Ms. Howie's and Ms. Cosentino's Grade 3 Class

Welcome to the new school year 2013-2014 Grade 3/4

Math

Emily M wants you to know that we are working on place value and rounding in Math. Mikayla knows that the Yellow Group needs to round 2 digits to the nearest 10. Here is an example from Alexa. 65 --> 70. Matthew S knows the rule is to round up if it is 5 or above. The Blue Math group is rounding 3 and 4 digit numbers to the nearest 10's, 100's, 1 000's.

What we are working on now is trading 10 tens for a 100 or we can trade 10 ones for a ten. When Emily H writes 346, she knows that the number can be shown by 3 hundreds, 4 tens and 6 ones. Madison can show the same number value in a different way by using 2 hundreds, 14 tens, and 6 ones. It means the same thing!

Max says that we can all be awesome at our addition facts if our parents practice with us starting with doubles (10 + 10) and doubles plus one facts ( 8 + 9).

In Language

We have been reading an abridged version of Anne of Green Gables. Ema and Shane are enjoying the story because they find it interesting to read about what life was like on Prince Edward Island.

We also did a shared reading of a story called Odd Velvet. We found it on the website for the Ottawa Public Library under Tumblebooks. Kaitlin says sometimes people are odd but we still should respect them and not make fun of them. Being odd can be fun and interesting says Matthew S.

Matthew H enjoyed the shared reading of The Boy in the Drawer. He reminds us that these narratives have a problem, setting, characters, events, and a solution.

These books are all narratives. Your children can tell you the parts of a narrative: setting, characters, problem, events and solution.

Welcome to Victoria!

Victoria is being helped by the whole class to learn English. She told us by using iTranslate that she enjoys the singing we do and that she likes working in the library. She also likes the friends she has at our school!

Bucket Filling is important!

Ms. Petrocco read our class the book Have you Filled a Bucket today? When you help someone or are kind you fill someone's bucket said Daniel. Being mean to someone by being rude or pushy will dip into someone's bucket added Caeden. Bucket filling is important because it gives you happy feelings. Fiona feels that if you fill someone else's bucket that will fill your own bucket too!

Health and Media

Students have been researching the importance of healthy sleeping habits. We used an inquiry method of learning. After reading from a great Internet site, students chose questions to research. They will be presenting what they learned to the class in the form of a poster. These experienced Grade 4's learned how to make slideshows last year and added this to their presentation. Grade 3's are anxious to have the Grade 4's help them learn this tool as well! Having trouble convincing your child to have healthy sleep habits? Remind them of what they have been teaching their classmates from http://www.sleepforkids.org

Art

We recently made these beautiful designs using fresh leaves. Students were amazed at the impression made by a painted leaf where they could see all of the delicate veins. Autumn colours were added in between the leaves and a beautiful image was the result. Several teachers have admired their work!

We made these drawings to reflect the music we listened to. It was Vivaldi's Four Seasons Autumn. We listened for the mood of the music, the tempo, repeating patterns and instruments that were playing.

A really cool way to display words is with the program called Wordle. In this case, students made their name the focus. They added words that told what their name means, or words that are important to them. We are going to use Wordle to help us with Math vocabulary or spelling words or Science vocabulary. You can find it at http://www.wordle.net