December News
Ms. Brokenshire's Grade 3 Class
Season's Greetings!
Following a brief hiatus for November's assessment period, our guided reading groups are back underway, and it is great to have the chance to meet with my small groups of readers again. Everyone is moving along their own path to becoming fluent, thoughtful readers, and I am proud of the students for all of the growth that showed up in my last round of running records. This month we are learning how to effectively summarize a story, which is quite different from the more familiar retellings that younger students do. Check in with your child to see if s/he can explain the difference between summarizing and retelling!
Besides reading a variety of Christmas books and student-selected independently-read books, I am using the works of children's author and illustrator, Jan Brett, as mentor texts for this month's literacy lessons. This writer is known for her gorgeous artwork and her lovely stories, especially her Christmas and winter-themed ones. In addition to learning how to write a story summary, we are focusing on comparing and contrasting stories (particularly different versions of the same plot) and exploring how authors get inspired and come up with their story ideas.
As you know, we write in our journals every day, and one of the types of writing we work on frequently is expressing our personal preferences and opinions. This month we will dig a little deeper into opinion writing, and with a few good sentence frames and some meaningful signal words, our writing is sure to become more organized, descriptive, and fluent when read aloud.
In math, we are doing some focus lessons with 3-dimensional solids in geometry. Of course, we are continuing to develop many concepts in our Daily Math booklets, such as 3-digit place value, 2-digit addition and subtraction strategies (including mental math), and problem solving.
Believe it or not, even with all of this learning going on, we are still managing to have a lot of Christmas fun! We have a few fun art projects on the go, we've got our Wrapped Up in Wreaths classroom wreath to decorate, and we have a "hot" song ready for the Christmas concert. 'Tis the season!
Classroom Christmas Plans
Thank You!
Portfolio Walks
Please don't forget to return your child's portfolio to school within the next few days so we have them all back before the Christmas break.
Happy Holidays!
Upcoming Dates
December 14 - Subway lunch
December 19 - Grade 3 Christmas Concert @ 6:30 pm
December 23 - Pajama & Stuffy Day; last day of classes
January 9 - Classes resume
January 13 - Staff collaboration day; no school for students
Contact Info
Email: lorelie.brokenshire@wolfcreek.ab.ca
Location: 5424 50th Street, Lacombe, AB, Canada
Phone: 403.782.8726 (4172)
Twitter: @3_brok