During our math lessons, students have  been developing their own t-shirt factories.  I try very hard to make our math lessons meaningful to real life – it motivates students to feel they are in control of their own learning.  Students were placed into small groups and given 3 sizes of t-shirts.  They had to name their factory and begin a series of small tasks.

Task 1:  Students were given 3 numbers for each size. They had to find strategies to add multi-digit numbers to find out how many t-shirts they have of each size.

Task 2: Students were then asked to organize their t-shirts into 3 sections.  Loose ones, Rolls of 10 and Boxes of 100 (Place Value).

Task 3.  Students then had to determine the value of each t-shirt size they have if 1 t-shirt cost $10.00 what is the total value of each size?

Here are some photos of our math learning for the last few weeks!

Yikes,  I was prepared to start Raz-Kids today, unfortunately we have a technological glitch and I won’t be able to access the student passwords today.  I’m hoping we will have it corrected by tomorrow.  Please stay tuned.

We have  finally received our Raz-Kids subscription.  Tonight students will be coming home with their Raz-Kid login and password.  It’s important that students are reading for at least 20 minutes every night.  We will be using Raz-Kids as part of our Guided Reading in the classroom, and students are encouraged to use it at home as well.

For some of the parents not familiar with Raz-Kids, it’s an online reading program that can be used on the ipad, android and computer.  It’s a  great resource of levelled fiction and non-fiction books followed by a series of multiple choice questions to check for student understanding.  Each students will be placed at their specific reading  level and given a variety of books to choose from in their “Book Room.” When a student clicks on a book, they are given 3 choices.  The book can read to them, they can read the book on their own OR they can record their voice as they read. Just like Dreambox, I have a dashboard where all student data is collected and sent to me weekly this includes comprehension quizzes and recordings.

In order to get kids excited for reading, students are given stars which they can use to purchase ‘accessories’ for either a robot or spaceship.  Have a look at it tonight – let me know your thoughts.

Our school has organized a Halloween Food Drive.

Each classroom will have a “BOO BOX” for non-perishable foods.

We will be collecting food until October 31st.

I’m hoping our grade 3’s are sharing stories of their math learning each day.  We have really progressed with our math talks. I spend a quick 10 minutes with a string of math related addition and subtraction questions. I’ve  been working with students getting them to reflect, connect and represent their thinking. The strings are designed to build math strategies which can be incorporated in our math lesson for the day. Students are now able to mentally do quick addition and subtraction and articulate their strategy to their peers.  Here is an example of our math talk this morning.