Kenneth D. Taylor, Grade 3 - Ms. Hargreaves

Wow, what an exciting day we had today!  World Water Day 2017.  The theme this year is:  Why waste water?  It is time to look at the ways we can recycle our daily water use.  Here is a video for you to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrJhsH0Sz_o It was great to see the rain this morning, it was like Calgary skies were celebrating this very important day dedicated to protecting this precious natural resource.  It reminded us about the water cycle.   We had two big events this today to consolidate our inquiry into the importance of water.   The first was a design challenge to build a water filter .   All three grade classes came together and we put on our scientist lenses to investigate how to build a filter using a recycled plastic bottle,  cotton balls, sand, charcoal, gravel and j cloth.  It was really wonderful to see everyone putting on their design lenses and testing out their filter prototypes.  We...

Our water walk is happening tomorrow afternoon.  Here is a map of the route we will be taking through the community.  We will be departing the school at around 12:45.  It will be a 5 km round trip.   Please have your child bring an extra snack for the walk. Thank you so much to the parents who have volunteered to join us.  

Spelling: Since there are only 3 days this week we will not have a spelling test .  We will resume with lessons 81-85 after spring break. Wednesday, March 22nd -- International World Water Day -- we will be designing water filters in the morning and doing our neighbourhood water walk in the afternoon at 12:30 p.m.    If there there are any other parents who have volunteer clearance who would like to join us in the afternoon, please let me know. We will celebrate the unbirthdays on the walk so please send a personal snack with your child that they can take with them. Movie Night on Wednesday evening: Thursday and Friday March 23rd and 24th - PD days - no school for students  March 27-April 2nd - Spring Break   Apr 3 – Classes Resume Apr 12th School Council 6:30 pm  • Apr 14th – Good Friday – no school  • Apr 17th – Student-Led Conference

Dear Parents and students: For our water walk on Wednesday at 12:30 we are asking for students to bring in any empty 2L  or 4L plastic milk jugs (including the caps) that you may have at home. we will be using these to fill with water which we will carry on our 5 km walk.  The  purpose of the walk with water is to experience what is like for children in countries who do not have access to clean tap water.  Many  children in developing countries have to walk 3 or 4 kms multiple times per day.   Thank you in advance.  

Here are some highlights of our thinking on Thursday and Friday. We've been collecting strong verbs during our learning commons time on Thursdays, here are some photos of us using the puppets to act out the strong verbs.  This is a great way to really understand the action word because students have to think of actions that their puppet will do and therefore it makes them build their background knowledge and critical thinking skills.  Remember that speaking, reading  and writing are connected. On Friday we were in the lab with our scientist lenses on as  we continued building  our rocks and minerals understanding by creating crystals with epsom salts, hot water and cold temperatures.    We joined Ms. Pearson's class to hypothesize why the crystals would form.  Connecting back to the water cycle,  we made some great inferences about evaporation and temperature as well as the changing state of water from liquid to gas to solid. ...

Well today was an exciting day as we got to travel to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller.   Maggie was our expert and wow did she ever transform our thinking!  We would highly recommend this virtual learning experience.  Do you know what  the provincial rock for Alberta  is?  Check this out:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_of_Alberta We learned about three different earth sciences:   Palaeontology (the study of ancient life), Geography (the study of land), and Geology (the study of the earth's structure).   We got to use all of the reading powers through interactive viewing and questioning.  We were able to expand our background knowledge about rocks and minerals and to understand how geography is connected to people's quality of life because of the natural resources that are found there. Here are some photos of the experience: Ask your child to share the cool interactive body movements for re...