Last Week Before Holidays

As always we will be continuing with learning and learning routines with some adjustments. All activities we are planning for incorporate curriculum so it is important that students continue to attend  school. Being on time, well rested and fed, allows students to be on their "A game" and ready to go! We certainly have a jam packed week for them to enjoy!

Monday, December 16th - Choir Dress Up

School Wide Caroling (gymnasium) - 8:30 am

Choir Field Trip - Students are asked to dress up is they wish, as we are performing for the seniors in our community! The remaining students from Mrs. MacQueen's class will join Ms. DuBray's class for the duration of the field trip. (9:30 am - 2:25 pm).

Tuesday, December 17th - Wear Your RED & GREEN Holiday Attire

School Wide Caroling (gymnasium) - 12:30 pm - Grade 3 Lead

Create Time to make gifts/cards for family members

Wednesday, December 18th - Wear Your RED & GREEN Holiday Attire

Create Time to make gifts/cards for family members

School Wide Caroling (gymnasium) - 12:30 pm

Classrooms have been working hard to earn a BOARDSGAME Party! They may bring appropriate boardgames if they would like. Students can also bring a snack to share with the class (cheese, crackers, fruit, cookies, veggies, sausage tray etc.) if you wish to send enough for 24, that would be great!

Thursday, December 19th - Wear Your Pajama's to School Day!

School Wide Caroling (gymnasium) - 8:30 am

NOON dismissal!

Note - Our Book A Day program will be winter themed this week!

How Do We Understand the World Through Stories?

What did we learn from the book, Because of Winn-Dixie?

Aisha - "Things can be really sad for you but sometimes you have to move on even though they are really sad for you?"

Lily - "It's okay if you have a pathological fear of something."

Ana - "You have to learn that you can move on with life."

Brayden - "Even though someone is being mean to you, give them a chance and maybe you can be friends."

Kendall - "Just because you don't want to be friends with someone, it doesn't mean that you have to bully them." "It's okay to be friends with different people of different ages."

Gabe - "That some kids don't grow up with parents from a young age."

Alex - "Even though that someone has gone to jail, they can change."

"Even though a family member doesn't live with you, it doesn't mean they don't love you."

Taven - "If something is gone in your life, be sad about it and then move on."

Elsa - "You can't hold on to anything.  You can only love what you've got while you've got it."

Jessica - "If you didn't grow up with a family member, doesn't mean you can't go on with life."

"It's okay to make new friends even if they've been a bit rude to you at once."

Wyatt - "Don't call people names."

Allie - "Everyone deserves a second chance."

"Everyone makes mistakes."

Kate - "If you call people names, they probably don't want to be friends with you." 

Malea - "When you are searching, and can't find it, it's good to move on with life."

Samantha - "We have to move on with life."

Leopold - "That you shouldn't hold on to only one important thing but think of other positive things."

Sienna - "Even though somethings lost, you still need to be happy."

Samuel - "It's okay to lose something you love."

Bhavleen - "If you don't have a family, still be happy."

Mrs. MacQueen - "Your friends and community can be your family too!"

Dedze - "Sometimes you have to let important things go."

Raine - "It's okay to be sad, you just have to move on with your day."

Olivia - "It's okay to be sad but you should never give up."

Blake - "If you've lost a pet, sometimes you have to keep trying and remember your pet is always with you."

"If you fall down, you always can get back up!"

December 8th, 2019

December Update! 

We will be teaching up until the last day of school, so attendance continues to be important for your child's success. If you are leaving before the last day of school (Thursday, December 19th, noon dismissal), please let me know ahead of time. This Wednesday is the Christmas Concert and next week will be caroling in the gym! Lots of fun times in the near future!

Science - Students have wrapped up their combined Science units about Building and Testing With a Variety of Materials last week. Next up will be our Hearing and Sound Unit. If you have an expertise in this area and would like to share with students, please contact me through e-mail.

Social Studies - We have been very fortunate to have had four presenters recently, who have presented on the topics of India and Global Citizenship. Over the next couple weeks we will continue to learn about India and then take a bit of a break to learn all about Ukrainian Christmas Traditions in the new year. I am thrilled to be sharing about my personal story with the students, as I am Ukrainian. We will also look at folklore with opportunities to act out traditional stories and learn some traditional Ukrainian dance steps.

Mathematics - As mentioned before, all concepts are continuously readdressed throughout the year. At this time, we are however concentrating on patterns within numbers (skip counting), Multiplication and Division. Please continue to take the time to practice with either cards or dice, basic facts with your child (addition, subtraction and multiplication). Just two minutes a couple times a week will support an improvement in basic facts acquisition.

Language Arts -
I AM SO HAPPY to announce that we beat our reading minutes for September in October! We are currently working on collecting our November data! Have your child show you on their Google Drive how we record this information. They should have two charts; one classroom and one individual.

Book-A-Day - Ask you child about the daily book and which one they voted for on Friday!

Read Aloud - Because of Winn Dixie will be wrapping up shortly. Stay tuned to hear about our next  book!

Word Work - Last week we looked at contractions. For the next two weeks we will be putting a pause on our formal Words Their Way Program to continue to focus on contractions as well as a few other specific spelling patterns.

Book Club is in full swing with many groups competed their novel and working on their book report write-ups. This week, feedback will be given to all students so that they can complete their good copies (edited) and prepare for presentations.

Coding - The next couple weeks will also have us visiting the program SCRATCH and completing a couple coding tasks. Feel free to explore the site at home in your free time.

As always if you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me through e-mail. Looking forward to gathering with everyone on Wednesday night for the grade 1 & 3 Christmas Concert!

Mrs. Emily MacQueen

November and December Update

November & December Updates

-       Thank you for your continued support over the last couple months. As you are aware, grade three is a big change with increased expectations and students have been working hard to meet these expectations.

-       Christmas Concert updates will be posted on Mrs. Bourgeois’ Music blog. Actors were chosen and unfortunately there was more interest than spots available. Your child will let you know if they were picked for an actor role. As well, choir has been working extra hard preparing for the concert.  

-       Apologies for not getting the November calendar out to you at the beginning of the month. Please feel free to add in, to the best of your knowledge minutes for previous days.

-       Please sign up when the conference manager becomes available for a time slot. It is expected that I meet with a parent for each student.

Mathematics at a Glance
We are continuing to focus on place value, addition and subtraction of 2-digit numbers, and regrouping. When ready we will move on to 3-digit. Please watch the following clips to demo using a number line and solving problems in multiple ways. This will support developing mental mathematical abilities (composing and decomposing).

mathsolutions.com/NTWNC32

mathsolutions.com/NTWNC33

mathsolutions.com/NTWNC31

Problem Solving

Working through word problems is an important skill that we will continue to explore on a daily/weekly basis throughout the year. It is important for students to learn skills such as highlighting, looking for valuable information, assessing for operation and ensuring that they have solved the problem.

How to Support at Home

-       any dice and card games to support acquisition of basic facts

-       skip counting to support repeated addition leading into multiplication/division 

Sites for Practice

http://solveme.edc.org/

ABCya.com

Language Arts

-       biographies

-       emphasizing on summarizing important information in texts

-       creating jot notes

-       writing proper structured paragraphs (topic sentence, supporting sentences/ideas, concluding sentence)

-       creating paragraphs from jot notes

-       using story planners to create structured stories (characters, setting, problem and solution, three main events, rising action building to climax of the story)

-       using graphic organizers to brainstorm and structure writing

Word Work Program – reinforces grammar, spelling rules, alphabetical order and basic sentence structure

Social Studies

Our pop-up event for Diwali was fun and packed full of learning! We have also had a pop up guest speaker, Donna Diaz who spoke about her travels in India. We will continue on until the winter break learning about India.

We are also learning about Universal Rights and Freedoms of children around the world. Some of our work has been around war times as well as learning about Indigenous perspectives and residential schooling.

Science

We will continue completing our units of Building and Testing with a Variety of Materials. Students enjoyed creating and testing their skyscraper during their Skyscraper challenge. They were able to use their knowledge of the leaps of skyscraper building from their learning of the building of the Burj Khalifa. The next unit of study will be Hearing and Sound (end of December into January).

Health and Wellness

As classroom communities, we continue to learn how to support one another in meaningful ways. Opportunities for learning with an emphasis on working together in groups in order to be productive have been a priority. Students have also been focusing on acquiring skills in order to calm their bodies and be in their personal optimal learning zone.

Thank you for your continued support. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Mrs. MacQueen

List of Volunteers For Open Minds/CPO

The following are all confirmed for the upcoming field trips. Everyone has filled in the necessary forms and can be expected at school for 8:00 am Monday morning. If you have not completed the mandatory meeting with Donna Diaz on being a volunteer, you need to e-mail me so that I can arrange that to occur the morning of your volunteer day. As a volunteer, you must be aware of certain protocols.

Monday, November 4th
 - Nicole H
- Karen Snook
- Jodi Boyd

Tuesday, November 5th
- Devica D
-Nicole H
-Tracey K

Wednesday, November 6th
- Raelynn I
-Nicole R
-Devica D
-Nicole H

Thursday, November 7th
- Devica D
- Sarah S
- Laura O (EA from Auburn Bay School)

Friday, November 8th
-Nicole H
-Joshua H
-Janet M
-Tracey K
-Joscelyn H

CPO - Tracey K

Thank you to others who extended their availability in volunteering for the CPO, with having a students teacher at that time we only required one volunteer. 

Friday, October 18th, 2019 Update

Please bring a small to medium sized pumpkin to school on Monday or Tuesday. We would like all students to have one by Wednesday, October 23rd. We will send them home at the end of the week on Friday so families can still use them for Halloween. We won't be carving the pumpkin at school. The pumpkins will be supporting our math, language arts and art programs. We also always accept donations as well. 

SOCIAL STUDIES Support Requests

Do you have a relationship with India, Peru, Tunisia, Ukraine or local Indigenous Tribes? 

Several classes (Ashby-Winters, Boshmann, Cooper and MacQueen) are currently putting together collections of artifacts of each of these populations to use with all four classes.

To give you an idea of artifacts we are looking for, Mrs. MacQueen has put together a Ukrainian Collection with the following items;

- folk tale book written in both English and Ukrainian (The Snow Grandparents -students act out)
-comic books in Ukrainian
-children book in Ukrainian
-traditional dancing costume pieces (headpiece, sash, beads, slippers)
-wooden beaded boxes
-pictures of children in traditional costumes from different regions of Ukraine
-pictures of traditional religious celebrations (Easter, Church Service, Wedding)
-pussy willows
-nesting dolls
-copy of the Ukrainian alphabet
-Ukrainian egg making kit

Really, anything that you think would enhance the learning of the culture and country. Please write a brief description of what the item is and it's cultural importance. We will return all items to you at the end of the school year. We will be sure to bag items carefully. If you wish to make any items donations, please mark your wishes on the bag that you send them in.

If you wish to send in traditional food or make a presentation for any one or all classes, please contact your child's individual teacher.

Thank you for your help!

LIBRARY SCHOOL IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Just quickly went through the paperwork coming in for our big field trip week and notice that I am still missing several student forms.

As for volunteers, I have too many volunteers for Monday and not enough for any of the other days,  with Tuesday and Thursday requiring 3 and 4 more. If you can volunteer or change your Monday day to one of the others let me know asap.

HAVE A WONDERFUL LONG WEEKEND!