Miss. Lienau's Classroom Blog!

This week Dawson was our star. I remembered from teaching his older sister 2 years ago how much his family loves Nascar, so I was curious to see if he would include that in his presentation. Awesome job on your presentation, Dawson!

Have you ever heard of Nascar? It is a type of racing and I just love the final lap of the race. It is the best with all the adrenalin rush cheering on your best driver. My favourite driver is Carl Edwards No.99, the best driver in the world. I also love all the crashing if my driver isn’t in them but if he is I scream “no” because I want him to win. Sometimes if he doesn’t that’s ok because nobody wins all the time. Sometimes people win two times in a row but that doesn’t happen all the time. My family brags to each other when one of us wins and I normally say “Haha you lose and I win!” Last year Carl Edwards didn’t win once all year not once. Then when he won this year I screamed “Yes!” and I was so happy and I couldn’t stop talking about it. I was that happy to see my driver win again and I’m still talking about it. I screamed so, so loud about it I just about blew my lungs into pieces!
By: Dawson

“Hey everyone,

I was hoping that we could all celebrate the beginning of spring!!! But if we do skip spring and go straight to summer I think we will all enjoy that as well. I guess the message is, do not worry about things you can not change and that is the weather!!

But we all CAN make positive changes in our children’s lives. And one of the biggest and important roles in your child’s life is school.

I realize that we are all so very busy with homework, sports, music, work and of course trying to have a family life. It is becoming very difficult to balance it all. Then you have the Foundation asking for more time from you! I know that every one wants to help in some way but who has all this time???

Our school is committed to work 12 Bingos a year. This brings our school about $15,000 – $18,000 a year which benefits our children in many ways; music programs, swimming, sports, leader in me, new computers and much more….

To fulfill these Bingo’s we need 12 volunteers a month. Sounds easy enough right? We are currently seeking volunteers for our next Bingo which is….

MAY 12 from 11:00 to 3:30 in Spruce Grove.

If you can help please call Denise Waller, another busy parent, who will be super pleased to hear from you.

680-686-5277″

Hi everyone, I hope you are all having a good start to your week. I am hoping that by turning the calendar tomorrow we will start to see some nice weather. We are busy here in Grade 3, so here is an update as to what we are doing!

Language Arts
Our focus has been on Story Writing in preparation for Part A of the Language Arts Provincial Achievement Test which is on May 14th. Students are given 70 minutes (plus an additional 30 minutes for anyone who needs it) to plan, write and edit a story based on a picture prompt. We have been doing a lot of work and now know exactly what needs to be included in an excellent story. The students are writing a field test this morning with Mr. M a gentleman from Alberta Education in order to prepare them for the actual test. It is a good opportunity for them to see what it will be like. We will be using the next few weeks leading up to the test to continue to develop strong stories, learn how to include proper dialogue, and how to edit.

Math
As you know, we finished our Multiplication and Division unit yesterday. Please watch for your childs rubric coming home later this week. I will also be sending home the Extra Practice booklet tomorrow for our next unit – Geometry. This will be a very short unit, but we will have a lot of fun doing hands on activities.

Science
We are wrapping up our Testing and Building units right now. As you know, Part 2 of the project is due on Tuesday, May 7th. I am really excited to see what the kids build using their knowledge from the units we completed. We had a great time at the Telus World of Science last week. The kids really enjoyed building their own roller coasters in groups. A special thank you to the parents who assisted us. We will be starting our final Science unit later this week – Animal Life Cycles.

Social
A HUGE thank you goes out to everyone who supported our Bake Sale by supplying food, pricing and setting up the tables, selling items and sending money with your child to buy a yummy treat! We raised an incredible $684.00!! This money purchased enough school supplies (pencils, erasers, pens, 2 notebooks and pencil sharpeners) for 650 students at the Suan Luang orphanage in Laos. The remaining amount of money will be used to purchase Butterflies for our classroom to go along with our Animal Life Cycle Unit in Science. I have to share a heartwarming story with you…. this is the reason that Mr.W. and I feel so strongly about doing this global citizenship project. As we were preparing for the bake sale last week, we talked to the kids about the fact that they had all brought money but we weren’t sure when they should go to buy their items, being the hosts. We were sooooooo impressed when THEY told us that when someone hosts something they go after their guests… they don’t eat half the food and then invite their guests to eat. It was a unanimous decision by all 42 kids. They insisted that this wasn’t for “us” but rather to raise money for kids who need it. Amazing work Grade 3, we are so proud of you for the decision you made!

Reminders
- Coming home with your child will be a fieldtrip permission form for West Edmonton Mall Marine Life Center. Watch for that the next few days
- Please remember to check your childs planner and initial it. It only takes a few seconds and this is our main method of communication. I am noticing most are coming back unsigned in the morning.

Have a great week!
Miss. Lienau

Last week Kate was our Star. She did an awesome presentation and I think the coolest idea she had was for her whole family to draw themselves on her poster. It was really neat to see how each person chose to represent themselves. Kate used her persuasive writing skills to convince me that I need to read Fablehaven books which I had never heard of before! Thanks Kate!

Hi, my name is Kate. I will be talking a little bit about myself. My all time favourite book is the Fablehaven series. If you haven’t read book one go out and buy it because it’s so amazing! My favourite movie is pitch erfect with all of its wonderful music.
By: Kate

Volunteer Appreciation:
Please come and join us on Friday May 3rd, 2013 to celebrate and recognize our Parent Volunteers!
The celebration will begin at 10:45 am in the large gym with a lunch to follow in the multi- purpose room at 11:30am-1:00pm
Hope to see you there!

Spelling:
New Words:
alone
book
circle
group
sentence

Review Words:
been
between
though
thought
several

Tricky Words:
truss
triangle
division
multiplication

New Words:
been
between
though
thought
several

Review Words:
care
square
does
done
enough

Tricky Words:
fraction
design
character
building

This week Rosheen was our star. She was very nervous to present her poster and pictures, but she did an amazing job, and I was pleased to hear her say that it wasn’t as bad as she thought! Rosheen is a true animal lover and so we all knew that at least a portion of her presentation would be about her pets! Well done, Rosheen!

Hi, I am Rosheen. I love animals. I have one budgie, two cats, two dogs, one hamster and 30 tanks of fish. Today is my budgie’s birthday and he is turning one year old and his name is Buddy. I have two sisters, their names are Meara ad Siobhan. Meara is in Grade two and Siobhan is in Grade one. I like dancing. I do tap, jazz, ballet, tumbling, and hip hop. My dance school is called Edmonton Children’s Dance Theatre. My favourite subject at school is Art. My favourite dance is hip hop. I went to a different school last year and it was called Glenora. I have a Mom and a Dad and they both work for the government. I also play soccer and my Dad coaches. I play with friends from my other school. My team usually wins!
By: Rosheen

Hi everyone,

We are back in the full swing of things here in 3A and have already accomplished a lot since the end of Spring Break. Here is a quick run down subject by subject as to what we are doing!

In Math we finished our Fractions unit and had a short test last week. On Friday I sent home the rubrics showing your childs learning for both Measurement and Fractions. The students did a great job with Fractions, I was so impressed! Our new unit that we are focusing on is multiplication and division. This one is actually easier to teach and for students to grasp than addition and subtraction. We will only be covering facts up to 5×5 in Grade 3. So far we have used equal groupings and arrays to solve multiplication equations. We have also discovered how to represent multiplication as repeated addition. The extra practice booklet went home last Friday.

Social studies we have also just finished our latest unit on global citizenship and have jumped into our next journey. The newest unit is on leadership in our community and helping each other. We started off by discussing what a leader is and what characteristics a strong leader possesses. We talked a lot about a strong leader being someone who is truthful, creative, responsible, inspires others, and makes decisions for the betterment of the group or community. The next thing we did was fabricate four different speeches with four separate students reading them. Based on those speeches we had the students complete a mock vote for who was the best candidate. It was great to see that the students took their knowledge of what makes a strong leader and apply it to make the best decision.

Our testing design and materials company in grade three are making great strides and we are going to be moving into the final project of the unit. We will be asking the students to build one of three different structures (their choice). Included in this project is to come up with a plan, budget, and list of materials to choose from. They will be provided with feedback throughout the process so that they have the opportunity to meet the specs provided. It is an at home project that, while we encourage help from you as parents we need to remind you that this project is for the kids! Watch for the project booklets coming home today!

Finally, in language arts we have finished the poetry unit and have moved on to story writing. I can’t wait to see the imaginations of all of the students at work, I love teaching the story writing unit for that very reason. We went over planning a story based on a picture prompt and a couple different ways to do that. We are now working on creative ways to start a story… NO “once upon a times…”

We would like to thank Tammy Mullen (Cameron in 3B’s Mom) for coming in to make Ukrainian Pysanky with all the Grade 3′s, as well as Virginia Ballermann for helping her. The eggs look great and we are just in the process of getting the wax off them before sending them home.

Just a reminder that next week will be a busy one here for us in Grade 3. On Wednesday we will be going on our first fieldtrip. Please remember you will need to send a full lunch with your child for this day. A special thank you to all the parents who volunteered to assist us… we wish we could take you all! We will be making our draw later today and will let you know tomorrow whose names were picked.
Thursday and Friday will be our Grade 3 Bake Sale in support of school supplies for the Suan Luang orphanage in Laos. We will send home a note later this week to those of you who volunteered to help out with the Bake Sale indicating when we have scheduled you. Thank you so much for the overwhelming support of this project, we really appreciate you helping out to make a difference.

I hope that you have a great rest of the week and talk to you soon!
Jill

The spelling words for next week, April 15th – 19th are:
New words:
care
square
does
done
enough

Review words:
ground
hour
sound
town
young

Tricky Words:
eventually
development
organization
expected

Spell-a-Thon
Thank you!! to all the parents and children who took such an enthusiastic part in our spell-a-thon. There has been some really great spelling practise done to raise money for our school. You should have received your child’s completed spelling list together with the pledge sheet back from school on Thursday). Parent volunteers will be in school Friday and all next week to process the returned forms with all the payments from your kind sponsors. We accept cash or cheques (any money is good money!), but if cheques are being sent in, please can they be made payable to G.C.S.C (Graminia Community School Foundation) and NOT to Graminia School.
Thanks once more – from Kelly Martens and the GCSFoundation team.

This week Taylor is our Star! She did a great presentation and showed us a lot of pictures of when she was a baby… a very cute one might I add! Thanks for such a clear, well planned presentation, Taylor!

Hi, my name is Taylor and I would like to talk about myself today. So I like toys because toys make kids active so Moms and Dads will not get mad at kids for watching the TV all day long if they are playing. I also like Youtube because I like watching mermaid kid videos because I am a big fan of mermaids. I wish I was one mermaid. I also like movie night because we are going to watch Hotel Transylvania. It is so funny because a human says to Dracula “I command you to be the werewolf man hooooooowwwwwww. I have too many kids, somebody scratch me, I have fleas!” I love my three dogs, J.J., Ginger, and Dallas. J.J. is just 9 months old and Ginger is 3 years old and Dallas is 12 years old. And also my Dad’s name is Chris and my Mom’s name is Ang and my brother is Kingston. My brother is 6 years old and I am 8 years old. My family is awesome. They make me long and they make me strong and they believe in me. They cheer for me at my cheer competitions.
By: Taylor