Next week grade 3 will begin a new unit. Students will practice the skill of speaking in the first person and will work on a project in which they will have to write a short biography about themselves (following the guided questions in the slides below). Each student will work on answering questions about where they live, and describe their families, and will then document their learning by interviewing each other and sharing their recordings with their classmates to learn about each other and what makes each one of us unique!
As we wrapped up our Science unit on Soil, we FINALLY had the chance to look at all of the bags of soil that have been arriving in the mail over the last month! It started with a quick tweet & a share on Facebook by one of our Grade 3 parents… and voila! 7 bags of soil from around North America!
We started the activity by looking up the various places on the map. Two students were in charge of using Google to show the locations on our SMART board and 2 students were in charge of then finding it on our classroom wall map.
It was great to see the class work together to find the locations and make connections to places they have been!
Then we reviewed the various types of soil that we have been learning about and started passing around the bags! The students were able to touch the soil and look at it through the bag, then they needed to determine which type of soil it was.
We were so excited to see and feel the very clear differences among all of the different soils!
A VERY BIG THANK YOU to every who mailed us bags of soil! This activity would not have been possible without you!
The students were VERY excited about the snow falling today… and even more excited to look out our classroom window and see the HUGE snow plows on the roads!
With all of this excitement for snow, many of our students forgot to bring in-door shoes today. Please pack them in your child’s backpack for tomorrow, so they can leave them in their lockers! Keeping extra socks in their backpacks / lockers is also a great idea!
representation of Morah Lianna todayrepresentation of the Grade 3 students today
While I have you here… Just a few more reminders:
-Friday, November 18th is PHOTO RETAKE DAY
-Friday, November 18th is a 2PM DISMISSAL
-Thursday, November 24th is DRESS DOWN DAY
-Friday, November 25th is a PD DAY
I am excited to share that we are re-launching the Scholastic Book Club! What is this Scholastic Book Club? Glad you asked! The book club is an EASY way to order books for your child to read at home AND each time you place an order, our whole class benefits! When you use our class code (RC110679), we earn rewards to purchase new books for our classroom library! Personally, I have my eyes on the new Bad Guys book and some more books from the Jory John and Pete Oswald series for our classroom!
So how do you join?
You might have a vague pre-covid memory of Scholastic flyers going home with your child each month… well now, there’s no need to check your child’s backpack for a flyer and no need to send money into school for book orders.
Scholastic has gone virtual!
Then you just need to follow these few simple steps:
New books and flyers are added each month! Please feel free to share our class code with any grandparents or relatives who are thinking of purchasing books for your child! I hope you take advantage of this awesome program and help us earn class rewards. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out!
We have been learning about Soil in Science class this term… and this week, we took the learning outside!
We collected soil from the ground right outside our school and got ready for our first soil related experiment.
Step 1: collect soil from outside and put it in a clear plastic cup
Step 2: make predictions about what will happen right when we add water to the cup and what will happen once it sits for 24 hours
Step 3: pour the water & mix it up! (then let it sit overnight)
Step 4: record our observations
It wouldn’t be a true Science lesson if we didn’t find ways to integrate our Scientific Study of Words (aka Structured Word Inquiry). So before we even made predictions, we looked at the word <prediction>.
Right away we noticed the prefix and the suffix <-ion>. We also learned what a bound base is!
Here are the predictions we made…
What will happen when we put water in the soil cups?
Ron: The soil will be all mushy and soggy, the dirt will dissolve and turn the water brown
Yaara: the dry soil will become wet like mud
Ella: The soil will turn into mud
Solly: It will turn into mud
Miko: The soil will move to the top of the cup
What will happen to the cup of water and soil if we let it sit for more than 24 hours?
Ahron: The dirt will be like a sponge an absorb all the water
Ollie: The dirt will absorb the water
Elise: The dirt will absorb the water, but there will still be water in the cup
Abby: There will only be a little bit of water
Galit: The soil will turn to mud
Reuven: the soil will become liquid, then mud, then just be wet soil
Raz: the soil will turn mushy
Boaz: The water will spread all around the dirt into the different parts and the soil will be mushy
Naama: It will turn into mud
We let our cups of water and soil sit overnight and then went back to see what happened!
Of course, we did another word investigation…
I was SO impressed that the students noticed the double suffix right away! We know that the <at> in observation comes from the suffix <-ate>! Ella was able to tell us that the base word means to look or to see something.
We were able to see the different layers of the soil and noticed that heavier particles sunk to the bottom of the water, while lighter bits floated to the top.
Reminders and Notes:
-Friday, November 4th is a 3PM Dismissal
-You can follow along with our learning on our class twitter account. We post smaller snapshots of our day on there!
-You can stay up to date on the general happenings at OJCS / OJCS Student Life by subscribing to the OJCS Student Life Blog!
The time has come!! We have a full week of school and we are launching General Studies Homework in Grade 3! For those of you who were in Grade 2 with us last year, the BINGO board should look similar.
Each month, I will post a new BINGO board. This board is for the last week of October and all of November. Students have been asked to complete at least one task per week, but they can complete as many as they would like. Students can keep track of their completed tasks to earn a BINGO prize. Prizes will be given for vertical lines, horizontal lines, diagonal lines, and a full bingo board.
Please note: if technology isn’t your child’s ideal method of completing homework, all written tasks can be done by hand (paper and pencil) and brought to class.
SPECIAL SHOUT OUT to Kayla for noticing my typo on the printed versions that the students are taking home today!
As always, please be in touch if you have any questions.
Global Maker Day was so much fun yesterday… So we decided to continue it today!
Grade 3 traded in their “Fun Friday” games period this morning to continue working on their marvelous maker day magic! Here are just a few snapshots from the classroom… Morah Lianna’s job as photographer was put on hold so she could become the duct-tape cutter.
Between all of the making, smiling, and tidying, we were able to reflect on Global Maker Day and the making process.
What was your favourite part of Global Maker Day? My favourite part was..
Ella “…that I could take cardboard boxes and turn it into something else”
Yaara “…we could get creative and build anything that we want AND that everyone made different things. It was fun!”
Ahron “…working together, having fun, colouring, everything!! I just feel happy.”
Miko “…when I added a cereal box to our marble run to make it harder so the marble wouldn’t always get in.”
Jake B “…actually getting the marble in!”
What was the most challenging part? The most challenging part was…
Ollie “…everybody kept knocking over our project because it’s big and on the carpet at the front of the room.”
Ron “…working in a group and with my team”
Reuven “…when we were struggling to figure out what we were going to do. We tried something, but it was too hard, so we tried something else, and that led us to make something else. So that is what we are doing now.”
Raz “…working alone one the second day when both my partners were absent… But then two other friends came to help me and now I have something even better!”
Galit “…figuring out what to build and how to make it.”
Abby “…when you would have to cut the boxes and cardboard.”
What would you do differently next time?
Jacob H “I would probably look at all of the boxes and other materials I had before getting started”
Solly “I would try to do it with more people instead of mostly by myself.”
Kayla “I would use bigger scissors to make it easier for cutting.”
Morah Lianna was so impressed with the teamwork, creativity, and clean up crew in this class! This may have been our first time “making” this school year, but it will most definitely not be our last!
Kitah Gimmel Parents: Please keep your eyes out for a blog post next week all about launching General Studies homework in Grade 3! Shabbat Shalom!
We encourage you to comment below saying which you would rather AND explain why!
(don’t read our answer until you’ve commented your answer!)
In Grade 3, we decided that a nickel for every day is better because during the months with 31 days, you would end up with $1.55. This means some months you would get 5 more cents than the option of $1.50 per month.
Global Maker Day is coming and we need your recycled goods!
We are beginning to collect items for the OJCS Global maker day on October 20th. We are looking for any cardboard boxes (think cereal boxes), toilet paper tubes, stir sticks, popsicle sticks, and plastic tubs (think yogurt containers, sour cream tubs, etc.), and any other items to help with our creativity. *please make sure that the items are clean before sending them in!
More general information (schedules, challenges and prizes) coming soon!
If you have any questions, please reach out to Morah Lianna or our OJCS Makerspace Team; Josh Ray, Mike Washerstein or Faye Mellenthin.
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