The classroom of Mrs. Langlois

Grade threes are currently working on a large project where they are becoming designers and engineers of of the new event center. To understand what features may need to be added to the event center, students went and toured the Calgary Saddledome to learn what features it has that we may include in our deign, or features that we may want to not include. We realized from our tour that there are many features that make the Calgary Saddledome a unique building. Ask your child what are some of the features that make it a memorable and record holding building. Students are applying the new information learned towards their reports. Today, we specifically worked on our topic sentence (SC/AH)). This is a very hard concept as we have been working on complex sentences, but now we need to go back to a simple sentence for a topic sentence. This afternoon we reviewed some of the constraints the Saddldome has as well as some of the positive features. We worked with our groups...

This was a busy but short week. We had a lot of things going on. On Wednesday we had a guest speaker come into our class - an engineer from the City of Calgary. She shared her story of being an engineering student in University all the way to having a career in engineering. She reviewed concepts like tension and compression, and introduced different types of forces. We looked at specific building materials and how forces act upon those materials. Finally we ended the presentation trying to build a bridge using only tape and pencils. It was interesting to hear the constraints some groups had where as others had different constraints. Ask your child what constraint they had in the building process. Reminders:  We have our field study on Monday to the Saddledome. Please dress for the weather. Although the tour is in the building, we will also be walking to the site location of the new event center as well as a bridge walk.

Today we continued to work on our arena designs. We received peer feedback (SW). We were put into even bigger groups where we shared our designs and asked questions. We used the questions and feedback to decide if we wanted to add to our designs or not add (AF). For example, some students noticed the bathrooms were right in the middle of the hallways and then made changes to move them closer to the walls. We may have some floor plans to share with you by Thursday night. In Math students are learning different strategies to solve addition questions. Four different strategies have been taught, blocks and pictures, stacking, expanded notation and hundreds chart. We introduce all the strategies, have students try all of them and then help students determine which strategy is most efficient and effective. By the end of grade three, students should be able to add 3 digit numbers together. We will be working up to this.

First of all I would like to introduce our student teacher in our class, Katie McCurdy. Ms. McCurdy will be with us until Dec 13th. She is working on her third semester in education and will be working towards teaching up to 75% of the time in our class during this time. Students have welcomed her and are enthusiastic to work along side her as she learns the curriculum, our class routines and student strengths. Ms. McCurdy will also be joining us at student learning conversations. If you are not comfortable with her being a part of this conversation, please let me know. In class students are working hard at creating their designs for the new arena. We did have to take a small break from them as we explored strong shapes, but are now back into the design process with much enthusiasm. Specifically, we combined all the data we received from parents in regards to features and created bar graphs. We realized that tally charts can be hard to read, but bar graphs give us a stronger visual o...

Voices of the students from room 7: This week at school we continued to design the new arena. We had a guest speaker and we were talking about the process of designing the blue prints (GA). We reviewed the requirements to build this building. For example our arena must have chairs, washrooms, food, water, entrances and exits (SM). We learned that the new event center needs 20 washrooms (KC). We did a bunch of bubbles and we started to plan out specific locations for our features (TD). With grid paper, we were able to figure out where the bathroom went (SW). The grid paper helps us measure how bing the rink would be and made it easier to place where everything was to go (AF). In gym we finished our basketball unit and we are strating volleyball (CS). Vollying the ball really hurts (DS). When you volley the ball it doesn't just hurt, but makes your arms really really red (ST). We learned different ways to control the ball, bump and set (AH). We are doing pamphlets and also lear...

Wow, I must apologize to all of you. I have not been keeping you up to date with the comings and goings in room 7. Language Arts Students have recently completed their Who Would Win books. Using the co-created rubric, each student self assessed their work and commented on their strengths and areas where they would improve next time. The Who Would Win Books will be available to read at the Parent Teacher Interviews as well as the rubric in which students used throughout the project. Our next project is creating a brochure to inform and teach others about a famous building in one of the 4 countries we are studying. We began this project creating questions to guide our research, we have started to conduct our research, and are beginning to look at how to write detailed sentences with the new information learned. Some students have been brave in sharing their work with the class to receive feedback and improve their sentences. I hope more students will begin to feel comfortable in sha...