Miss Kouremenos' Class Blog

Clang, clang, clang was the sound that most of the kids in 3k made while they were working on their final building project today in science. The students used 60 cm of tape, 7 pieces of newspaper and 25 paper clips to construct a paper bridge that had to span one metre across the chairs. First each student had to design their own bridge and then they got together with a partner and had to decide whose bridge they were going to build or they could combine their ideas to build a new bridge. After they got their supplies they got to work in constructing their bridge. They had to work cooperatively to design the strongest bridge they could make. They used golf balls to measure the strongest bridge. They had to place golf balls in a bag one at a time once their bridge was complete. It turns out that Jaden M’s and Alysa’s bridge was the strongest. Great job everyone!

In social studies we are learning about the country of Ukraine. This weekend is Orthodox Easter so all Ukranians will be celebrating. To help celebrate with them last week we go to paper mache balloons in order to design our own Pysanky eggs (Decorative Easter eggs in Ukraine). This week we got to paint them. First, we read a story called “The Birds Gift” and this book told us how the pysanky egg came about in Ukraine.  We discovered that each egg is different and tells a little story using symbols/designs and colours. We got to design our own egg using different symbols to tell our own stories. They are now hanging in our classroom to help keep the evil away as that is what the Ukranians say.

Written By Monkey 3K.

Valentine’s Day was a big hit in 3K. The student’s showed kindness to 1G by making them Valentine’s Day door hangers and we had a chance to deliver them on Thursday afternoon.

Enjoy the video of our festivities. Thank you to all the parents who brought treats to make our day extra special.

Try our slideshow maker at Animoto.

Over the last couple of weeks the students have been participating in many writing activities. We have now added a few more tools to our writing toolbox.

Our fourth tool is ‘Plastic Eggs’ – These eggs help us crack open words to help us see what is inside. We are working on showing our writing rather than telling. The students were asked to work in small groups to crack open some words. Here is what some groups came up with.

Telling sentence: The witch was ugly.

Showing our writing: The witch has wrinkly skin like a pig and a large carrot shaped nose. She has two bush eyebrows over her green and blue cat shaped eyes. She has moles all over her face. She has triangular ears that are purple and rotten teeth.

Written by Grace, Kaylee, Miguel and Jacob

Telling sentence: The child was cold.

Showing: The child was so cold that he got a frostbite on his nose. He lips were bright purple. He has icicles hanging off his glasses and nose. He has no hat and his hair is full of snow. He has bright red cheeks and ears.  His teeth were chattering as fas as a bumble bee’s wings. He had no snow suit on. He was rubbing his arms trying to get warm. He has frozen snow going down his back.

Written by: Jaron, Alysa, Jackson and Gabby

Telling: The queen was so pretty.

Showing: Our queen has a long red and white dress that shines in the moonlight.  There are blue cone shaped diamonds around her light, shining, sparkling dress. She has bright blue jewels on her shining yellow gleaming crown and shiny red lips.

Written by: Jaden E., Makayla, Jaden M. and Willow

The fifth tool we added to our toolbox was ‘Plain Bear’  to show us the difference between “Clear vs Blurry” – These tools remind us that when authors create pictures in our mind using words they create a vivid image, making us experience what the author is experiencing as if we are right there in the book. If we can’t create pictures in our reader’s minds then the picture is blurry so we will have to crack open the words a little more.

At the moment the 3K authors are working on showing us a special object they brought from home.

Cracking open our words.

We challenge you to write us a showing sentence instead of a telling one!

Last week we started a new writing unit entitled “The Bear Necessities of Writing” created by Debbie Quick. The students discovered that builders are not the only ones that need a toolbox, but writer’s need one as well. Of course a writer’s toolbox does not include a hammer, nails, screwdriver etc. that would be found in a builder’s toolbox.

We have added three tools so far to our toolbox and we will continue to add more next week.

Our first tool is a ball: The bouncy ball reminds us that we need to place a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and a punctuation mark at the end of the sentence (ball stops bouncing and rolling).

Our second tool is sticky tack: Sticky tack helps us with our spelling by stretching the word out as we say it.  It also reminds us that in writing “Quality is more important than Quantity.”

Our third tool is a camera: A camera reminds us that as writer’s we need to use words and phrases that allow our readers to picture what we are writing so they can visualize the experience in their mind.

I’m looking forward to writer’s workshop this week as we will work on using words and phrases that show rather than tell.

Have a wonderful week!

It was great to see the children walk through the door on Monday morning after the two week break and listen to all their holiday stories. We had a fantastic first week back filled with lots of learning and fun!

In Reader’s Workshop we worked on Visualizing as you read – the students were introduced to Rocky the Raccoon (A Raccoon who helps us visualize. His job is to put pictures in our head as we read. We need to see and think about the story like a movie going on in our head. (What do the characters look like? The actions?). The students worked on a lot of visualizing activities both when reading and writing. They drew their own monster and then had a partner draw their monster according to the description they wrote. The students realized how important it is to include a lot of detail in their writing in order to clearly paint a picture in the readers mind.

Here are a couple of samples of our monster descriptive writing project.

The students were also given a description of a Granod and were told to draw what they visualized. Here is the description they were provided with:

Granods

A granod is an animal. It has a long, oval shaped body. The granod has a long neck and tail. The top of the neck, back and tail are covered by a row of triangular-shaped plates. The granod’s head is shaped like a long triangle. It has big eyes, and eyebrows that stick out. It also has big nostrils. Its body is covered with scales. The granod has four short legs. At the end of each leg is a foot with five long toes. Each toe has a sharp claw at its end. The granod has two wings attached to its body. These are located behind the front legs towards the top of its back. Granods may be many different colours, but usually they are green and yellow or red and yellow.

This is what some of the students came up with:

Visualizing a Granod.

On Wednesday afternoon we ventured off to the Grant Fuhr arena to take part in skating. The students had a great time gliding across the ice. It was great to see so many students improve their skating skills in just one hour! It was also great to see students helping one another and teaching each other how to skate. It was wonderful seeing their faces glow, especially in the eyes of those students who were dependent on an adult when we first arrived, then took off independently by the time we had to leave! Thank you so much to all the parents and grandparents who came out to help tie skates and skate with the students. Enjoy the short video below of our skating experience:

Make a video of your own at Animoto.

We also began our poster presentations this week for the non-profit organizations we were discussing before the Christmas breaks. The students put lots of effort into their poster and presentations. Here is a glimpse of some of the posters: 

This week your child was given their Dreambox username and password. It is written on first page of their agenda. Click on the link to the right of this page to access the log in page online. This is a great tool to use to strengthen your child’s math skills. This program is available to our students until March 2013. Have fun!

Practising in the gym for the C.A.V.E assembly.

During the week of November 26th-30th, 3K and 3S students were busy practising in preparation for the school C.A.V.E assembly. The assembly had a focus on listening to ones own conscience and teaching Millgrove students what your conscience is (the little voice inside your head that tells you right from wrong). The grade three students performed some skits to teach students about listening to their conscience, created some posters that were displayed as they sang the song “Listen to Your Conscience” by the Kidsinger Jim. In December, we are reviewing the following character traits that we have been working on at Millgrove so far this school year: Empathy, Responsibility and Conscience. Let’s see how many bear paws our students can earn!

Here is the link to the lyrics of the conscience song. Our students sang the first verse: http://www.childrensmusic.com/music/kidsinger-jim/song/listen-to-your-conscience/

This week we celebrated Diwali, the festival of lights. This festival is celebrated in India. They celebrate by lighting fireworks, diyas and firecrackers. They honour the goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth who brings good fortune and prosperity to all. They also celebrate good winning over evil. Some special things they do is eat tasty sweets such as golden perras and spiral jallebies. It was perfect because it was Kyler’s birthday and he brought in cupcakes with marshmallow storm troopers with blue icing, so that was also our Diwali treat.  They also buy new clothes for the celebration.

To celebrate in our classroom we made paper diyas to light up our lives and we made rangolis. Families make rangolis during diwali to welcome Goddess Lakshmi, and other guests into their home to ward off evil. Rangolis are colourful pictures made on the ground using rice flour, sand or flower petals. We made ours on black construction paper and coloured the designs with special construction paper crayons. Look below for pictures of our art work.

Rockin’ Rangoli Art

Our Diyas are lighting up the hallway!

Our 3K calendar is up and running. Please check it out under the calendar heading – Event Calendar.