Adventures With Mrs. Craig

 I loved seeing everyones costumes today. We will continue with the same spelling words next week.  Please go over your child's pop math quiz with them.  Have a safe weekend! 

 Every morning we start off calmly with quiet reading. I love seeing students cozy up with a good chapter book, or read the pictures through a great story book. We are understanding that this time in the morning is silent and calm. We are doing a great job. Ask your child what book(s) they are into right now.  Today we learned that an adjective describes a noun. We relearned what a noun is. We made a poster about this together to help remember what a great sentence looks like. In our journal we drew pictures of ourselves and then a small paragraph with all of the describing words (adjectives) about themselves. Ask your child what adjectives they used to describe themselves.  Afterwards we did a guided drawing of a haunted house. Some students chose to do a garden house. Others did their own drawing free hand. Students then copied sentence starters off the board of the senses they used to express their house, or they created a short story. We used our knowledge of great adjectives to en

 Please make sure your child takes out the green paper from their backpack. This has their gmail email and password, Raz kids and Mathletics login. All of these tools are great for sharing and continuing learning at home.  In Social Studies today we wrote down interesting facts from our Alberta text book. Afterwards, Mrs. Craig read the chapter and went over the most important points. We learned about Alberta's Natural regions: Canadian Shield, Boreal Forest, Foothills, Rocky Mountain, Parkland and Grassland. We had an interesting class conversation, "Should city grasslands be protected?" Ask your child what they were thinking.  In Math we worked on double digit addition questions with carrying. We went over different strategies and learned how to use rounding as a skill for adding.  In groups of 2 they shared their "Friendship" writing piece with one another. Many of them had great ideas on how to be a great friend or make a new one.  We learned about the meani

 Today we logged onto laps tops! We had to have a lot of patience as we logged on and changed our passwords. We learned how to log in to our new Google classroom (grade 3/4 Beddington Heights). From now on, if your child is away, you can use their email (ask them their passwords) and go into their google classroom for class work. We will be adding new things every week. If you need help with remembering your child's email (and if they forget their passwords) please email me: lmparsons@cbe.ab.ca Yesterday in Social Studies yesterday we learned about different landforms/landscapes. They really enjoyed learning about the Blackfoot story and Big Rock.  We continue to practice rounding numbers in Math. Some students are working on looking at place value and rounding according to the question.  We logged onto Mathletics and Razkids. I will send home their user names and passwords next week.  We wrote letters to our penpals! Our penpals are a different grade 3/4 class. We will eventually

 Today we learned about rounding numbers to the nearest 10's. We made a rounding roller coaster together and they copied it in their math book. "4 or less, let is rest. 5 or more raise the score." Ask your child what this means. Some students worked on rounding to the nearest 100's place.  We finished up our good copies of Chanie Wenjack writing. They sketched a picture of a railroad to go along with their writing. We are really liking how they look in our hallway. Everyday we have been walking in memory of him. We are graphing our steps as we go.  In Science today we wrote down important definitions and vocabulary to remember. Such as: reuse, recycle, compost, waste, reduce and rethink.  In Social Studies we learned about Alberta in the past and how stories of people live on. We wondered what people would talk about with our generation, and what our legacy would be.  Please remember to study your spelling words for Friday. Also, document your reading at home. We will

 Ask your child who Chanie Wenjack is. We learned all about his story today and wrote about him in detail. We explained what happened to him and how it made us feel. We learned that this week is 'Secret Path Week." Secret Path Week is a national movement which occurs annually from Oct 17-22. The week was inspired by Chanie Wenjack, a victim of the residential school system.  Schools have an opportunity to become Legacy Schools and facilitate learning during this week and over the school year through stories of resilience and participating in the 'Walk for Wenjack', which raise awareness of the legacy of residential schools.  ​ For P.E this week we are walking everyday to raise awareness and count our steps. Our bulletin boards outside are classroom will be filled with our work around this, as well as some art and writing.  In Math today. We used to dice to build numbers in the ten thousands. We then pulled them apart for place value and used expanded form. After we wer

 Yesterday we made an important list with the guided question of "why do we read?" Each student wrote on a sticky their own reason of why they think it is important. Ask your child what they added.  We have been practicing our basic facts in math: subtraction, addition, division and multiplication. They have been working on creating their own Math problems.  It is mental health awareness week. We talked about what that meant and why it is important. In their journals they each wrote sentences/paragraphs. Their starter sentence was "When I feel happy I.....The way I show this is....." They did this with the emotions of annoyed, angry, sad and excited. After we completed our spelling test and went outside for some races (in P.E), they created beautiful Owl art pieces. I can't wait to put these up in the class!  Please go over your child's spelling test. Make sure your child is recording on their home reading sheet, all of the reading they do at home. We are ma

 We learned about 'descriptive writing' today. They then drew a picture of a monster, and wrote, with great description, the details of their monster. In partners, they drew one another's monster based off of the writing piece. When done, they showed a picture of their actual monster. Ask your child if it matched, or did they learn they needed to add more detail? Your child has a folder with a letter from me in their backpacks today. Please go over it and start logging reading minutes every night!  In Math we worked on pictures that came with numbers. For example: pumpkin=7 Cat=9 House=12 pumpkin+pumpkin-cat= They then worked on creating their own math problems with these prompts: The answer is 12. What is the question? Tomorrow is picture day. 

 This morning we were able to choose a new library book. Ask your child what book they decided on this week.  We did some quiet writing this morning. They wrote, in the most detail possible, what they did on the long weekend. Many people ate too much turkey and spent time with family. Others, enjoyed being home and watched some movies. We shared our writing with a partner.  In Math, they worked on subtraction and word problems. They then solved addition and subtraction questions together. For example: 20+10+50-5= In Social Studies we gathered and wrote about many important facts about our province. The first question was "What are the top 3 largest cities in Alberta?" Many students named a different province or a different country. This leads me to more work on geography! We will start that tomorrow. Other facts we learned:  Top 3 Most Interesting Landmarks Three Interesting Provincial Parks Tallest Mountain Deepest Lake Longest River To end our lesson they drew the provincia

 This morning we started off with making words using only the letters from 'Halloween.' We thought of almost 20 different words.  They wrote perfect sentences with their spelling test. As a class we discussed 'family words' that went along with some of the spelling words. We started with words that ended in ght. We then looked at our spelling words and spelt words that ended in _e and _at. We did a challenge: who could write a sentence using the most family words. In Math we did a pop quiz! Ask your child what they found challenging.  We worked on telling time today! Many students really understood this and can't wait to show off their new or relearned skill tonight.  We completed a bar graph together today: Room 13's Favourite Colours. Ask your child why people use this method to collect data. How did we find the answer quickly when looking at our bar graph? To end the day we watched a video about Alberta. Afterwards, we coloured a map of Alberta.  Tomorrow is

 Wow, did you see that rainbow this morning!? Ask your child about it and let them tell you the science behind how a rainbow is formed. We did a K (know) W (want to know) and L (learned) chart together as we learned about rainbows.  They continued working on their colour by number. Many of them finished them up and they are ready to go home (probably tomorrow).  In Math we worked on greater than and less than numbers. Some students finished early and worked on word problems such as: Mrs. Craig has 37 coloured pencil crayons. 9 of them are yellow, 8 purple and 16 blue. The rest of them are red, how many red ones does she have?  In Science we learned about landfills. We learned about the words: decompose, biodegradable and composting meant.  Ask your child:  Where does the garbage go after we put it in the bin? What does a landfill look like? What are the layers of a landfill and how does it work? In Social Studies we began to read and talk about Alberta. We loved having the conversation

 We started off our morning with word work. They came up with 12 different words from the word 'spider'. They were able to cut out the letters in order to move them around.  I read them a story called "I'm New Here." Ask them how that story made them think about others and how they might feel moving to a new country.  We played a great game of soccer outside. They started off with 4 teams, ending with 2 as a final game.  They were very busy today working on their Fall poems. This is a project that they would like to keep a surprise!  In the afternoon they worked on spelling of numbers with doing cross word puzzles. They used their math books to look up different spelling.  Ask them what they are doing in music class lately.  Spelling words:  red: add, be, cat, dog, see,  Blue: ghost, school, adding, October, scared Green: honestly, organizing, Halloween, scarecrow, Thanksgiving, hibernation Friday is a PD day and Monday is a holiday for Thanksgiving. 

 We had a great Friday. For P.E we went for a walk around the block and enjoyed using our senses to see the season changing. To connect with this experience, room 13 worked on a special project (which included poetry) that they will be taking home. I know they would like to keep this a surprise.  They continued to work on their 'colour by number.' These are starting to look so interesting as they worked with 'just right numbers' for themselves.  I am excited to announce that we have the option to dress up for school this year (for Halloween). We will be doing this on October 29th! I can't wait to see everyones costumes.  Please go over your child's spelling test.  Have a great weekend! 

 I am back! I sure missed my students, and I am very grateful that they all had excellent behaviour for my substitute.  We had a very busy, awesome day today! This morning we ran outside for our Terry Fox run. We each were given a sticker to print who we were running for. Ask your child who they decided to run for!  Our Math question today was "How many laps did Room 13 run altogether?" This was very tricky as we all ran a double digit number! Talia had the correct number with 398 laps! Great job!  In Science we learned about "why we recycle". Please ask your child why! We came up with a lengthy list together and wrote them down in our Science journals.  Colour by number: In Math we started a fun project! They are creating their own colour by number. Each of them had to come up with 10 math equations of their own. Tomorrow they will be working on their drawing and matching each piece with 10 different colours.  We have our spelling test tomorrow! Please study your w