KTS - Mrs. Njie - Grade 3 2020-21

Thanks you for your help in talking to your student about their name. All the students had a chance to practice saying their thoughts out loud in a complete sentence. Practicing in this way will help the students transfer their ideas into full written sentences. If you have not already done so, please have your discussions done by Monday. We need everyone ready with their ideas so we can begin to write.

Here are some guiding questions:

Who picked out your name?
Why did they pick that particular name?
What does your name mean?
Do you like your name? Why/why not?

Here is an example of what the students should have ready in their heads (not written down yet!)

So, rather than letting your child answer 'Mom' for the first question, help them put this answer into a complete sentence, such as 'Mom picked out my name.'

We had some really good stories - some were funny and some were very touching.

The more comfortable your child is with saying the answers, the easier it will be for them to write down their ideas into sentences.

We have begun to think about transition words. These are words that connect together our ideas so they flow more smoothly. Here are some examples:

We first used them in our Thanksgiving piece of work and we will use them to bind our sentences about our names together. You will get to see the finished results at Conferences!

We had a brief look at UN Rights of the Child as one of the articles is about having the right to a name. This connected very well with our Social Studies work on identity. It also made us think about the First Nation children who had their names taken away from them when they went to Residential School. We are beginning to realize that your name is incredibly important.

We have been connecting math to Social Studies as we have been drawing 2D shapes following compass directions, such as 'Go West for three squares.' Some of us are really benefitting from practicing using a ruler!

We had a pre-assessment in math to find out what we knew about shapes. You can help your child learn the names of shapes by spotting them when out and about or drawing them and asking for child to name them. We have looked at rectangles, squares, triangles, hexagons, octagons, parallelograms, rhombuses and trapezoids so far.

In science we have been looking at the scientific process. We began with a problem that we are having in class. Our pencils keep falling out of their pots. We thought about what we know already about things falling over. For example, someone noticed their fan fell over. Another person thought that was because the fan had a lot of weight at the top.

Each child thought of one variable that they would like to investigate. They planned their ideas on paper. The student grouped up and built their design. On the way were many beautiful Oopses! On the way, we touched on fair testing and repeat testing. Each group got a chance to show what they found out, such as having the weight at the bottom of the pot helped with stability.

We noted what each group found out and combined the successful ideas together to design and build the most perfect pencil pot that would not fall over.

We decided that to do this the pot would have to: