Mr. Pressey

This week we went and visited our kindergarten buddies and did some art. We made reindeers out of popsicle sticks. The hard part was gluing the popsicle sticks because it was hard making them even. Another tricky part was also putting on the antlers because sometimes our buddies struggled twisting them. We continued learning about multiplication by practicing the easiest and most important times table, the fives. We practiced counting by fives to get faster. We are trying to get so good that we just know the facts without counting by fives. Someone also realized that we can sometimes count by tens to do this too or half a number that is multiplied by ten. The other day we made Tinfoil Men/ Tinfoil People. It was an art project that helped us learn more about light and shadow. It was used to teach us how an opaque object blocks light and makes shadows. One student said that he liked bending the men because they are very flexible. To learn more about multiplication we made array bu

We have been doing lots with Art and Science lately.  We read a story called Snowmen at Night and that inspired us to do an Art project. We used oil pastels to make a snowman and some paper towels to smudge the pastels. We shaded the edges to make it look 3D and we included a shadow because we are learning about light and shadows in Science. We have also been starting to learn about multiplication. We have been doing multiplication thinkboards to practice lots of strategies to solve problems like arrays, 100 charts. drawings, repeated addition and using known facts.We have been practice our 2 and 3 times tables when we do 2 minute math. We have also been playing some math games. Our Winter Concert is at 4:45 - 6pm on Thursday December 20th. We have been practicing dancing with 3 Left Feet.

November 16th This week we learned soooooo much about the ear. We learned about the 3 main parts of the ear. It may sound weird but learning about the ear was really interesting. We learned that their are 3 small bones in your ear called ossicles. We learned all about the ear while we practiced taking notes and writing a paragraph, with an introductory sentence, in our own words so we wont get expelled from university. In math, we have been studying about subtraction. We started learning which words and phrases meant addition or subtraction when we get word problems. Some examples of subtraction phrases are how many more, how many are left, remain, how much more and difference. During our math switch groups some of us were learning about money and adding coins. Some of us were learning about roman numerals and we also played a game were we skip counted to practice our multiples of 3's, 5's and 6's. Also we spent lots of time practicing regrouping and exchanging number

We have been learning about the parts of the ear during our exploration into hearing and sound. The Outer Ear The Middle Ear The Inner Ear

November 2nd This week we learned about hearing and sound. We learned about the parts of the ear. We learned how sound waves travel through the air to the auricle and down the ear canal.  We learned how to use mind maps to help us take notes using words and pictures. We learned more about doing subtraction with Ms. Thoms. She helped us to regroup numbers when we subtract and we don't have enough of something. We used base 10 blocks so it would make more sense. Since it was Halloween we learned about bats and how they use echoes to find their way around the world. We also practiced drawing a realistic looking bat. We have included a picture and you can see it on the blog if you don't believe us.

This week we started learning how to dribble in our basketball unit in gym. We crouch down, we bend our knees and bounce with the ball, we use soft spider fingers and our hand tries to follow the ball down and up. We started doing our subtraction unit and we learned how to estimate, we used pictures to solve. We learned how to start at the small number and count up to the big number to get the difference. We learned how to be Code Breakers for reading. That is when we find interesting or unknown words and phrases when we read. We learned how finding these words and phrases would help our own writing because writers use really great words.

This week in Room 8, we started our reading groups. Some of our activities were Partner Reading, Computer Literacy Games, Guided Reading, Bananagrams and Silent Reading. Today we did a Frenzy. That is when we have a math quiz to see if we've gotten faster at single digit addition. We learned about our new spelling rules which we've written in our agendas.

http://engagingstudents.blackgold.ca/index.php/division-i/math-d1/math-3/grade-3-math-statistics-and-probability/

Today we were learning about sound and hearing in Science. We were listening to a video and we needed to guess what was making the sounds. We were watch a foley artist working to make sounds for movies, t.v. shows and video games. We learned about place value blocks and also about fractions like quarters. Some of us also practiced using a calendar. We also practiced Talk for Writing where we learned how to tell a Journey Story called Stickman only using pictures. We talked about how our story had 3 problems that the character had to overcome. Each of our groups got to talk to Mr. Pressey about the spelling rules in their spelling words for this week. We raised some money and did a practice lap to get ready for our Terry Fox run on Friday.

Today we started off by conducting an experiment. We were learning about how to conduct a fair test and how we control variables. We discovered that ice that is covered with salt will melt the fastest and ice covered in sugar will melt the slowest. We also practiced visualizing based on our class novel, There is a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom. Finally we tried to see how much faster we have gotten at our basic addition during our Friday Frenzy. We also practiced retelling our journey narrative, Stickman, during Talk for Writing.