Week of April 25th

Our class participated in the official public vote for Calgary's official bird this week. We learned that Calgary is home to over 200 species, and we were asked to choose a bird to represent our city. This was a great activity to help guide our conversations about the importance of urban wildlife. We learned that we had lost an estimated 3 billion birds over the last 50 years due to various threats and conditions. To help address this issue, Nature Canada developed a certificate for Bird-Friendly Cities to recognize cities' contribution to saving bird lives. As part of the certification process, each city needs to decide which bird they would like to represent Calgary. The five birds to choose from were: 




During our community walk, we used our time to locate these birds and become reacquainted. All of the birds were spotted except the gorgeous blue jay. Upon returning to the classroom, each student picked which bird they felt deserved this honour and researched it. To support our literacy, the students are now taking the information they have learned and are writing a persuasive letter informing the community of why their chosen bird deserves to win. As a class, we also tallied and graphed which bird was the most popular in room 8. It was a close call, but the Blue Jay won by a majority. 









We also had a lovely time this week connecting with our Kindergarten buddies. Before gathering, the students in room 8 chose a book from the library that they thought their buddy would enjoy. In advance, we spent time practicing our books by reading them out loud and paying close attention to punctuation and expression. The two grades then connected, read and completed a visual representation. The grade 2/3's did a lovely job guiding the Kindergarten students with open-ended questions to help them represent their reading comprehension of the story. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Emily Carr

Image
The story of Emily Carr was a sure way to inspire our class and connect our learning to our focus book  The Tree in Me  by Corinna Luyken. Despite being scoffed at by her older sisters for her desire to do her art, Emily Carr did not give up. Instead, she was true to herself and profoundly impacted the Canadian art scene. Like many of the Group of Seven artists, Emily’s work was inspired by Canada’s natural rugged world and indigenous landscapes of the west coast. We created a thoughtful piece that used tints, shades, foreground, mid-ground, and background as a class. We also explored warm and cool colour theory. We spent some time thinking about the words, descriptions, and emotions associated with warm and cool colours. We discovered that warm colours are often associated with happy, joyful emotions. They are linked to sunshine, the daytime, and summer and autumn. Cool colors can be used to express sad, calm, and tranquil emotions. They can be linked to water, nighttime, and the wint
Read more

Week of June 26th

Image
 This will be my last entry for the grade 3 class of 2022/2023! We have had an amazing June filled with great explorations and time outside. I would first like to say a big thank you to the parents who made our National Indigenous People's Day such a wonderful success. The students had a fantastic time exploring Prince's Island Park and participating in many hands-on learning tasks outside in nature. The goslings and ducks did not disappoint!  In class, we finished off the year by writing a letter to our new grade 3 students. Sharing with them all of the wonderful things they have to look forward to as they begin a new year in room 8. After brainstorming our entire year of events and activities, we found it hard to believe all of the learning and adventures we could participate in. We also had fun this month revisiting our poetry unit and creating Limmercks and more Haiku poems. Our math year ended, reviewing past lessons and exploring translations.  In the first part of this u
Read more
Image
Week of Oct. 12th  This week we started one of several lessons which focus on writing a personal narrative. 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 is 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 feel is worth writing about. When we brainstorm we think about all of the different things we can write about and find the best possible topic to write about. 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 that you care about and remember
Read more