2023-2024 Gr. Three Harris

 On Wednesday, we had a lovely trip to Bow Habitat. Our day was filled with wonderful instruction and exploration as we became acquainted with this amazing facility. Our learning objectives for the day were to: 1. Observe and describe the growth and development of a rainbow trout from egg to adult.  2. Study the physical characteristics, behaviours, adaptations, and needs of fish to survive in their habitat.  3. Identify examples of environmental conditions and habitat preservation that can help maintain trout populations.  4. Explore the science of mimicking nature: understanding the technology of a fish hatchery and how it meets the natural needs of the fish. Below is a list of a few of the new vocabulary words we learned through this hands-on experiential process:  · Adaptation: A change in a plant or animal that helps it survive in a particular place or situation.  · Camouflage: When animals use their shape, colours and patterns to blend into their surr...

 In math these last two weeks, we have been reviewing the place value system for reading and writing numbers in base ten. We have been learning to distinguish between the place values of a digit in one-, two-, and three-digit numbers and understand the value of each digit. We have learned how to read and write three-digit numbers using words and numerals and understand the connection between number words, expanded form, and base ten block representations. This week, we will be comparing three-digit numbers using the symbols < and > with base ten blocks and using place value.  Remember that we will go on Wednesday's full-day field trip to Bow Habitat. This will be a wonderful opportunity to extend and build on our learning as it relates to how plants and animals interact with each other in various environments and how this interaction can be represented with a food chain. On our community walk this week, we explored patterns in Nature. Below are the “I can” statements we ...

During these last few weeks, we have started to do our weekly community walks. This year, we intend to head outside for a community walk every Thursday afternoon, weather permitting. Research shows that learning in an outdoor environment has terrific benefits for our mental health; it helps to improve understanding for our more active learners and can help our students develop environmental awareness and a connection to the land.  While outside and throughout the year, we will discover what the land means to us and recognize the deep, physical, mental, and spiritual connection to the land that is part of indigenous cultures.  Our focus last week and this week was the importance of seed dispersal for plants to survive. We discussed how a plant can not survive without competing with other plants for water, space and sunlight. We participated in a fun activity where the students learned about seed dispersal by walking through areas of long grass along the river while wearing or h...

  Our writing has focused on creating a personal narrative for the past two weeks. We discovered a personal narrative is simply a true story about you. This can be tricky for students, so supporting them to break this task down with several mini-lessons was extremely beneficial. Our first mini-lesson was designed to help them understand what a personal narrative is and how to brainstorm a topic that they felt was worth writing about. When we brainstorm, we think about everything we can write about and find the best possible topic. When you brainstorm personal narrative topics, you can think about memories you have about things that have happened to you, fun things you have done with your family or friends, trips you have taken or special places you have visited, activities you have done at school or anything else that has happened to you in your life. We discussed that it is important to choose a topic you care about and remember many details about. We created a brainstorming sheet...

This week with the goverment proclaiming Sept. 30 as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, our learning intention in the classroom was to take the time to learn, recognize and honour residential school survivors, their families and communities. Through the use of some wonderful age-appropriate books, the students had some very respectful and mature conversations about our Canadian history. When we discussed why we wear orange shirts, it was a wonderful surprise to see how much awareness the children had with regard to our past history and the treatment our indigenous community faced. The students expressed many ideas as to why the preservation of a culture is important and how reflecting on our past helps us to do better in the future.  Our conversations this week also connected to the importance of community.  We discussed what a community is, how being a part of a community feels and what unique communities we belong to that help support our own individuality and id...