Week of April 13 - 17th

Ukrainian Celebration

The grade three classes started the week out with our Ukrainian Day Celebration.  The students enjoyed sampling traditional Ukrainian food such as perogies, sauerkraut, cabbage rolls and borscht.  Thank you so much to Mr. & Mrs. Galloway for preparing the food.  It was so good!

              

                       

The students also enjoyed decorating pysanky using the kistka tool, beeswax and various coloured dyes.  Thank you to Mr. and Mrs. Galloway and Mrs. Milson for helping with the pysanky.

Language Arts

For the next few weeks we will be focusing on "expository texts" during our Writer's Workshop.  Expository, or non-fiction, text is factual writing for the purpose of informing others.  This week we started our "Diary of an Animal" research project.  The students were given a list of animals to chose from for their research project.  In partners, the students were asked to investigate the life and characteristics of their chosen animal.  Using the computers and library books, the students are gaining confidence in their research skills and ability to make jot notes.

Next week the class will use this information to write a number of diary entries from the point of view of their chosen animal -  just as our mentor texts (Diary of a Worm, Diary of a Fly and Diary of a Spider) are written.

Math

This week in math we focused on using arrays to show multiplication concepts.  Students can more readily develop an understanding of multiplication if they see visual representations of the concepts.  For example, they can picture students in a marching band in equal rows or chairs set up in rows in an auditorium.  These arrangements all have something in common.  They are all in rows and columns.  An arrangement of objects, pictures or numbers in columns or rows is called an array.  Arrays are useful representations of multiplication concepts.  

This array has 4 rows with 3 stars in each row.  This is referred to as a 4 x 3 array.  This 4 x 3 array has 12 stars in it, or 4 x 3 = 12

Science

We completed another survivor challenge this week that focused on identifying and applying methods for making structures stronger and more stable.  Using strips of manila tag and fasteners, the students tested the strength of different shapes (triangle, square, pentagon and hexagon).  The students worked to figure out ways to make those shapes stronger and more stable.  They discovered that the triangle shape is very strong.  The class found that many of the supports added created the shape of a triangle.

   

                  

The student enjoyed another great class of yoga this week!

Congratulations to Joshua Lavallee for being chosen as our Student of the Week during assembly!