Communities in the Past Parent Letter

Dear Families,

Grade 3 classes are starting a new social studies unit: Communities in the Past.  We will be investigating communities between 1780 - 1850, including Indigenous and newcomer settlements in Upper and Lower Canada.

We will examine the relationships among various groups, as well as the benefits and consequences of their interactions.  We will also connect the communities to the environment and land use.

Throughout the unit, students will practice the following skills:

• gathering and organizing information
• analyzing information and images
• evaluating information and drawing conclusions
• reading and interpreting maps

Questions to support the student inquiry process:

• How do you think Canada has changed from the 1800s to now?
• Who lived in Canada in the 1800s?  What was life like at that time?
• What challenges do you think the people of the 1800s faced?

Ideas to extend your child’s learning at home:

• Discuss how different groups can cooperate and respect one another in a community.
• Think of actions you can take to help your community.
• Talk to your child about your family’s history.

Over the course of this unit, students will bring home notes and activities to review and consolidate.

Thank you in advance,

The Grade 3 Teachers

Halloween at School

Halloween is approaching quickly! Our Halloween parade will occur on Monday, October 31st at 2:15 p.m.  This parade has been a Bayview Hill E.S. tradition and gives our students a chance to show off their costumes.  Our class will walk through the junior and intermediate hallway as well as the lower primary hall in our costumes.

With such a rich and diverse population in our community, many families have different beliefs; and, because of religious, personal or cultural reasons, some families do not wish to be involved in Halloween activities.  If you would like your child to opt out of Halloween activities, please let me know through the agenda as soon as possible. 

In addition, we ask that masks, weapons and/or toy weapons (e.g., nerf guns, swords, sticks, bow and arrows, etc.) remain at home.  Face paint can also get very uncomfortable and messy for children to wear the entire day.  However, if a costume requires face paint, it may be applied before arriving to school.  Students can wear their costume or bring their costumes in a bag (labelled with their name) in the morning and they will have an opportunity to change before the parade. Thank you for your cooperation.

DreamBox

We will be using DREAMBOX! 
Click this link to have a go!

DreamBox Site

Bayview Hill E.S. is fortunate enough to have School Council approve the purchase of a license for DreamBox. DreamBox Learning is an online software provider that focuses on mathematics education at the elementary (PreK-8) level. Unlike typical software applications, this one is adaptive, which means it moves students through the problems based on ‘strategies being used’, not on ‘right answers’.

Starting this Thursday, students will be introduced to this wonderful, interactive, and student-friendly website.  They will be given a new username and password.  Many students were exposed to this site last year in Grade 2 so it will be very familiar to returning students.  The website works on both a computer and on a tablet.  Occasionally, DreamBox will be assigned as homework when it is appropriate.

It has been suggested that students use earphones while playing.  The instructions are often oral and it becomes too noisy and distracting to have all students playing in one common space with sound turned on.  If you have a spare set, please send them to school in a ziploc for this purpose.  They can also be purchased at most dollar stores for just over a loonie.  

Math Inquiry: Place Value

The York District School Board is encouraging teachers to use problem-solving, inquiry, and critical thinking across subject areas.  Beginning this week, the Grade 3 students will be starting a number sense and numeration unit in math.  We will focus on place value, addition, and subtraction of whole numbers up to 1000.  We will be incorporating problem-solving and critical thinking into this unit.  Students will be ‘discovering’ how these concepts work through a lot of hands-on activities.  For example, students will need to find a variety of efficient strategies to count large collections of objects.  As well, we will be exploring skip counting, addition, and subtraction by solving problems involving a t-shirt company.

Parents may find that there will not be the same kind of homework involved in this unit.  We will be developing a deeper understanding of the following concepts and skills in class:

• Representing whole numbers up to 1000 in a variety of ways
• Demonstrating the value of the digits in 3-digit numbers in a variety of ways
• Solving problems that arise from real-life situations and that relate to the magnitude of whole numbers up to 1000
• Counting forward and backward by 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, and 100s to 1000 from various starting points, using a variety of tools and strategies
• Counting forward by 25s to 1000 starting from multiples of 25, using a variety of tools and strategies
• Solving problems involving the addition and subtraction of 2-digit numbers, using a variety of mental math strategies
• Adding and subtracting 3-digit numbers, using concrete materials and standard methods

Students will practice making connections and explaining their reasoning in a variety of ways.  At school, we will not be focusing on rote memorization of number facts.  To support this math unit at home, parents can pose real-life problems to their children and discuss best solutions.  Parents can also encourage children to justify their answers using math vocabulary.  Math websites such as Dreambox and Prodigy will also be set up at school and can be used as a supplement at home.  

October's Literacy

Students will be focusing on two key concepts during literacy this month: Making Connections and Writing Complete Sentences.

Making Connections is a reading comprehension strategy that enhances student understanding of the text.  "Good Readers" naturally connect to what they are reading and this builds up their background knowledge as they gain information/make connections.  We will be looking at text-to-text connections, text-to-self connections and text-to-world connections.  Students are encouraged to make meaningful connections and to explain how it helps them understand what they are reading.

As part of the early writing process, students require the skills to write different types of sentences for longer writing pieces.  We will break down the elements of a complete sentence and examine the four types of sentences including correct punctuation (declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamatory).  We will fix up fragments and run-on sentences as well.  Students will be moving on to paragraph writing once the concept of a complete sentence is solidified.