Monthly Archives: December 2018

A Few Important Items …

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There will be NO Prodigy math or Bookworm Body Part Homework this week in order for the students to have time to properly prepare for their major BIOGRAPHY projects. Biography posters will be coming home mid-week this week so students can start rehearsing their presentation of the information on their poster. You can support at home by helping your child with their costume, coming up with an interesting introduction, and listening to them practice their oral presentation skills by presenting the information off of their Biography poster page. Enthusiasm, voice inflection, eye contact, hand gestures and body language are all areas of focus. Biography presentations are set for next week (Monday, December 17th & Tuesday Dec. 18th we have an exception of 2 students presenting on Friday the 21st ).

Please have your child bring his/her poster back to school each day (Thursday and Friday… and next week) as there may be time to practise in class.

We will continue rehearsing for next week’s Christmas concert. My class will be performing a lovely Christmas song along with the other four grade 3 classes during the concert on Dec. 19th at Noon in the gym. We hope you can come see us perform!

The school’s Recess Peer Tutoring program has become VERY popular and some of our students have benefited by working with the tutors. Talk with your child and remind them that going to see one of our Grade 6 tutors is a great and positive learning opportunity! Please note that the library is currently closed as a new carpet is being installed… so Homework Club is canceled until further notice.

In Science, we continue to look at what makes structures strong and stable. Our unit on Patterns in Math continues as well.

Thank you so much to those families who have generously donated to our school’s snowsuit fund initiative.

Finally, if you are planning or know that your child will be away before next Friday please send me and the office a quick email.

We Can Code!

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Yesterday, the students enjoyed learning their first hour of computer science! We live in a world surrounded by technology. And we know that whatever field our students choose to go into as adults, their ability to succeed will increasingly hinge on understanding how technology works. But only a tiny fraction of us are learning computer science, and fewer students are studying it than a decade ago. The Hour of Code is a worldwide initiative by code.org to introduce computer programming to millions of students and encourage them to learn programming. The event is taking place this week, during Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 3-7). Since this initiative began a few years ago, over 100 million students have tried an Hour of Code. This year, my students are joining tens of millions of students worldwide in over 180 countries! Please check out the links under Computer Science on the right-hand side of this blog page to watch various brief videos promoting this initiative, and let your child try the various coding tutorials offered to students! My students were able to complete much of their first tutorial for beginners today in one hour! All of the puzzles and creative activities at the site are designed to teach students computational thinking and the basics of computer programming. Students solve each puzzle by programming visual code blocks to achieve a goal.

The Hour of Code is just the first step on a journey to learn more about how technology works and how to create software applications. To continue this journey, students are encouraged to try taking a longer course at http://code.org/learn/beyond

You can also help promote computer science education and sign their petition at http://code.org/promote to bring computer science to more schools. Or buy a t-shirt or hat at http://zazzle.com/codeorg (would make a great Christmas gift!)

Here are some pictures of the students coding from yesterday afternoon:

 

Science and Engineering Fun in Gr. 3!

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Last week, to kick off our science unit on strong and stable structures, grade three students from my class and Mr. Jackson’s class worked in groups of 2 and were challenged to plan and build the tallest free-standing tower using only 50 cue cards as their building material. The groups were given 45 minutes to complete this task, so they had to be focused right from the start! Each group first had to plan and sketch their design. They were allowed to use scissors to cut the cards if they wanted to. They were also allowed to bend the cards in any way they wanted.  As you can see, the groups got right down to work, and several designs were attempted! In the end, the tallest cue card tower measured 70 cm tall! Next, we will explore ways to make tall structures more stable. (Please send in empty paper towel rolls if you have them! They are very useful building materials and will come in handy over the course of our unit!)

The winning design! 91 cm tall!

Second place – 84cm tall!

3rd place – 74cm tall!

WEJ Winter Concert

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On Wednesday, December 19th, WEJ will be having its annual Winter Concert and you are invited! Please come and enjoy some amazing songs and dances that showcase the talent and hard work of our students from Grades 1 -6!
12 noon 
Wednesday, December 19th
in our gym
Please try to stay for the entire show. The final acts would love to have the audience that the beginning acts enjoy!
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