Mrs. Garlow's Classroom Blog

Social Studies

Students have been working hard at creating their dioramas for the past few weeks to display their inquiries and research of the diverse First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples who inhabited these lands from the beginning and whose presence still continues to this day.  

This week students will wrap up their research and present their work to the class.  Have a look below at some of the incredible research projects on the  various Indigenous communities that spans across Canada from coast to coast!

Swim to Survive

Just a friendly reminder that our class will starting the Swim to Survive program this Friday, November 29th.  If there are any parents who are available to assist our class, please let me know.  An updated police vulnerable screening check must be completed and submitted to our office.

Please ensure your child arrives to school on time as the bus will be leaving at 9:30 a.m.  It would be greatly appreciated if your child comes to school with their swimming suit on under their clothes.  Your child will need the following items:

• underwear (for after swimming)
• towel
• goggles (optional)
• flip-flops (optional)
• a plastic bag to carry their wet towel and swimwear

Students will eat their snacks upon returning to school.  They are often very hungry after their swim sessions so packing additional or larger portions of snacks is recommended.

Mrs. Garlow's Classroom Blog

Thank you to all families who were able to come to our student-led conferences and to all the students in our class who took ownership of their thinking and learning.   It was so wonderful to see everyone!  Taking the time to self-reflect and identify areas of strengths, areas to grow in, and making a plan towards change is a lifelong process - not only with the academics, but with all other aspects of our lives. 

Social Studies

Please click on the link below to see the video clip about Treaties Education Week in which Gail Johnston, a member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island, came to do some story telling with our grade 3 students.  You may see some familiar faces!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztQmBXNEf44&feature=push-fr&attr_tag=CBXgc7kQkttmKcTY%3A6

Gifted Screening Tests

Stage one of the gifted screening test will take place this week for our class.  The test takes approximately 90 minutes to complete all three sections of the test and will be spread out over three days.  

Students who score at the top levels will be considered for stage two.  If your child qualifies for stage two, you will receive a 'consent for intellectual screening' form between January 8 and 10, 2020.  If you do not receive a consent form, it means that your child is not moving on to stage two.

Math

In math, students have been learning to add and subtract numbers with and without regrouping.  Next week, students will use the information collected about the year of birth of their family members, to compare age differences.  Timelines are introduced as a context for using the open number line - a helpful model used as a tool to explore and represent strategies for addition and subtraction.  Students have been using the open number line as a model for subtraction. 

If a child solves 187 - 8 by first removing 7 and then 1, modeling children's thinking on the open number line helps them move beyond counting one by one for addition and subtraction, to using strategies such as taking leaps of ten, decomposing, and/or using landmark numbers (digits with a 0 or 5 in the ones place value system).  The use of the open number line also encourages discussion of the relationship between addition and subtraction and of the relationship between various problems in which the operation of subtraction can be employed - such as removal, comparative difference, and finding a missing addend.

Please regularly review basic addition and subtraction facts with your child at home in a fun manner that includes the whole family such as UNO, Snakes and Ladders, or played orally in a mental math game during a car ride.  Try to keep it light and fun.  In addition, there are links to some math resources and games under the 'Resources' tab found on this blog.  Quick recall and proficiency of these basic math facts is essential to their success with adding and subtracting larger numbers.

Mrs. Garlow's Classroom Blog

Math

We started the year with adding on a ten-frame structure and then moved onto a concrete number line.  Students have now progressed into adding on an open number line.  

An open number line is a helpful tool used to explore and represent strategies for multiple-digit addition (and later subtraction, multiplication, division, time, money, fraction, etc.).  An open number line is an empty line used to record children's strategies.  For example, if adding 18 + 79, a strategy that can be modelled on the open number line is to keep the 79 whole and decompose the 18 into smaller numbers, moving to a landmark number of 80 (79 + 1 + 10 + 7), it would be recorded on the open number line like this:

The use of an open number line helps children move beyond strategies like counting on by ones to looking at numbers in creative and flexible ways such as splitting numbers, taking leaps of tens, decomposing, and using landmark numbers.  

This week in math, we continued our unit with addition through the context of linear measurement.  We also revisited and reinforced the concept of unitizing, place value, skip counting, and recognizing place value patterns when taking leaps (adding) of tens by counting pumpkin seeds to figure out how many seeds there were in each one.  

Afterwards, we added all the pumpkin seeds to determine how many seeds there were altogether.

Here are the modelled strategies of student's thinking during our math congress.  Look at all the creative ways these young mathematicians worked through their thinking and all done through mental math!

Science

After scooping out all the pumpkin seeds for math, we wondered what would happen if we buried the pumpkin in the school garden.  Would it decompose?  Would it grow?  If so, how?  If it didn't grow, why not?  What are some of the contributing factors? Students wondered how it could grow if it didn't have any seeds.  How do seedless grapes and watermelons grow?

Students thought it would be a great idea to do an experiment by filing the pumpkin with different objects to see what would happen in the spring when we dig it up.  Some students' wonderings were documented below.

A student wondered if a new species of plant would be created if we placed the seeds of a different plant inside the pumpkin.  The class thought it was an ingenious idea so we decided to test out that theory by placing a small gourd, an apple core and a chestnut inside of the pumpkin.  

We added our names onto a piece of paper like a time capsule and buried the pumpkin into the garden.  We shall see what happens in the spring.  Stay tuned...

Student-Led Conferences

It is important for families to register for Edsby as RHPS will be using this platform to schedule our Student-Led Conferences on November 14th (evening) and 15th (morning).  Parents/guardians will need to accept the invitation sent to them from Edsby and create an account in Edsby in order to schedule a time for the student-led conferences.  

Invitations to join Edsby were sent out yesterday for families.  Please check your junk mail folder if you are unable to find this invitation.  If you require another invitation to join, please contact the school office.