April 24th - 28th

Hi everyone,

I hope you had a great week.

We started the week off with our spelling quiz, as we will be doing again this week.  Hopefully everyone had a chance to study our first set of homophones.  Remember that you will have to listen carefully to each sentence to make sure that you write down the correct word during the quiz.  We will be continuing with more homophones this coming week.

We also enjoyed our final four book reviews.  L.S. presented a Marvel story collection to us, focusing on The Hulk.  B.M. introduced us to "Dogman".   His novel and H.K.'s novel from the "Captain Underpants" series share the same author, Dav Pilkey.  J. H. shared "Here Comes Trouble" with the group.  He recommends it to people who enjoy funny and interesting stories, with cool characters.

In Art, we reflected on what we noticed about Norval Morrisseau's choice of subject and his use of black compared to our own.

We have begun our study of strong and stable structures.  We have read texts about building igloos and analyzed the procedure as written.  We have completed experiments testing the stability of various heights of towers and what happens if we add weight to the base.  We have read about and explored the strength of triangles in comparison to quadrilaterals.  Every student has also chosen a famous structure to research.  The research is due this Thursday, May 4th.  The research will be used in class to create a script and presentation about the structure chosen.

With Ms. Powell, we revisited our question about comparing fractions of a set.  We also explored how we could add fractions with two different denominators (e.g., 1/3 and 1/4).  We investigated and played with probability games, and then created our own.  Both of these lead to discussions about division and so we have begun to explore that topic.  We will continue to go more in-depth with division this week.

Special events last week included our opportunity to participate in the community clean up.  We focused on the area around the garden, cleaning up lots of litter between the stones and the fence.  Friday was our Eldorado Excellence Awards assembly for April.  The themes were Autism Awareness and Responsibility.  Congratulations to our award winners, H.I. and J.H. and to T.J, J.T. and A.T for presenting our puzzle piece in the video.

We are looking forward to this coming week.  It is Education Week!  This year's theme is  #weinspirehope.  Special events include our school's participation in Music Monday on Monday.  Tuesday, May 2nd is Walk to School Day. You are welcome to join the walk at any point along the route.  This will be followed by our Open House.  Open House  is an opportunity for you to come in and join our class for the first period of school (8:15-9:15).  Thursday evening is the Canada Concert.  While our class is not participating in this concert (as we were part of the Christmas event) we do have a couple of students in the choir, who will be performing that evening.  The Volunteer Tea is being held on Friday, May 5th.  This is the staff and students' opportunity to say "Thank you!" to all of you who help so much with making Eldorado the amazing place it is!

Have an amazing week!
Ms. Sparling

  

April 18th-21st

Hello everyone,

I hope you have had a wonderful week!  All of us in 3D were busy as usual.





We began our week with spelling as we always do.  Students were working on words with the prefix "mag" or "mega".  This week we will be moving on to homophones; words that sound the same but have a different meaning and spelling.  The students will really have to be listening carefully to the sentences for the context so that they choose the correct words during the quiz.






In Language, we wrote our short persuasive pieces about which animal best represents us.  You will have seen those pieces on Seesaw or at the Arts Night.  They were attached to our art work, completed in the style of Norval Morrisseau.  This week we will be reflecting on various pieces of Morrisseau's art work and our interpretation of his style in our own pieces.















We enjoyed two more book reviews.  T.J. presented "Rebound Time".  She was able to really target specific people in the class who she felt might enjoy based on their personal interests.  A.A. present "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace".  He had researched his book on-line and was able to share many details of the text with the class.  We are looking forward to our final four book reviews this week.

Fractions continued to be our primary focus in Math.  We have looked at fractions of a whole and fractions of a set.  This week we will be applying some of this knowledge as we look at probability.

Our novel is "The One and Only Ivan".  We have just met Ruby, as she joins the group at the Big Top Mall.

In Science, we have begun to read about and investigate strong and stable structures.  This week we will be participating in a number of experiments to help us better understand some of the concepts we have been reading about.  These experiments will also provide us an opportunity to deconstruct a series of procedures before we begin to write our own. Linked to our Science studies, students will also be coming home with a research paper template so that they can investigate a famous structure of their choice.  They will be using this research, in class, to create a script for their presentation.

This Friday will be our Eldorado Excellence Assembly.  The theme of the month is responsibility.

Have a great week,
Ms. Sparling

April 10th-13th

Hi everyone,

I hope you have been enjoying this lovely long weekend.  I loved getting to spend time with my family and friends, as well as taking advantage of the lovely weather (even Saturday was warm, with the rain).

In the week that just past, we acknowledged the Day of Pink by reading stories about different kinds of families and talking about how everyone has the right to be themselves and be loved for who they are.  Each student in the class filled in their own gingerbread person outline with symbols, words and images that they felt represented them.  The figures were then passed around the class and every class member wrote down one thing that they really like or appreciate about that child.  These are now displayed in the classroom for everyone to see how amazing each and every member of class 3D is.  I have also posted a picture of each child's figure to their individual Seesaw account so that you can enjoy them as well.

We continued with the idea of identity and choosing representations of ourselves by looking at the meaning that various First Nations associate with different animals.  Each student in the class has chosen an animal that they believe best represents themselves and will be writing a persuasive paragraph to convince us of their choice.  Once their writing is complete they will have a chance to make a representation of the animal using art techniques based on the works of Norval Morrisseau.  He is one of Canada's best know Native artists.





To prepare for this activity we have continued to read and deconstruct other pieces of persuasive writing, with a focus on providing proof/details/examples to support our arguments.







In Math, there was a continued focus on fractions.  As well as our daily Math Challenge.

In Spelling, we focused on the prefix "dis".  The spelling quiz will be first thing tomorrow morning.

We also enjoyed four more book reviews. K.N. shared "Finley Flowers" about about good friends and the issue of bullying.  A.S. told us about Ronald Dalh's book, "George's Marvellous Medicine". He felt that it was a great book that was funny and full of surprises.  J.S. presented "Old School", one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.  He recommends readers who enjoy comedy try out this series.  A.T. presented "Ghost".  He blew everyone away with his well organized and presented slide show of his review.  We learned a lot about the book, Day of the Dead and C.P.  We are looking forward to our next four reviews!

Don't forget that the days of the cycle have once again shifted.  We will have gym tomorrow (Tuesday) and Thursday.  Library is on Wednesday and Music is Thursday and Friday.

Enjoy the last of your long weekend!
Ms. Sparling

April 3rd-7th

Hi everyone,

I hope you have been outside this weekend enjoying the change in the weather.  Only in Canada do you have a snow storm one day and people walking around in flip-flops the next.

The week that just past was a busy one for all of us in grade three.  We changed our seating groups and set our latest individual goals.  Reading logs also came due and we discussed our new Peel attribute focus for the month: responsibility.  We also had the chance to experience five more book reviews.  G.K. shared the book, "Drama" and explained that she enjoyed the play embedded in the story and the mystery of it. J.C. shared "Captain Underpants" and his favourite characters and sketches in the text. A.K.'s book selection was "Hurry Freedom" which is part of the Canadian Flyers Adventures series.  She recommends it as a class novel for next year.  A.P. shared "Miranda, the Goldilocks Fairy" with us and recommended it to readers who enjoy fun and magic.  H.I. was our final presenter of the week.  He presented a different version of "Beauty and the Beast" from the one presented by J.T. last week. He read us a short passage to entice us to read his choice of text.  We are looking forward to this weeks instalment of our book talks.

Last week's spelling focus was words being with "auto".  Tomorrow's quiz is all words beginning with "bi".  We will be focusing on a new prefix in the week ahead.  In other areas of language, we have been reading and analyzing persuasive texts.  We also worked on honing our research skills using texts about various Canadian First Nation Groups.  Some students were even able to translate their research into google slides.  In the course of our research we encountered First Nations legends and looked at what the messages behind those stories tell us about the natural world.

In math, we continued our study of both area and perimeter.  We have also begun to explore fractions.  We will be working on transferring our understanding of fractions to various other areas of math, such as time, money, and probability (e.g., quarter of an hour, half past, 4 quarters equals one dollar, half the times I pull a counter out of the bag it will be red, etc.).  Our daily math challenges may be linked to any math strand as the prose is to have the students be flexible in their math thinking.

In other news, we kicked off our school campaign around Autism awareness by wearing our puzzle pins and watching a video demonstrating what it might be like to experience sensory overload.  We continue to learn more about autism through trivia challenges and resources shared by Ms. Quinn's students and the students in the R.I.S.E. program.  On Thursday, Officer Mackin was in to present to all of the grade threes.  She engaged with students about their role in the prevention of bullying, as well as strategies for dealing with a situation that includes bullying behaviours.

I have switched to trying to get many of our class photos on to Seesaw and as a result do not have as many photos to post here.  Please send me a note in the agenda if you need another copy of the QR code.

Have a wonderful week and please remember that there is no school Friday, April 14th and Monday, April 17th.

Ms. Sparling

March 27th-31st

Hi everyone,

I hope that you had an amazing week!  It was April Fools Day on the weekend.  I am looking forward to hearing about some of the tricks the students participated in or fell victim to.

This past week we had our spelling quiz of words ending in "ness".  This week's words all have "auto" as the prefix.  I hope everyone has been studying for tomorrow's quiz.  The new words for this week will also have a prefix, though I won't give away which one just yet.

We also started our book reviews this week.  J.T. bravely went first sharing her review of the novel,"Beauty and the Beast". D.V. attempted to persuade all of us to read "The giving Tree". R.S. introduced us to an interesting text and listed some of the other titles by the same author for us to explore.  S.C. shared "The Pyramid Hunter", the first book in a new series that she highly recommends.  A.A. presented one the amazing books form "The Magic Treehouse" series and inspired us to check which titles we have in the classroom library.  We are looking forward to this week's reviews and learning about some more amazing titles.







In Social Studies,  we worked on finishing off our tri-aramas.  There will not be any more class time provided to complete the art work aspect of this task so you may see some pieces of this coming home to be worked on.  While we were using pastels and plasticine in class the remaining pieces can be completed solely through drawing with pencils, crayons or markers.  Time will be provided at school to complete any remaining videos.  With wrapping up our tri-aramas we switched our focus back to the First Nations.  We examined recent artifacts created by a current Indigenous artist.  We read, discussed and wrote about how the First Nations helped and taught the Early Settlers and we read poetry written by a Metis poet about bridging two cultures.







In Math, we worked with perimeter, area and multiplication.  We will continue our studies of area and multiplication this week.  As well as introducing the use of fractions.

In Language, we have already begun our study of the persuasive text form and will be further deconstructing this form and using it in our writing and presentations.

On Friday, we had our Eldorado Excellence award.  The focus was on co-operation and the completion of our waste audit collaboration with the Region of Peel.  We are so proud of all of our students!   The school met its goal and committed to continuing to work on diverting waste from landfills through the use of effective recycling and composting.

Today is World Autism Awareness Day.  Eldorado staff and students will be demonstrating our awareness tomorrow as we wear the puzzle piece pins the students in the R.I.S.E. created for every member of the school.

We are looking forward to Officer Mackin's anti-bullying presentation on Thursday. 

I hope you have all been accessing our Seesaw classroom.  We are trying to post more of our work there for you to see.

Have a great week!
Ms. Sparling