News for Week of April 15 - 19, 2024

Thank You

The Grade 3 students are doing an excellent job preparing for EQAO. Thank you to parents for assisting and encouraging your child to complete their weekly EQAO Practice Booklets and return them by the due date (Friday) so we can review their answers together. ***The next EQAO homework (Practise booklet #3) is due back to school on Friday., April 19th.

A reminder to Grade 2 students that it's important for them to return their phonics homework by the due date requested. The latest Grade 2 phonics homework is due Monday of this week.

IMPORTANT: Grade 3 Coding Workshop/Hackathon Challenge:

Students in grade three will be participating in a “Coding in the Classroom” experience hosted by Coder Sports. Students will take part in three 1-hour coding sessions (April 22, 23, and 26), specially crafted to offer a fun and engaging introduction to coding. A group of co-op students will be leading the workshop, and they are part of a STEM leadership program, coming from various high schools across the city, including All Saints.

The aim of the experience is to foster teamwork and creativity among the students, who will be organized into small groups based on their prior coding experience. This hands-on approach not only introduces them to the basics of coding but also encourages collaboration and problem-solving. 

In an effort to organize students into the appropriate groups, please follow this link and complete the registration form by Wednesday, April 17th. The information will be used to group students based on their individual comfort levels with coding. 

We look forward to the students engaging in the Hackathon challenge!

Our Learning 

Language:

In Writing, we have completed our persuasive letters. We will complete some more persuasive texts over the next couple of weeks as additional practice. We will soon begin to work on retelling fictional narrative stories using the Shape Go! Map as an organizer. We will then use what we have learned about the elements of narratives to write our own narrative stories. You can support your child's learning by asking them to retell the important parts of a fiction story they read to you.

Our next UFLI phonics lesson will focus on  the long o vowel sound as in the word open. The long vowel sound is the same as the vowel's name, o. 

The vowel o says its own name, o, when there is a silent E at the end of a word, like in the words home, bone, code, rope, and note. The E does not make a sound so we say it is "silent" ("silent E" or "bossy E"). 

Please have your child practise the heart words we have learned so far in class: the, I, a, said, to, do, of, see, he, be, me, from, you, what, have, look, book, are, was, your, want, go, no, so, goes, says, they, their, were, talk, walk, could, should, would, or, for, who, *by, *my.

Math:

In our Grade 3 time unit, we have been using analog and digital clocks to tell the time in hours and minutes, and we will soon learn how to include seconds to tell the time. Please review how to read and write the time to the hour (e.g., 2:00), half hour (e.g., 8:30), quarter hours (e.g., 3:15, 3:45), as well as to the 5 minutes (e.g., 6:05, 6:10, 6:25, etc.). We will have an assessment of our learning about time this week. 

Link to Grade 3 Parent Summary Letter About Time here

In Grade 2, we will review how to use non-standard units and standard units of time, including seconds, minutes, hours, to describe the duration of various events. We will have a short assessment early this week.

Link to Grade 2 Parent Summary Letter About Measuring Time in Seconds and Minutes here

Help Please

We still need your help! We are working on a collective Welcoming Multilingual mural. We are seeking parent volunteers to come and help us paint Welcome in as many languages as we have at St. Gabriel School. Thank you to those of you who have already volunteered to help us. If you are interested in getting involved, please fill out this form:

Welcome Mural Form

Important Dates:

April is Earth Month

Thursday, April 18: Library books due

Friday, April 19: St. Gabriel School Movie Night

Monday, April 22: Earth Day

April 22, 23, 26 (morning): Grade 3 Coder Sports "Coding in the Classroom" Hackathon