Counting Seeds

Counting seeds involves a lot of work.  First we made referent piles of seeds (e.g., 10, 20, 25) and then we estimated how many seeds we had in our pumpkins.  After getting our estimates, we actually grouped our seeds in numbers that we could all skip count by in order to get an accurate count.  As you can see, some of the groups got quite sophisticated and kept their groups of seeds organized by using rulers as boundaries.  A lot of negotiating and cooperating go into counting hundreds of seeds.

Sad pumpkins

Here they are after a hard week of being wonderful

Halloween decorations!  All moldy and sad!  A

super science experiment too!

Pumpkin Math

Pumpkins were a big theme this past week in math.  First we read this wonderful book which taught us all some very interesting things about pumpkins.  Did you know that the more lines in your pumpkin, the more seeds it will have?  I had 5 pumpkins for the kids to work with in small groups. Their job was to do some measuring before they thought about carving their pumpkins, which was clearly their first priority!

Lunch Monitor

What a great smile!  Wouldn't you love it if every

time you got served somewhere publicly you 

received a beautiful smile like this?  Being a lunch 

monitor is more than just dishing up the lunch. It's 

about developing good school citizens. It's working 

as part of a team, it's about learning to be

responsible, it's about showing care and respect to
others, it's setting a good example, it's being a caring
member of our school community who enjoys

helping out to make our school community its best.          

Lunch monitor

One of the first to volunteer to be a lunch monitor!

Leadership opportunities

Being a grade 3 at our school is a really BIG deal!

Our grade 3s are incredible leaders and we offer

them as many leadership opportunities as we can. 

The grade 3s of division 4 are embracing them!

Making sure we are only voting once

Our grade 3 scrutineers took their jobs VERY 

seriously. They politely greeted the voters, checked

off their names, explained how the ballot worked,

and escorted them to the voting booth.  It was very

exciting. Mythical creatures won the vote so we 

will start with the mythical creatures of Harry

Potter as that was the most popular choice. 

Voting for the PM Program

Because we'd kept our voting booths from last

year, we decided to pull them out again when voting

for the first PM Program theme. 

Cross-country

Here's another example of a growth 

mindset. Doing your best even when

things don't go your way.  I believe 

this is a top 30 finish even though this

athlete had slipped and fallen at the

very beginning of the race. Again,

some runners may have decided their

race was over at that point. Not her!  She 

got up and had to chase approximately 

200 girls to the finish line!  How 

amazing is that?

Another great athlete sprinting all the

way to the end!

What a great day!

Many of division 4's students were 

members of the cross-country team

coached by Ms. Conklin 

This was a terrific example of a growth

mindset. This athlete did not have a great

start to her race. She thought she had 

lost her mum amongst the hundreds of

parents who were at the meet.  Can you

imagine how scary that was?  Well it

was very distressing and right up until

the race started she was in tears. As you 

can imagine, not the best mindset to start

a race with. For some children, it would 

have been easier and safer to say they 

weren't going to run.  Not for Addi!  She 

got out there and ran her best. I was so 

proud of her!

Determination

Cross-country

Another couple of athletes working 

sure hard in their races!  Even though

it was a bit sloppy out there, these

two fellows came across that finish

line with huge grins on their faces. 

They illustrated one of our school

values:  finding joy. 

Social Emotional Learning

Social Emotional Learning

Division 4 was really lucky to have some help from Ms. Lia at the very beginning of the year teach us some great strategies for helping us to develop our self-regulation strategies.  As adults we do this all time and we're not always aware that we are using strategies that we've developed on our own.  As educators, we now feels it's incredibly important to help our students learn to self-regulate (be in charge of their brains, bodies, and emotions) throughout the school day.  At school, all staff members are working hard to develop a common language about social-emotional learning (SEL), so you might hear your child talking about expected and unexpected behaviours, or the size of the problem.  Or you might hear your child talk about the zones: blue, green, yellow, and red.  Being in the blue zone might be feeling tired, sick, sad, etc.  Green is the optimal zone for classroom learning where one is focussed and calm.  Yellow is a zone where one could be overly excited and red could be where you feel angry or frustrated  its important to remember that its not bad to be in the red or yellow zone  sometimes its absolutely essential that we are in those zones.  Every classroom already has many strategies in place to help kids with their own learning.  We are working on a common language as our school does so much learning together as a community.

Sea Crows

Sea crows

This lesson has become a favourite tradition at the Annex.  We start the year with an amazing field trip to the beach to scavenge for found treasures to build our own sea crows (scarecrows of the beach!).  After reading a wonderful story, Sea Crow by Shannon Stewart, we plan and design our own sea crows at school and then head off to the beach to create real sea crows.  The big idea in the story is that the main character has worries and she is able to overcome them using her own strategies.  We use this story because it is so easy for all of us to connect to it.  Connecting is one of the most important reading comprehension strategies that we can teach our students.  Connecting happens when you find yourself saying, "This reminds me of….. and I understand how the character (s) feel because I felt like …"  Division 4 is working on making connections while they read or while they are being read to.  

"In a galaxy far, far way," a school blogger has finally escaped!  I have no excuse for not keeping Div. 4's blog up to date so after reflecting on the goal-setting process with the students in division 4 this past week, I set my own goal of getting the class blog up to date.  That's my first step.  After that, I will try to post something once per week.

Sonobe cubes

Math and art go beautifully together!  These are

modular origami cubes.  Each face of the cube is

folded in the same manner and then all the faces 

are fitted together to form the cube.  While folding,

the students noticed the 2D shapes that were

appearing in the paper:  rectangles, triangles,

parallelograms and squares.

Building numbers

During math time, we make numbers in many ways.  One way is with our "Power of Ten" cards. These cards are designed so that children can create visual images of numbers in their minds.  As you can see, there are 6 tens and then 5 units or ones in a visual shape that the students can subitize (see at a glance without really counting).  Subitizing is a building block of math just like phonemic awareness (being able to hear and manipulate the sounds in words) is a building block of learning to read.  At the Annex, we all know that we are teaching math differently than we learned it.  You are always welcome to come in and ask questions about what we are doing differently in math.

Schools say Thank-you! – Ted Harrison

My friend Barry was very close to Ted Harrison.  A while back, he called me to see if all of the students at the Annex would be interested in a new colouring and story book that the Ted Harrison Foundation had designed.  I immediately said, "Yes!" and Barry packaged up a box of lovely books-one for every one of our students.  My students know it's important to say thank you to people when they are given things so they all wrote thank-you letters to Barry, which many of them illustrated in the style of the book.  Barry was thrilled to receive them and sent some along to the Ted Harrison Foundation.  Take a look at the link!

Subject: Schools say Thank-you! – Ted Harrison

http://tedharrison.com/blogs/news/89303107-schools-say-thank-you

Happy cookie factory employee

This is one of the best days of the year!  Cookie Factory in December!  Busy "elves" along with all the other students in the school get to make cookies that we package up and sell as a small fundraiser.  Each class comes in and makes their cookies. This event is absolutely LOVED by the students and teachers alike.  Without our fantastic parent group, it would not be the joyous event that it is as the parents not only bring in the dough, get the tables set up, they also bake all the cookies and do all the washing up and keep the "factory" running smoothly.