Save the date!!! The St. John the Apostle BBQ is coming up. Please join us if you can!!

As we approach the end of May (time FLIES!) things are going to move very quickly!  

In Grade 3, the students will be working on their EQAO tests throughout the next two weeks.  We have spoken a great deal about writing these tests. The Grade 3 students are prepared to work hard and try their best.  I know that they will all make me proud! 

To this end, we will not be working on new word wall words for the next two weeks.  We will all take these weeks and practice and review the words that we have leaned throughout the year!  There are so many!

We will continue on with our daily work!  We are looking at the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  The students brought home their retell journal on Friday. Please complete this whenever you can and return it to school once it is finished. Remember that whatever they tell you is great!  Retelling comes with practice. 

In class, we are looking at retelling the story with picture support and also by filling in blank words. Once we have practiced a few times, we are going to tell the story in own words! The students are really enjoying the story and seem confident in their knowledge of events! 

We have also been comparing and contrasting different objects. This past week, we looked at caterpillars and butterflies to see how they were alike and how they were different.  At home, talk to your children about how things are similar and different (How is a tree like a flower? What is unique about each plant?)

We have been using a Venn Diagram to organize our information

In writing, we are still practicing Procedural Writing (How To Texts). We will consolidate all we have been learning about and practicing in the next few weeks! 

We will also be looking a Narrative Stories for the rest of the year.  Stories follow patterns.  They have a setting and characters; they have events that make up the beginning, middle and end of the story; there is a problem and a resolution within the story. We will be using a few different strategies to learn more about how these elements go together to create stories.  

We have been practicing our story telling using a cute game called "Rory's Cubes".  Ask your child about it! 

As I mentioned before, the next few weeks will be very busy. We have a lot of work to do and there is a lot going on! Please continue to check here and on our Twitter account for updates!

Have a great week everyone!

Happy May Everyone!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend and a lovely Mother's Day! Your hard work and dedication to your children is obvious every single day. I hope everyone was able to have a little break yesterday!

We began the month celebrating our Catholic Education Week. What a packed week it was! So many exciting events, presentations, spirit days and beautiful weather! I feel so fortunate to work for such a wonderful school board that has so much to celebrate!

In the last post, I mentioned that the students were creating projects surrounding Earth Day. They did such an amazing job presenting their projects to the class!  The expectations for the presentation were for the students to speak clearly, in complete sentences and with enthusiasm.  They were to look at the audience and confidently share their information. I have hung their posters and comics up in the halls to show off their hard work.  I will send them home soon!

Here are our word wall words for this week!

This month, we are going to work to consolidate some of the things we have been learning.  

In writing, we have been practicing Procedural Writing which is writing "How-To” do something. The students have done an excellent job learning the necessary components of this genre of text. They are beginning to verbalize when and why this type of text would be useful! 

While we will continue practicing procedural texts, we are also going to take a look at descriptive writing.  Throughout the year, the students have been learning about adding adjectives and descriptors to sentences, both orally and in writing. We are looking to take this knowledge and transfer it to more in depth writing. 

A major focus of our calendar time every day is the sounds we hear. We look at words in parts, we listen for beginning, middle and end sounds and we try and identify the sounds we hear. 

Recently we have been practicing deleting and substituting different sounds. This is an excellent activity to try at home! "Look at that red car! What is the first sound you hear in car?  What is the last sound? What happens when you take the /c/ sounds away and change it to a /f/? "

While reading, we will continue to practice all of our decoding strategies as well as the predicting and inferring strategies to develop a deeper understanding of the text.  The students have also been encouraged to ask questions while reading to further their understanding. Good readers as questions about what they are unsure of!!

Speaking of questions, we are going to use questions to help us look at narrative stories. Our focus will be on the main parts of a narrative (character, setting, problem and solution), and we will use the famous WH questions (who, what, where, when and why) to help understand the story. This week we are going to look at the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This book also happens to be the subject for this month’s Story Retell Journal!! 

So, as you can see, we have a lot going on! As the year draws near the end, there are many exciting events coming up! If your child will be staying at their homeschool for a special event or field trip (which I am completely on board with!), please let me know so I do not mark your child absent.  I will simply record that they are participating in a school activity. Also, please remember to cancel their transportation for that day by calling STS. Thank you in advance!

Again, thank you for reading!  And as always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.  I am happy to chat!