Congratulations to our Cross Country Team!

Had to brag a bit!

Hope you've enjoyed a great start back to school!

Hey Grade 4's,
It has been so nice to be able to see you at school again (those of you who have moved away, we miss you very much)! I've seen you working hard in your classroom and playing hard on the playground. Keep it up. Can you believe that fall is already here? My family had some fun with face painting and we checked out the site for Cross Country as well on this first fall weekend. Here are some pics for you.

Summer Fun

I hope this post finds you all well and in the middle of a fantastic summer vacation! I was excited when I finally got your photobooks in the mail the other day. I will try and deliver them to you over the next couple of weeks.
My family has spent lots of time up north swimming, riding bikes and roasting marshmallows. Teagan came on her first canoe ride recently. She did NOT like it! It probably didn't help that Owen was helping to paddle the boat and he's a little crazy at the wheel! We'll try it again and see what she thinks after a second trip. She does like to watch the boats go by from her spot on the beach.
Have you read any great books yet this summer? I brought home a book called The Hunger Games. I think some of my students will read it this coming year, and I couldn't put it down. I've read all three books in it's series in the last week! Emma  is reading a Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew book that she has enjoyed so far, and Owen is trying to solve a mystery in an A to Z Mystery book.
Enjoy the rest of your holiday! See you in September!
Mrs. F.

A Letter From Roxie

Grade 3's,
I thought I'd share this with you via the blog as we may not get a chance to look at it in class this week. I know you were all wondering when we would hear from Roxie. Well, this was an email that I got from her tonight.

(I've decided to email this so you got it before the end of school. I hope they resolve the postal strike soon. )

Dear Grade Three Friends!

I am so sorry it has taken me so long to write to you. I have been having an amazing time, and have been very busy over these last few months. I think the last I wrote to you, I was headed to Africa for a Safari Adventure. Well, let me tell you, there were some breathtaking and rare sites to be seen! In fact, there were so many of them, that I can't recount them all to you. It would take reams and reams of paper to retell! I will share a couple of my hilights with you though.

I was able to see elephants having a bath and playing in the water, rhinos wrestling with each other, and we caught a rare glimpse of a lion and his pride snoozing under the sizzling African sun (we kept a safe distance so we didn't become their dinner).

That trip lasted a month, and was a welcome relief after the freezing cold temperatures of Russia!

I realized that it was probably time for me to head home as I had been gone for so long. On my way back, I stopped in Australia to see the kangaroos in the Outback and I had a lay-over in Hawaii for 3 days where I got to visit some inactive volcanoes.

It was bitter sweet to come back home to Trois Rivieres. I had such a wonderful time roaming this interesting planet of ours, but it was nice to get back and sleep in my own bed.

I have two final riddles for you before your summer holidays begin.

A man left home running. He ran a ways and then turned left, ran the same distance and turned left arain, ran the same distance and turned left again. When he got home there were two masked men. Who were they?

 Although I didn't get to visit France this year, I wonder if you can tell me:

What is in the middle of Paris?

Hope the riddles are not too difficult for you. Have a wonderful summer holiday, and good luck in grade four! May you have many interesting adventures in the years to come.

Yours in Adventure,

Roxie


What was your favourite adventure that you took this year in grade 3?

Lion Safari

Grade 3's,
This week we will be taking our trip to the African Lion Safari. I am very excited. I haven't been there since I was about your age.
Check out the link to the park. See if you can find the map and see where you may want to visit when you are there (we won't be able to do the Jungle Boat cruise or the Wet Play area).
http://www.lionsafari.com/

What are you looking forward to doing on the trip?

Tell me 5 things that you learned from the Conservation link that you thought were interesting.

Which animal is your favourite and why do you like it so much?

Another year of baseball is over!

Congratulations to the Eastdale 3-pitch teams on their great efforts over the last 2 days! The Junior and Senior girls both won their tournaments today and the Junior boys won their tournament yesterday. I was VERY proud of the junior girls team that I coached. They played tremendously well together and most importantly, they showed the good sportsmanship that Eastdale teams have earned a reputation for. It was a fantastic experience coaching them (even though they soaked me with water after our championship game:) and I hope that I will get a chance to coach some of this year's grade 3's on the team next year. Get your gloves out this summer and start throwing the ball around for some practice. It's only 10 and 1/2 months left until next year's tryouts!

Updates

EQAO is over, and I was so proud of how the students handled themselves during the assessment.
The next couple of weeks are packed with excitement (and still some work for the grade 3's).

Monday June 13- Track and Field for many of our gr 3-5 students.
Tuesday June 14- boys baseball tournament - we will be out to watch some of the games - bring your sunscreen, and some money if you want to purchase treats from the 'pink truck'
Wednesday June 15- girls baseball tournament - we will be out to watch some of the games - bring your sunscreen, and some money if you want to purchase treats from the 'pink truck'
Thursday June 23 - African Lion Safari trip

Our library at school is closing up, so please check your shelves and counters at home for any outstanding library books that need to be returned.
We are currently working on our "Hanzel, Gretel and Fred" play. The students have impressed me with their acting abilities. They love to ham-it-up!

Brain Food

We have been working on growing our brains at school this year. We have fed them with rest, knowledge, exercise and now with food. We've tried 2 different recipes so far for brain smoothies. Here they are if you want to try them at home:

Lean and Green

2 slices of melon (we used the green one)
handful of fresh mint
1/2 bag of spinach
1/2 a mango
4 oz apple juice
2 tbsp plain yogurt
icecubes

Put the spinach and apple juice in a blender, blend until it is reduced. Add everything else and blend together.

Note: freeze the melon ahead of time and eliminate the ice if you wish, the recipe also called for 1/4 of a cucumber but I haven't added it as I'm not a big fan of the cucumber.

Pre-Game Boost
4-5 frozen strawberries
handful of raspberries
1 banana
4 oz orange juice
2 tbsp yogurt

Put it all in a blender until smooth.

Note: Someone recommended adding a bit of honey if this is a little on the sour side. We will try this version to see if we like it better.

Updates

The countdown is on to the end of the year (although the students still continue to push on and work hard). There are many things happening in the upcoming weeks. Here are some of them for you to be aware of.

May 30 - June 9 - students will be completing their EQAO work during the morning session here at school. It is important for them to be here on time and ready to do their best work on these days.
June 1 - Crazy Hat day
June 10 - PA day
June 13 - Junior track and field meet for students who have made the team (this hasn't been made yet)
June 14 & 15 - Eastdale's Annual 3-pitch tournament (nutrition free days - School Council will be BBQing these days)
June 15 - Twin Day
June 22 - Canada Day for Eastdale Spirit - wear your red and white
June  28th - Reportcards go home with students
June 29th - Last day of school for students
June 30th - PA day

Dance-a-thon

Looking forward to busting a move with the grade 3's tomorrow morning!

An Education in the Great Outdoors!

What do you remember about these sights from our trip?

What was your favourite moment of that day?

Virtual Library Resource

Parents,
Today I am sending home a flyer for the HWDSB Virtual Library. It is a great resource with several different formats of information on it for your childs interest and enjoyment. At the bottom of the page is the username and password required for students to access the information.

HTTP://WWW.HWDSB.ON.CA/SERVICES/VIRTUALLIBRARY/    

Water Problem

Check out our work from today's Daily Challenge!

Class Writing

Today we worked together to write a good piece of non-fiction D.T.P. Here's what it looked like. The students are now working on writing their own piece of D.T.P. about the dandelion. If they want to do a little research on their own about the dandelion it will help them in their writing.
Ask your child to find a piece of DTP writing in your house and point out some of the features of good DTP.

Track and Field Friday

TRACK AND FIELD DAY    

                         EASTDALE – 2011                    

Eastdale will be having its school-wide track and field day on Friday, May 13^th.  

All students will participate in all corresponding events (found below) and ribbons will be awarded for first, second, and third placements.  Students will compete against students of the same gender, born in the same year.  Placements will qualify competitors (gr. 3-8) for the divisional meet in late May/early June at Mohawk Sports Park.

Events include :weight throw (shotput)       (gr.6-8)

                                      softball throw                    (gr.SK-5)

                                      80/100 metre race             (gr.1-5/6-8)

                                      300/400 metre race           (gr.1-5/6-8)

                                      700/800 metre race           (gr.3-5/6-8)

                                     standing/running long jump (gr. SK-3/4-8)

                                     soccer dribble                    (gr. SK & 1 & 2)

                                     200 metre race                   (gr. 6-8)

                                     high jump                            (gr. 6-8)

Please ensure your child is wearing proper athletic attire for the day’s forecast, has plenty to eat and drink, and has sun protection.  Please let us know if any medical conditions should be of concern that day.  Our raindate is Mon. May 16^th.

(Grade 8 students will be running the events this year.)

N. Jamani

Gr. 7/ P.E. Teacher

Pioneer Project Information

To keep you updated on what students are doing during class, here is what they are working on for their Pioneer Projects.

Moms, You ROCK!!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and an especially terrific Mother's Day!
Thanks for all your support this year. The kids and I really appreciate it.

Spirit Days

Need a morning to sleep in a little longer than usual? Well, this Wednesday is it! Students at Eastdale have the opportunity to participate in Pajama Day on Wednesday, May 11th. They are asked to bring in a non-perishable food item or donation of a loonie if possible to be collected for our local food bank.
There are several other Spirit Days that will be happening over the next two months and we will be tracking the percentage of class participation. The class with the greatest percentage of participation over the five days will win a class pizza party! I know that we can do it! I've got my Valentino's order ready to go! :)

Some quick updates.

Wednesday, May 4th is Open House. Please come visit us in the classroom between 5:30 and 7pm. The book sale is also on. I'm hoping for the Bieber poster for my locker!)

Here are some things pertaining to our grade 3 class:
We have 3 more weeks of swimming on Thursday afternoons.
Monday, May 9th, forms due for Outdoor Ed trip.
Friday, May 13th, track and field at Eastdale.
Wednesday, May 18th, afternoon trip to Outdoor Ed centre.
Friday, May 20th, Dance-a-thon. - Pledges due.
Monday, May 23rd, Victoria Day Holiday
Tuesday, May 24th, RJ and DPA event - bring comfortable clothes and shoes.
Week of May 30th, EQAO will begin.
Friday, June 10th, PA Day for students.

In literacy, we are looking at non-fiction text styles with a focus on things we can do to improve the environment around us.
In math, we have been working on the Measurement strand. We have been comparing liquid capacities to one litre, have been reading analoge and digital time to 5 minutes and will be discussing mass in terms of the unit kilogram. We will be looking at geometry in the next couple of classes as well and will be discussing flips, slides and turns.
We've looked at symmetry in art, and are continuing our Pioneer studies by completing a research-based project with Mr. Oconnor.

New Classmate

The grade 3's are excited to welcome a new member to our class. We're not sure of the name yet, but will let you know when we know. Can you see him/her?
In science we are studying plants and are discussing:
parts of a plant,
needs of plants,
how plants adapt to different conditions,
how we impact plants and how they impact us.

We had a wonderful time at swimming today! The students have dramatically improved since our sessions in the fall. What do you think the capacity of the pool is?

Getting Wet with the Litre

Today we were experimenting with water and different containers to measure capacity. Students should be able to identify one litre and describe how much capacity an object has compared to a litre. For example, the should be able to say a typical waterbottle holds about 1/2  of  one litre.

Hoppy Easter

Hope you all had an enjoyable long weekend with your families. I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things at school.
I am excited that we get to go back to swimming this Thursday afternoon.

Here's a link that you can use to practice using the words: am, is and are.

http://www.bradleys-english-school.com/online/flashmultiplechoice/mc_amisare.html

Check it out. Don't forget to finish your math homework online (make up some questions about your design for your classmates to answer).

Weekend Observations

 

Can you tell which ones belong to the girls and which ones belong to the boys?

Sprouting Seeds

Students,

Who can tell our readers about the pictures here? Type a comment about them and I will add it onto the main part of the blog. I brought them home and will take pictures and post them over the weekend for you to check out.

Parents, Wondering About the Pictures?

The following photos were taken of the students work. They were asked to create a design with a maximum of 3 different types of pattern blocks. Now that I've posted their pictures, they need to comment on their own picture with a list of questions about the picture. Hopefully many of the questions will relate to what we are learning in our study of fractions. They can then check out someone elses questions and post an answer for them.

As usual, when they are commenting, they should include their first name, make their comment post under 'Annonymous', preview their post and then post it.

Proceedural Writing

 Each morning last week, students were asked to write a procedure (or the steps involved in completing a task). They looked carefully at their work, their classmates work and some samples and as a result, they improved their work significantly as the week went by! Here are our guidelines and some samples of what they did.

Math Update

Some of the students have been reviewing subtraction with borrowing. Ask your child to try out a question for you like: 300 - 78. They can solve it on paper first and check their answer with a calculator.





We had a quick introduction to Fractions of a Set today. Some quick questions you could ask them are ones like:

-What fraction of the people living in our house are male? female?
-What fraction of windows in our house have curtains or blinds?
-What fraction of a week is one day?
-What fraction of a dime is one penny?
-What fraction of a dollar is one penny?
-What fraction of a metre is 1 cm?

This is a chart of the highlights of what we learned today.

Poetry Pause

During class today, we paused for a minute to look at a poem. We discussed what a poem can 'look like' and what it can 'sound like.' The students had many great ideas about this! Here is a picture of some of the work we did with the poem, Under the Ground.

Here is another poem to read and enjoy. Please add a comment with your name that explains how you know that SEEDS is a poem. Use information from the text and your own ideas to support your answer.

Gr 4 Words

Grade Three Sight Words

Parents, please find below a list of sight words for grade three. You may wish to review these words with your child and have them practice reading them and writing them. There is a link that has flash cards for the words and some games that you can play. If they've mastered the grade three words, feel free to move on to the grade four ones.

about	better	bring	carry
clean	cut	done	draw
drink	eight	fall	far
full	got	grow	hold
hot	hurt	if	keep
kind	laugh	light	long
much	myself	never	only
own	pick	seven	shall
show	six	small	start
ten	today	together	try
warm

http://www.kidzone.ws/dolch/grade3.htm

Multiplication Houses

Today in class we made a multiplication house for the zero facts. Students will bring this home in their agendas tonight. For homework, students need to build the zero facts house. They could use some adult help with this (if you have an exacto blade, it makes it easier to cut out the doors).

The steps to building the house are:
-cut out both patterns along the dashed gray lines,
-cut out the window and door openings along the dashed lines,
-add glue to the back of the front of the house around the window frames and doors,
-glue the two pieces of house together so the windows open onto the multiplication-sentence answers and the door opens onto the riddle answer.

Happy Birthday!!

Hope you are having a GREAT day!

Math Update

We are continuing to look at division in math, but now we are talking about it using fractions. Some vocabulary that we should be familiar with are:

equal parts

fractions

halves

sixths

quarters/fourths

fifths

eighths

thirds

tenths

mixed number

Octi