Hard to believe that we enjoyed a 3rd week of school together already. Students are working very hard toward our on-going learning goals. We are learning more about each other and working hard to demonstrate cooperation and hard work.
This past week, we celebrated International Dot Day. We read the story The Dot By Peter Reynolds. An inspiring story that encouraged us to make our mark, persevere and keep trying! We began our visual art unit with this sweet story. Students were challenged to make their mark by starting with a small dot on their page and tasked to see where that dot might take them. Our class is pretty creative. We had some great ideas about where a little dot can take us. Our artwork is posted outside of our room. Have a look the next time you visit our school!
If you ask many of the students in our room what their favourite activity is outside...can you guess what it is? Soccer of course! Students in our class spend much of their recess playing soccer outside. So naturally, we will be working on our soccer skills for the next few weeks in gym class.
In soccer, it is important to learn some basic skills such as passing with the side of the foot, stopping the ball, how to pass to a target and how to control the ball. These are some of the skills that we worked on this week in our groups. Students are also working very hard to cooperate with one another. We are ensuring that everyone is getting an equal turn to practice. We are also working in our teams to demonstrate teamwork and patience. Kicking a ball around a target is a skill that students are learning to help them focus and how to guide the ball. Ask your child what they learned about playing soccer in gym class this week.
In math, students continue to work on number concepts and place value. We are representing numbers in a variety of ways. We are composing and decomposing numbers using many strategies while focusing on a number's place value. In grade 3, students work on 3 digit numbers up to 1000.
Our math blocks begin with a math problem on the board that we work on independently and then observe the strategies of a few volunteers. Students are learning from one another while identifying how to represent numbers. We are currently working on a place value activity that requires us to identify what our initials are worth using place value. Students are really enjoying this activity. Ask your child to recall how to represent their initials using standard form, number words or expanded form!
