite book is the ok book because he had a pancake of he head @pernilleripp
This week during the Global Read Aloud Project, we collaborated with a Grade 1/2 class nearby in Kanata. We were finally successful at connecting over Google Hangout to chat with another class. The students did such a great job at being patient and at chatting with the class over Hangout for the first time. We chatted about all of the books that we've read by Amy Krouse Rosenthal over the past few weeks during the Global Project. It was great to see the students ask so many detailed questions. They also had great answers to the questions that Mrs. Mason's class asked us. A Hangout provides students with many different opportunities to collaborate, to share, to inquire and to discover new ideas. We are opening our classroom doors on a global scale when we invite another classroom into ours via a Hangout. The students were excited about meeting Mrs. Mason's grade 1/2 class and hope that they could do it again soon. After our Hangout, her class sent us many Tweets to share more things they loved about the Global Project we are both working on. Students are beginning to use Twitter to answer questions sent to us from classes we learn with. We experimented with it at our Writing Center today.
All week we talked about what the word OK means. We experimented with Google Slides to create our own version of Amy Krouse Rosenthal's OK book. Students were challenged to use Slides and Google Draw to create their own OK images and learned how to Google and insert their own images onto their Book page. It was great to see the students experiment with a tool that they hadn't used before. They quickly became experts and were excited to help their friends learn some of tricks to using the tools. We will definitely be using Google Slides again for shared learning opportunities. Creating our own class book inspired some students to create their own books at our Writing Center. We are just in the early stages of adding ideas to our writing center but so far we have many eager authors in our room. Below is our completed OK Book. We hope you enjoy reading about our OK adventures!
This week we participated in the 2nd week of The Global Read Aloud Project. This time we read the book Duck Rabbit by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. The students really enjoyed reading and laughing along with this story.
While reading the book, we made many great connections to the story. As a class, we talked about the Making Connections reading strategy and recalled the 3 types of connections you can make when reading a book: Text-to-Self, Text-to-Text and Text-to-World. After reading Duck Rabbit, we talked about what other books or personal connections we can make to the story. We had many great discussions and ideas to share. We wrote about our connections and shared them with our partners.
This project is helping us to work on our reading strategies. While reading a story, good readers make connections to better understand the books that we read. Ask your child to make some connections while reading with them at home!
While reading the story, the students had many opinions to share on whether they thought it was a Duck or a Rabbit. We had many great discussions and students and to prove why they thought it was a duck or a rabbit. We still don't know for sure what the answer is. We took the official Duck Rabbit poll. We can't wait to the the results!
A great thing about the Global Read Aloud Project is the opportunity to make global connections with other students who are also reading this story. This week we collaborated with friends in our class to share on a Padlet created by a teacher in the Ottawa area. Students are learning to share and collaborate with friends by sharing ideas together when posting online. This Padlet was used by other classes from around the world to write about what they liked, their favourite parts and their connections to the funny story Duck Rabbit. What a fabulous opportunity to connect and share with other students globally. Big thanks to Mrs. Martel for inviting us to share our learning with her class and others from around the world. Have a look below at the great learning our class got to share. Students loved that they could read the learning of students that they haven't met too!
Additionally, we continue to use the AudioBoom app to read with a friend. Students are using the app to read their work orally. This helps them to practice their reading fluency with a partner. When reading with a friend, we are practicing how to read clearly and with expression. Our partners also help us to make corrections to our writing too. Have a listen below to some of our great connections to the story Duck Rabbit.
Finally, after reading the story it reminded some of us of optical illusions. We looked for many great examples and were really excited about this one. What do you see in the picture?
This week we began working on another Global Project. The Global Read Aloud project is a 6 week author study project focusing on books by the author Amy Krouse Rosenthal.This project will take us on an interesting adventure. We will read a book by the author each week then share, post and collaborate with it online with people from around the world.
The first book in the project was called Chopsticks. After reading the story, we wrote about what we thought the author's message was. Students worked with a partner to come up with the moral or message in the story that they author wanted us to learn. A few students read their author's message on the AudioBoom app. Have a listen below at some of our great learning. Additionally, we used Twitter to share our learning with the author of the story herself. In the first week of the project, we've already heard back from her. The students were so excited to hear from her and to see that she pays attention to Twitter messages that we send out. It is great to see the positive interactions we can make with Twitter. Not only are we using it to share our learning on the Global Read Aloud project, but we are interacting with the author of the book too. We are using the hashtag #GRA15 and #GRAAmy to share our learning with students from around the world. Ask your child about it!
The students were curious about chopsticks after reading the story. They often used pencils to try to imitate how to use chopsticks to pick up objects. We played a Chopstick Challenge on Thursday to end the first week of the #GRA15. It was so much fun to see who could pick up and place marshmallows in a bin the quickest in 1 minute. The winning student got 26 in 1 minute! It was a great way to end our first week in the project. Next week we will continue with the project and read the story Duck Rabbit.
Our current science focus is on plants and life systems. In class, we are reviewing what we already know about plants. Students worked with a partner last week to post and share their ideas on what they know about plants on a shared Padlet. Have a read at what we know so far:
Today we read through our Padlet and shared what we know about plants. Some students shared what they know and names of different plants they remember. During our discussion, many students shared questions about what a Venus Fly Trap was. We started to research the plant and learned a few things about what it looks like and what it does. We had a few other questions about the Venus Flytrap so we decided to ask the website Wonderopolis for help on our Class Twitter Account....
Dear @Wonderopolis How does a Venus Flytrap eat a bug?
Wonderopolis is a wonder website that students can access from home to research questions they might have. We will be consulting this website a lot this year to help us with our science wonders. We created a Science Wonder book today and wrote about what we know and what we wonder about plants so far. We can't wait for Wonderopolis to reply to our question and to share with us how they eat bugs. During our unit in Science, we hope to answer these questions and more. If you would like to research Venus Flytraps at home please do! Ask your child to share with you what they know and what they wonder about Plants so far.
Thank You Wonderopolis for helping us with our Wondering. They posted on our Padlet and shared a link with us. Take a look!
@MrsCiampaClass We LOVE all the WONDERing & thinking represented on the @padlet! We left a message for you! Keep up the GREAT WONDERing!
For our unit in Health, we have focused on healthy eating and the 4 Food Groups. Students began inquiring what the 4 Food Groups were and questioned the kinds of food that are in the main food groups. We have collaborated with our friends on a shared-slide document. Students investigated the 4 Food Groups in an in-depth way. They were challenged to first figure out with a partner what types of healthy food are in the food groups.
To research, students consulted wonder and nutrition websites to help answer their inquiry and to categorize food into their appropriate food group. After completing this task I wondered if students understood why it was important to eat healthy food in the food groups. The next task had the students determine why the food groups were important. I was amazed to see how knowledgeable students are in researching. They recognized how to ask the right questions when searching on Google. They read through websites with a friend and found some amazing facts about Fruits, Vegetables, Dairy, Grain and Protein foods. We even contacted Wonderopolis to help us determine where to categorize some food. The class is really enjoying this special project and I am so proud of how experienced they are in researching and proving with evidence. Well done friends! We will be using this important research to assist us on another project beginning Wednesday. Students will be exploring healthy food in a fun way. We will be creating a video to teach others about our healthy treat....stay tuned!!
To view our on-going work on our shared Google Slides project, please follow this link:
Last Thursday our school celebrated our annual Multicultural Open House. We opened our school doors and welcomed all students and their families to visit our classrooms, watch student performances, eat a huge and generous potluck and participate in a technology event.
Before heading to the gym, students in our classroom led student conferences in our room. We worked hard on Persuasive Open House Letters to convince our parents to come to open house. It was a success as most of the students in our room made their way into our classroom to show their parents all of the great learning that takes place in Grade 3. To prepare for the evening, we talked about what we would most likely want our parents to see or learn about. We created centers and students put what they wanted to showcase at each of the centers. The centers were: Math Center, Literacy Center, Reading Center, EQAO, Padlet & QR Codes, KidBlog Writing and of course..Tech Experts!
It was so great to see the students welcome their parents into our classroom while leading them around the room to share their learning. They loved showing off their technology expertise on a variety of apps. It was the favourite center for sure. They showed their parents all of the tools we are fortunate to have. They helped them log into Chromebooks and use the iPads to log into Raz Kids. They showcased their amazing KidBlog accounts and how much our writing has improved since the start of the year. It was so nice to see parents and future generation kids excited and engaged in the learning in our Grade 3 class. Well done friends!
The technology event in our school's gym was a first for our school. Together with the leadership of some grade 5 and grade 3 students, families were treated to an engaging Padlet selfie wall. Students set up a Padlet selfie station filled with many fun props, a camera, and a projection screen to track all of the fun images that were captured. Students guided parents to navigate on the Padlet and taught them how to use the tool by getting them to post a comment about our school. Families and students were also introduced to our school Twitter account (@Assumption_ocsb). Students answered questions about how we use Twitter in our classrooms and everyone was invited to post a hard or real tweet on Assumption's Twitter account.
With all of the wonderful access to technology that our school is fortunate to have, parents got to see some of the amazing ways we can use tech tools to engage, communicate, connect and share. Our grade 3 and 5 students are comfortable navigating the tools and families were treated to a fun and engaging activity that we called our Selfie Wall. Families lined up to take selfies with their children and were excited to see their images posted on one large Padlet. We heard so much positive feedback from families who were delighted their their children had access to so many tools AND that they were using the tech tools in fun and engaging ways. It was great to have families participate and to see some of the great messages they left on our Twitter and Padlet wall. One of my favourite quotes came from a student who said "I like that we can learn at school and then go home and teach our parents too."
Below is a link to the completed Padlet selfies and some Twitter comments posted by our family community. We hope that your picture made it onto the Padlet wall. We also hope that you enjoyed participating in the event as much as we loved planning it! A huge thank you to Mme. Paradis, Mrs. McEvoy and Mme. Oliver who supported us and helped to make this event possible. Mr. MacKenzie and I were very proud of the grade 3 and 5 students who hosted a wonderful first parent technology event at Assumption. Well done everyone...until next time :-)
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.
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!
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
In Math we are wrapping up our unit in Geometry. To evaluate what we've learned, students spent time this week focusing on 3D shapes to become experts. We know so much about 3D shapes that we had to prove it. Students worked in partners and picked a 3D shape to be an expert on. They had to fill in our 3D chart with the feature of each shape and then add some interesting facts about their shape. We used Padlet to share what we learned! Have a look below at our completed Padlet to see the student's learning. We are using key math terms such as vertices, faces, edges, flat surface, curved surface and more.
HH: Today DL taught me a shape called hexagon - based pyramid.One thing I know is that it looks like a pyramid.
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) March 5, 2015
DL says today we had math centres me and my friend make 3d shapes and shod our principal @Assumption_ocsb!
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) March 6, 2015
In Gym we have challenged the students to make shapes with their bodies. We played a game called Guess My Shape. Students were challenged to make shapes and have their friends guess what shape they were trying to make. We used what we remember about number of sides and vertices to help us determine what the shapes were. A fun game to get students moving and to practice their sportsmanship!
This week we spent time adding new activities to our Math and Literacy Centers! Students are very engaged during center time - they are practicing the concepts we learn in class and working on new projects and ideas. It is a great time to see their creative side and to watch as they advance their own inquiries. We often welcome new center ideas. We plan what students can do at the centers and make sure we are practicing key concepts at all centers we create. Students come up with activities and concepts they can practice at each of our centers. The Math Centers were very fun this week. We spent time practicing key concepts we learned in 2D and 3D Geometry!
What can we do at our centers? One of our student's blogged about it on her Kid Blog...have a read at what she said!
@MrsCiampaClass Wow! I see triangles, squares, rectangles, parallelograms; so many shapes! I'm wondering what shapes you see and how many?
— Math Monkey (@Math_Monkey1) March 6, 2015
@MrsCiampaClass@mrskingocsb we think it is a 3D solid because it has faces, edges and vertices! What kind of angles do you see?
— Mrs. DelahuntCaluori (@lcaluori) March 3, 2015
The boys successfully persuaded me to create a Minecraft Center!
This week, the boys successfully convinced me to open a Minecraft Center in our Literacy Center. They came up with the I-Can List and are eager to demonstrate their expertise with friends. I look forward to seeing what creative learning the students come up with at this new center!
This week we celebrated Kindness Week. As a school and as a class, we took the time this week to highlight the acts of kindness that we do on a regular basis. We also took the time to talk about the things that we can do or say to spread a little more kindness. As a class we helped our school to reach 300 random acts of kindness. For many days, we learned that we were the kindest class in the school. We were very proud of that honour.
We spent time writing about kindness in different ways. One of our big goals is to show better sportsmanship both at recess and in gym. We have been working on how to play fair, how to show respect to our teammates and how to make sure we have fun when playing games together. We made a checklist together and decided that this is what we will work on. The students are recognizing how to show good sportsmanship. They are encouraging their friends when playing games. I am very proud of their efforts to show good sportsmanship - great work friends! Some students even blogged about it. Showing good sportsmanship is a wonderful example of kindness.
We are looking for comments on our blogs...please feel free to add a comment to students who blogged about sportsmanship this week!
We received a delightful surprise in school on Friday. Rabbi Bulka and the organizers of Kindness Week came to our school to acknowledge the kindness of our school! They shared with us that they came to give 3 kindness awards to students at our school. One of the big surprises was that they were awarding a student in OUR CLASS an award for their kindness.
WN good sportsmanship is,to share with someone and help someone with ANY thing #kindottawa
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) February 19, 2015
FF says: I showed grit by hinding the soccer ball into the net then I saket hands aftter the game. #kindottawa
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) February 19, 2015
WN good sportsmanship is,to shake your opponents hand after ANY game #kindottawa
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) February 19, 2015
sm says:you can show spotsmanship when you don 't give up and don't bragging play fair .
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) February 19, 2015
