Hello!

I can't wait to read all of your poems when I get back to the school! I hope you're learning lots and having fun! Mrs. Mansfield, Mme. Parent and I learned a lot today at the Thinking Symposium in Kingston. We learned how important it is to have purposeful talk in our classroom. To hear what our students are thinking and how that thinking is so important! Looks like we're on the right track with our learning literacy community and math talks! Keep talking Grade 3! See you on Wednesday Grade 3! 

Announcements September 17th, 2014

Hello Everyone! Just a reminder that tomorrow night is our Open House. It starts in the gym at 6:30. Looking forward to meeting you all! Picture day is also this Friday, September 19th.

Library Books

Tomorrow is our scheduled library time. Don't forget to return your books to school. 

Announcements!

Morning everyone! Just a few reminders about this week:

1. Open House is this Thursday
2. Scholastic orders will be due this Friday. (September 19th)
3. Word Wall Words for this week remain the same as last week (no new sentences are due on Friday)

Our Literacy Block - Daily 5

Dear Parents and Guardians,

            It is important to me that I provide my students with a literacy program that most benefits them as they become readers, writers and lifelong learners. My goal is to introduce classroom routines and structures in a way that removes all of the guesswork from the children and allows them to concentrate fully on learning. In reading, the classroom structure I use is called “The Daily 5”.  The purpose of this letter is to fill you in on what the Daily 5 is all about.

            The Daily 5 is a way of structuring the language block so every student is independently engaged in meaningful literacy tasks. Students receive explicit whole group instruction and then are given independent practice time to read and write independently while I provide focused, intense instruction to individuals and small groups of students.

            When the program is up and running smoothly, students will be engaged in the Daily 5, which is comprised of:

        1.  Read to self

2.  Working with words

The WWW will form part of our Daily 5 and we will work on independent tasks with the words as the week progresses. However, every Monday your child will write new word wall words in their agenda. A WWW quiz will be given each Friday. All words on the weekly list will follow a common spelling pattern or rule and sometimes the words will also follow a certain theme depending on the time of year. On Monday’s the students will bring home their WWW notebook. I have asked them to write a sentence for each WWW. Of course, they can combine the WWW into more than one sentence.  This homework is due on Friday.

3.  Read to/with someone

4.  Writing

5.  Listen to reading

We will spend our first weeks working intensely on building our reading and writing stamina, learning the behaviors of the Daily 5 and fostering our classroom community.  When all five tasks have been introduced and the children are fully engaged in reading and writing activities, I am able to work with small groups and confer with children one on one. Once our Daily 5 is up and running I encourage you to ask your child about it and see what he/she has to say. I anticipate your child will tell you about the class stamina, how we are working towards independence, and maybe you will even hear about some of the fantastic things your child has written, read, or listened to during our structured reading time.

Blog Update!

Just a quick note to say that I updated the Word Wall Words page and Homework page on the side bar of our Blog (on the right). I hope that you're also getting a chance to follow our class on Twitter! I'm happy to see all the new followers!

Science Unit

The students learned this morning that our first Science unit will be "Strong and Stable Structures!" Our first task was to brainstorm all of the structures we could think of. One of our students came up with a beaver hut (or lodge for those who liked to call it a lodge!!) Well done! How many structures can you think of?! Here's a picture of the bridge that runs over the Rideau Canal at Somerset Street in downtown Ottawa. I actually  use to live right there.

 

Ipick books

The students got to go shopping this morning! They shopped for the books that they will be reading during DIRT! I wonder who remembers what the acronyms DIRT and Ipick stand for?

Phewwwwww!

WOW! I feel like I blinked and the day was over. We had a great day (at least I think we did & I hope the students do as well!). We didn't get a chance to write anything in our brand new agendas. If we had the chance, this is what we would have written...

$8.00 fee for agenda
Please return student verification sheet asap

WAIT... Homework is for the students, NOT the parents...(except this one time!)

Your child will be bringing home some "homework" for you to complete this week. Please return it to me at your earliest convenience! You will find it under the "Homework" page. Please feel free to email your homework as well to samantha.harrington@ocsb.ca! I wonder who will hand in their homework in first!