See You Soon!

Open House Parent Conferences

A huge thank you to all parents who were able to join us today at our school's Open House breakfast. We had so many wonderful families join us in our gym this morning. Families had the chance to enjoy a healthy breakfast together with their children. We also got to watch the dance teams led by Mrs. Vela. They blew us away with their amazing talent! After the breakfast, we went to our classrooms and invited our parents to join us.

We held mini parent conferences to show our parents some of our expertise in our room. Many students got to show off their amazing work on our Google Docs and Google Slides. There were other students who wanted to teach their parents how to scan QR Codes to read their narrative stories that we created. It was neat to see the students teach their parents how to scan a QR Code, and then how to write a comment through the link on their cover pages.

Students also wrote blog posts and comments together with their parents and taught them how to navigate the KidBlog site. It is so great to see the student's expertise in action. We also had students talk about their experiences with the Open House with their parents on our Padlet below. Please feel free to add more of your thinking! 

We are so thankful to have supportive families in our community who joined us today. Thank you to all of our thoughtful parents who came to feast with us and to learn more about their children's learning. It really brought a huge smile to our class' faces. 

To view the blog posts created by students today during the Parent conferences, please head on over to our class Kidblog accounts. 

Created with Padlet

EQAO Homework Workbook

Dear Parents,

Today your child came home with their 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 at the end of this month beginning on May 25th. 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. PLEASE ENSURE STUDENTS BRING THE BOOK BACK TO SCHOOL EACH DAY SO WE CAN REVIEW THE WORK IN CLASS OR IF THEY HAVE QUESTIONS. For more information, please see the note inside of the workbook in your child's agenda.

Open House and Lorax Persuasive Writing

We have been working on Persuasive Writing in our room for the past few weeks. Students are learning how to convince someone to do something important to them. We need to make sure we are polite and we use kind words when we are trying to persuade. Our reasons have to be valid and have to be as convincing as possible.

We completed a Lorax persuasive task during Earth Week. We read the story and wondered as a class why the Once-ler was so determined to cut down the trees and take so much life away. We researched many reasons why trees are important to our life and to the life of other things in nature. We learned how to research and how to find reasons that made sense to our writing topic. Students used Google Slides to compile their research and then referenced the Slides while writing their persuasive letters to the Once-ler. Have a look at our research below:

 

Last week we completed another persuasive task. This time the topic was Open House. Students chose to either persuade the students of Assumption to buy books at the Book Fair or to persuade their parents to join us at our Open House breakfast. Students had to use transition words to help them compose their persuasive letters. Their good copy was typed on Google Docs where many students got to use Google Read and Write to help them edit their work. Ask your child to explain to you how it helped them with their writing. We also shared our final draft on an iPad app called Chatterpix. Students loved experimenting with this app. We posted all of their completed Chatterpix creations on their KidBlog accounts. Please visit our KidBlog accounts to leave a comment on their writing. They loved creating them and are excited to see they are available on YouTube!

Science Workshop on Soils

Shaking up the soil types with @sci_in_school @assumption_ocsb Look how much fun we are having. https://t.co/svEgMwe4hb

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 27 April 2016

Created with Padlet

Wiggly worms that tickle https://t.co/AkzkgWff1B

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 27 April 2016

Is root growth easy or hard with sand? @sci_in_school https://t.co/4ej0UMceDp

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 27 April 2016

Labelling and discovering the parts of a worm with @sci_in_school https://t.co/It03Vj4fgz

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 27 April 2016

How much water can the topsoil hold? @sci_in_school? https://t.co/Ok8U9P2fT0

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 27 April 2016

Having fun learning about wiggly worms during our @Sci_in_School workshop today. pic.twitter.com/A0UlS4nhrz

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 27 April 2016

2 and 3 Digit Addition and Subtraction

In Math our current focus is on addition and subtraction. We are working towards adding and subtracting numbers that are 3 digits. A math review was sent home this weekend. Please use our charts below to help students review. Some students need to review how to subtract with regrouping. The chart below will help. We also came up with some strategies to help us add numbers. These strategies really help us when we add 2 and 3 digit numbers. Ask your child about these strategies and review the math work at home this weekend.

Also below are pictures of our Math Centers this week . We played a lot of fun addition and subtraction games with our friends. Ask your child about their favourite games. I will also add some math game links at the bottom to help students review key concepts. Have a great weekend!

http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/SpeedGrid/Addition/urikares.html
http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/SpeedGrid/Subtraction/urikasub1res.html

Swim to Survive Program

Starting this Monday April 11th as well as Monday April 18th and Monday April 25th, the grade 3's will be participating in the Swim to Survive Program. Thank you for sending your permission letters back to school in a timely manner. Students will head to Splash Wave pool by bus to learn basic swimming to survive lessons. We ask that you remember to send your child to school with the following items:

-appropriate bathing suit (one piece for girls)
-towel
-plastic bag

Students who do not come to school with these items will not be able to attend the swimming sessions. Students do not need to bring anything else. Items such as hair clips and eye goggles are not permitted. We will leave by bus around 12:30 and arrive at school around 2:30.

Thank You!

Coding and Forces Causing Movement

 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.

Getting started on our shared learning with @assumptiongr45 We are learning how to #Code today @Assumption_ocsb pic.twitter.com/kAf7fgWRcD

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 29 March 2016

Programming the Flappy Bird game for the first time. @assumptiongr45 @Assumption_ocsb https://t.co/14x2DjNxKu

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 29 March 2016

The hints help us to change the game if we can't move to the next level. @assumptiongr45 https://t.co/024wIhEc0T

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 29 March 2016

We get certificates for completing our #hourofcode @assumptiongr45 https://t.co/L9zbdXxqNR

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 29 March 2016

We help our friends when we can't figure out the problem in our code #HourofCode @assumptiongr45 https://t.co/2zM8PiOyDS

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 29 March 2016

TO says: "#HourofCode is more like playing than working but it's still fun, because we're making games." @assumptiongr45 @Assumption_ocsb

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 29 March 2016

Our first #HourofCode today with @MrsCiampaClass #coding #collaborativelearning #HelloWorld pic.twitter.com/6ia7hVUq7x

— Amanda Salinas (@assumptiongr45) 29 March 2016

In science we are connecting forces that cause movement to coding. pic.twitter.com/IUNIyaCeaM

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 30 March 2016

Trying to figure out why Elsa isn't moving into all of the squares instead of just one. https://t.co/Splcvb8GAD

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 30 March 2016

We keep trying but can't figure out why he is turning right too much? https://t.co/QgEvBg3JZN

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 30 March 2016

Lent Project Delivery

Over the past few weeks during this season of Lent, our class has worked hard to promote kindness in our school and in our community. Our goal was to spread some kindness to our local Food Bank by collecting canned food to benefit the people who live in our community. The students planned and organized this initiative in a number of ways. We started talking about doing something nice for our school during Kindness Week. We watched videos and read stories about the boomerang effect and how spreading kindness makes our world a better place.

We decided to promote this to the school by writing daily announcements and created posters to spread our message. We read a few stories to inspire us, then we created posters on Slides to collaborate with a friend and share why kindness is cooler.

As the weeks went on, our collection of canned food slowly grew. To further inspire others, students were interested in creating their own commercials and share on YouTube. We wanted to use the Green Screen to make videos to promote our project to the school so we made a plan on Slides. 

The students did a great job of following what good speakers do while filming their first ever commercials. We posted our commercials to YouTube. To view each of our commercials, follow this link to student's KidBlog accounts. Each commercial is posted to the students' blogs. Mr. Gautreau watched each of our commercials and left us a comment. Students loved to see their principal giving them feedback!

And finally, today Sylvie from the Partage Vanier Food Bank came to visit our school to pick up the boxes of food just in time for Easter this weekend. She was so appreciative of what the students did over the past few weeks to collect so much food. She thanked us and we helped pack the boxes for her to bring to the Food Bank today. It felt great to share with her that our final total was 316! We hope this helps many families in our community over the Easter weekend. We reflected on the project today during our Talking Circle. Students shared their favourite memories and what they enjoyed most about the project. We posted some of our ideas on the Padlet below. Please feel free to add your own thinking if you think there is more to share. We also added a few photos and links to reflect on this amazing experience. Well done Grade 3!!

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Contractions Homework

Welcome back to school! I hope you all enjoyed a restful March Break holiday. 

This week our vocabulary focus is on contraction words. What are contraction words? They are words with an apostrophe that take the place of letters. Contractions are a shorter way to say two words. For instance: he is becomes:he's. Follow this quick link to see how we can change two words into a contraction word:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvjpoNKhnZA

For Homework This Week:
1. Students can play this contractions word game:
http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/vocabulary-games/contractions/pick-the-correct-contraction.html
2. After playing this game, students will need to demonstrate their understanding of how to change two words into a contraction word on their BLOG.
3. Make a list of words that you changed into contraction words. (he is = he's)
4. Comment on a friend's blog to see what words they come up with.