What’s coming up November 4th – 8th?
Monday – DAY 5 – PE & World Language
Tuesday – DAY 6 – Music
Wednesday – DAY 1 – Swimming & World Language (volunteers needed)
Thursday – DAY 2 – Art & Library (bring books and bag)
Friday – DAY 3 – PE & World Language
KGA Happenings
What another wonderful and busy week! Thank you to all parents who helped make our Halloween celebration memorable for the students. They all had a “spooktacular” time! Please read below about the amazing learning that has been happening in KGA this past week.
Year Long unit of inquiry: How the World Works
Central Idea: Through investigations people test theories and come to new discoveries.
As part of this year long unit, the students were engaged in investigations around pumpkins this past week. We made scientific observations, predicted and tested whether or not our pumpkins would sink or float, measured the height and circumference using non-standard units. We estimated and ordered the pumpkins from lightest to heaviest then weighed them using a scale and used our five senses to make more observations as cleaned out this inside. Our Grade 3 learning buddies even joined us to help us count how many seeds each of our pumpkins had! Did you ever think there was so much to learn from pumpkins?!
In connection with our Pumpkin Investigations, we also read the book Pumpkin, Pumpkin several times throughout the week. In this book, a boy plants a pumpkin seed and watches it grow through its life cycle. We will plant our own pumpkin seeds this week and observe the changes we see as it begins to grow too!

Unit of Inquiry – Where We Are In Place and Time
We had a wonderful field trip to the submarine on Friday! This was a fascinating field trip that really helped us to think about how people design and create spaces to meet specific purposes.

Reading
In reading, the students are learning to apply their knowledge of phonics to help them begin to sound out some words in the books that they are reading. We have been focusing on using picture cues in repetitive texts to make a prediction about unknown words. We do this by looking at the picture and getting our mouths ready with the first sound of a word. We then think about what word would sound right and make sense.
Many of the books that children are bringing home as their “home readers” are also repetitive texts. Please remember to re-read these books throughout the week. Books should be kept in traveling folders and returned to school every day. Books are changed on Mondays.
Benefits of re-reading these books throughout the week include:
- Vocabulary and Word Recognition. The more a child reads, the larger their vocabulary becomes
- Pattern and Rhythm
- Fluency
- Comprehension
- Confidence
Writing
In writing, we have been learning about “how we grow as writers”. We have been looking at examples of different types of writing from other student’s writing and making noticings about what the writer CAN do. This is helping us to focus our writing goals and motivating us to move forward as writers.
Students had an opportunity last week to begin (and some finish) a Halloween or “Spooky” story inspired by some of our class read alouds. Students focused on drawing and labeling their illustrations, beginning to put words on their paper by capturing sounds they hear in words and reading their writing to others.
We have also begun a new word study unit, We are Word Scientists! In this unit, we will focus on letter knowledge and letter-sound correspondence, phonological awareness, and high-frequency words. The students will be working with the alphabet chart which will help them to consolidate their learning in word study so far.
Math
In math, we have begun our unit on 2D and 3D shapes. We went on a walk around the school to make noticings about shapes in the world around us and have begun looking at different attributes of 2D shapes. We will touch on 3D shapes in the unit but will revisit this skill later in the year. In this unit, we also focus on positional words in relation to shapes such as: next to, behind, in front of, beside, etc.
K Unit 2 Tips for Parents
Learning to measure using non-standing units and to compare measurements of length, weight and capacity will also be skills we will work on in the weeks to come.
On Monday, students will all receive login information (usernames and passwords taped onto their Traveling Folders) as well as a letter giving you more information to an online Math resource – www.ixl.com 
This is an OPTIONAL math practice resource. Please let me know if you have any trouble logging in.