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Sunday, January 21, 2018

End of Where We Are in Place and Time







We have heard wonderful biographies about Christopher Columbus's journey to North America, Amelia Earhart's solo flight around the world, Mirzo Ulugbek's important contributions to astronomy, Jane Goodall's research about chimpanzees, as well as from many other personalities in history.  As we are winding down with this Unit of Inquiry, the boys and girls in 3P have been working on their research skills by analyzing and deciphering the important information, writing biographies into proper format, and presenting their information in the form of a video autobiography.  I am so proud and impressed with their work, and they too should be proud!

This past week in math, we have been investigating about coordinates on maps, in the context of how explorers hundreds of years ago navigated the oceans.  Our Blue Bot challenge #4 was designed to have students work together in small groups so that they successfully navigate their way around the map in short order.  It was a very successful challenge, with a lot of collaboration and teamwork.

Our next UOI, How We Express Ourselves, begins this week. It promises to be an invigorating unit which all students, whether they are artistically inclined or not, will learn tremendously. The arts are a unique way to communicate a message or story--which happens to be our central idea.

This week I will be away on Thursday and Friday at a teacher conference in Oman, but the students will be in very good hands!  I look forward to meeting parents for student-teacher conferences on Wednesday.  See you then!

Friday, January 12, 2018

Biographies and Blue Bots

Hi 3P Parents;

Welcome back to the new school year. As you probably know we have been very busy so far.  Equally you have been probably wondering about what has been going on with regards to a mysterious character on campus.  Well, the mystery has been solved.  Today we had a special guest appear in our classroom.  Mirzo Ulugbek, the famous 14th century scientist and ruler from Central Asia surprised us with his visit to our classroom this morning.  The boys and girls have been doing quite a bit of research about the contribution of science from Central Asia, and of course Mirzo Ulugbek's name was the most prominent they came across in their research.  In any event, by his presence, he was able to clear up quite a bit of the mystery.  This helpful to the students as they prepare for their summative assessment next week.  They will be researching and writing a biography about a famous inventor ,scientist or explorer, as well as presenting their research in the form of a "video autobiography" where they pretend they are the person, and assume their character.  They have also been encouraged to dress up for their short video.  The children will also do a "ladder of feedback" where they provide constructive suggestions and feedback to each other.  In Math this week the focus has been to take our graphing to another level by doing cartesian coordination, better known as finding coordinates on a map.  They have been using the Blue Bots.  All in all, it has been an exciting week. They also managed to find some time to work on their Rainbow Sheep stories and their mental math.  Have a restful weekend!