3O Newsletter
From the Teacher's Desk
Upcoming Dates
Happy New Year!
I hope you had a great
holiday season with
friends and family.
I would like to sincerely
thank you for taking the
time to participate in
our Canning Christmas
project. It was a great
opportunity for your
child to give a gift to
someone for teaching
them the true spirit of
giving, as well as helping others in the process. They had fun
making the poem cards
and decorating the cans
for the gift recipient.
We shared reactions to
this gift during our
Community Circle on
the first day back and it
was a heartwarming to
hear the stories from
some of the students.
Your child has been
asked to be responsible
for recording this information in his/her agenda either that night at
home, or first thing in
the morning at school
the next day.
We have been working
on Book Talk presentations. Our Book Talks
will begin shortly to
help encourage sharing
of new books for others
to read.
Please remember,
reading helps your child
be a better reader,
writing and speller.
20
Student of the
Month Assembly
27
at 11:25
February
13
Report Cards
Go Home
What's Going On In Our Classroom?
Our class continues to
record daily reading in
our agendas. Our goal
is to try reading for 20
to 30 minutes a day for
as many days as possible each week.
P.D. Day
No School
Students will come
home with High Frequency Word Lists later in February, along
with a note of some
tips and games for
practice. The goal is not
only to recognize these
words but to also learn
how to spell them to
further develop their
personal language
base.
On a Side
Note
Your child is the
“link” between
home and school.
Responsibility for
recording information in their agendas and sharing at
home is being highly
encouraged. Thanks
for also supporting
and encouraging this
responsibility and
independence in
your child.
Literacy
Reading is
Thinking
Reading
We will be reading about Pioneers
in Social Studies and moving into
Forces and Movement in Science
by February.
While reading non-fiction texts, we
will practise how to take jot notes
of key information used to later
summarize and make meaning.
This will lead nicely into report
writing.
Lately, we have been working on
focused Guided Listening lessons
Math
During our unit on Geometry,
we have been studying twodimensional shapes and their
attributes. We also learned to
identify, compare and classify
them using geometric properties.
Measurement concepts will consolidate our learning of linear
measurement, as well as time.
We have spent time reviewing
our mental math strategies in
addition and subtraction of 2digit numbers.
using our class novel, and other
read-aloud activities, in order to
help make more developed predictions and inferences.
To practice helping us figure out
how to make an inference (“read
between the lines” or “put the puzzle pieces together”), we have activated schema, used picture clues,
and sentence clues.
Our focus will continue to be on
developing written responses to
reading. We will begin learning how
to start answering Open Response
questions. This will help prepare
students for EQAO testing during
late spring, as well as get them
ready for written CASI reading assessments in grade four and beyond.
Practice of Mental Math Strategies for basic facts to 20 is
always a great thing to do at
home to help your child develop
a strong foundation for these
skills.
Writing
We will continue using the stages of the writing process when
producing pieces of writing, with
a focus on spending quality time
on the prewriting stage. Students have been encouraged to
expand upon ideas to develop
more content in their writing.
Our focus will move into ways to
write with more descriptive vocabulary, and to try and use our
senses to help add interest and
make our writing come alive.
Thinking Addition
Remember inverse operations can be
used
Using Doubles & Building on Doubles
14 – 7 Know that it’s 7 from knowing
doubles facts
We will use our strategies to
help us when adding and subtracting 3-digit numbers using a
variety of methods.
Building on Doubles Plus One
13 – 6 Recognize that it’s a Doubles
Plus One fact of 6 + 1 for 7
Following, is a list of ideas using
Mental Math subtraction strategies we have used in class:
Pretend Ten
15—9 Think 15—10 to get 5. Since 1
too many was taken away, add it back
for 6
Counting Back & Counting Up
7 – 2 Think 7 and count back for 5
When difference is less than 4, like in
10 – 8, count up from 8 to 10, for 2