This week our class started reading the novel, Silverwing, by Kenneth Oppel. We are learning lots of interesting facts about bats, so we started writing them down together on a chart in our classroom.
Stay tuned to see what else we will be learning about bats!
Every day our class is involved in buddy reading with the other classes in our school. Last week we made book bags with the grade 2/3 class to carry our books to other classrooms. Students chose their material and got to sew their bags together with parent volunteers. They look awesome – a big thank you to our parent volunteers, too!
What was your favourite part of making the buddy book bags?
What was the hardest part about sewing?
Our school’s Terry Fox Run will be held this Thursday. Over the last couple of weeks, our class has been talking a lot about Terry Fox – what we already knew about him and what we would like to find out. We talked about what the difference was between a superhero and a real hero and what qualities heroes possess.
We also looked at the South African athlete, Oscar Pistorius, who this summer, became the first double leg amputee to participate in the Olympics. The students were amazed at the advancements in technology when they compared Oscar’s prosthetic legs today to Terry’s from the 1980’s.
Now, I invite you to participate in our class discussion:
What qualities make someone a hero?
Do you know of any heroes in our community?
What is your goal this school year?
Today was a busy, fun-packed day! One of the great activities we did today was to create a talking stick for our class with the Aboriginal Education teacher at our school.
We learned that the talking stick is used in many North American First Nations cultures to begin discussions and show whose turn it is to speak. We had a choice of three different types of sticks. Our class chose to use a Diamond Willow stick.
Next, students got to take turns and come up to choose something to put on our talking stick.
What did you learn about talking sticks?
What do the symbols we put on the talking stick mean?
Students were very excited the other day when I announced that we would be doing some art during our math time. We created our name patterns to show our learning so far in our patterning unit.
Coming back into a new school year, I think it is important for students to get the opportunity to share their stories from the summer. During our first week, we created a chart about all the different things kids did in our class.
This week we got to work on writing down some of these stories. Here are a few samples:
Fall is just around the corner, we can all feel it in the air! I thought our classroom could use a little brightening, so we decided to make sunflowers this week. The students cut out the petals themselves, glued everything together and then used tissue paper wrapped around a pencil to make the “seeds” in the center. I think they look great!
Welcome to Mrs. Kostiuk’s Grade 3 Class Blog! I am very excited to be at a new school this year and to be blogging our many experiences and discoveries together. I plan to use this blog to connect with parents, as well as other students and classrooms outside of our school. I can’t wait to meet our class tomorrow :)!