Aye! Matey!

Our school is busy getting ready for our school musical. . . .  Treasure Island!  Everyday I hear my class singing the songs and talking "pirate talk".  We found the book, Treasure Island and have started reading it!
We are learning that good readers make pictures in their heads to help them understand what the author is saying.  While reading the first chapter we  listened closely to how the author described the characters.  We recorded these words and used them to make a "picture" in our heads.  The author had many words to describe the Captain!  We heard that he was tall and strong, wore a blue coat and had black, broken fingernails!  We also heard that he had a long, white scar on his face. 

  Here are some pictures of what we think he looks like! Do our pictures look like you visualized him?

He wore a blue coat. Notice the brass buttons.

He was tall and strong!

His fingernails were black and broken and he had a long white scar on his face.

Look at those muscles!

Thank you to Adrienne Gear for her graphic organizer!

We Made the Paper!

Today I opened our local paper and look what I saw!  Well done Chantrell Creek! 

Chantrell Creek Celebrates Chinese New Year!

On Friday our school celebrated the start of the Chinese New Year.  At lunch we  were treated to some delicious dumplings made by some of our parents- a BIG thank you to all those who helped make and deliver the dumplings ~ they were delicious!.  After our tummies were full we had an assembly.  Several of our students performed including George!  He played the drum.  Our kindergarten kids did a Dragon Dance and then some of our grade 7s did the Lion Dance.

 Our incredible K's!

We made Chinese masks on Thursday during our art time.


We started with a draft so we could practice the designs we wanted to use.  We were encouraged to use the elements of design that we learned about last week in our art class.

 Can you find masks that use angled lines?  Circles, dots? Wavy lines?


Red is  an important colour to people celebrating the Chinese New Year so many of us tried to use lots or red in our masks. 

 During center time Jahan decided to make his draft into a mask!  I think he did a magnificent job, don't you?

 Did you celebrate Chinese New Year at your school? What did you do?

Designs for You!

In art this week we learned about the elements of design.

We used the app Draw and Tell and practiced these elements using different tools.

Check out our individual blogs to see more of our finished designs!

Addition? Multiplication?

We are beginning to explore the relationship between addition and multiplication.  We used the app "Draw and Tell."  Mrs. Betts gave us an addition equation and we had to use stickers to show the meaning of the equation.  We wrote the addition equation under the picture.  Then we had to circle the groups and write a multiplication equation underneath the addition equation.  We learned that 2x3 means 2 groups of 3.  We started to see the connection between addition and multiplication.  We were excited to finally be multiplying.  Here are some pictures of our learning!

What are you learning in math right now?

Oh the Places We Go. . . .

On Monday our learning took us on a detour!  If you have been following our blog you know that the Grade 3s have been learning about structures. We began the lesson by exploring a new book that Mrs. Betts had borrowed from another teacher (thank you Ms. Coumont!) and we noticed some information on skyscrapers that caught our attention so . . . . of course we had to read it and find out something about skyscrapers.

As we were reading we noticed that there was a sidebar called "Skyscraper Challenge."  Since we are always up for a challenge we decided to read it and find out what it was all about. Once we read the challenge we decided to give it a try (with a few modifications)  We started brainstorming for how we could have our own skyscraper challenge!



Our challenge:  To create the tallest most stable structure we can using up to 10 cardboard boxes. The boxes can be no bigger than a cereal or shoe box and we can not tape our skyscraper to the floor!  The buzz in the classroom was incredible.   . . . . kids began planning, explaining, sharing and thinking right away! Once our skyscrapers are done we plan to test how stable our structures are by using a fan to see if they can withstand a force (because that's what skyscrapers can do!).  We have learned about using a good foundation and what shapes make strong, stable structures.   We were so excited that when the bell rang everybody continued talking and planning.  I wonder what our skyscrapers will look like?  Check back soon to see what we design!

Questions, questions and more questions!

Have you ever thought what life would be like without questions?  During our buddy time we have been learning about questions.  We started off by reading the book "Why" by Richard Torrey and a section of the book "The Philosopher's Club. 

These books started our thinking about questions.  After reading the books we made a list of all the question words we could think of.
                  


Once we had our list of question words we were given the challenge to come up with as many questions about a basketball as we could. 
There was lots of conversation going on!  How many questions can you think of about a basketball?









The next time we met with our buddies Kyle and Jamie introduced us to the idea of red light and green light questions.   

Check out the chart they made for us. . . .




Once we knew what a red light and green light question was we were given another challenge.  This time we had to sort our questions about the basketball into red light, green light and trash questions (questions that weren't relevant to our topic or that didn't make sense). 




Here are some examples of our thinking. . . . .

When we met this week we worked in groups of 4 and looked at our decisions.  Our task was to share our thinking of why we put our questions where we did. We were allowed to change our thinking after we had heard our partner's thinking. Many of us did change our thinking after hearing what our partners had to say.



At the end of our working time today Mrs. Betts left us with . . . . . a QUESTION!. . . . Here is what she asked us "What question words stimulate red light thinking and what question words stimulate green light thinking?"  I wonder what we'll do next week with questions?