Uzbek Art and Equivalent Fractions

It was a week of very different concepts, but we can say that about any week.

Wednesday 3P students visited the various artisan shops at the famous Hasti Imom in Tashkent.  The students were able to experience first hand, how their art was made.  Through their observations and relevant questions, they appreciated how intricate their work was, how creative the artists had to be in order to create the work they do.  A few jaws were dropped when it was revealed that one embroidered quilt, or one wooden carving could take as long as three months to produce, yet the cost to purchase them seemed extremely disproportionate. We visited 5 different artisans doing lacquered painting, embroidery, straw art, miniature painting and wood carving.  See the pictures below of our field trip, as well as a few others taken during this week of learning. 

Another highlight of the week was the Elementary school assembly celebrating International Mother Tongue Day.  We had three risk taking students (Alex, Adnon and Abdulbosit) participating in the assembly, singing songs in their mother tongue.

In math we continued our work with fractions, with a focus on equivalent, mixed and proper/improper fractions.  In language arts, we have been writing and listening to poetry, as well as contrasting and comparing the movie and the book version of Roald Dahl's book, BFG.  It was a very busy but rewarding week!  I managed to get into PE this week to see what they were doing.  I hope you enjoy the pictures. 


Two Important Announcements;

1) In light of the recent illnesses, please discuss handwashing with your child.

2)   Next week is Spirit Week! Children are encouraged to dress up. Monday :Stripes, Tuesday: Twin Day, Wednesday: Wear a Tie, Thursday: Blue and White, Friday: Crazy Day

One Memory--Three Pieces of Art

Being able to observe our feelings/messages, synthesize and consolidate the message, and then to present our messages in the form of art is the essence of our Unit of Inquiry.  This week past, 3P have been learning to interpret art, to understand that we all have subjective and different views about a piece of art. Beginning this week students will begin to create 3 different forms of art about their memory, which they have carefully reflected about. 

This photograph elicited many ideas for example.  The students formed small groups to reflect on the photograph together. Some students felt it represented poverty due to the person in the foreground  being shoeless.  Others suggested it represented a sense of happiness and community given that there are other people surrounding him, and that there is a guitar.   Others linked the photograph to another of a black man who some felt was poor.  One student observed sharply that while one leg in the first picture was dark, this was due to a shadow, as the other leg was clearly lighter.  Still others felt the photo represented a sense of freedom and carefree attitudes.  So many ideas coming from grade three students tell us that understanding arts are a wonderful way for students to explore and develop their ideas.  Being able to express our ideas verbally, on paper and through art really makes students truly fluent.  This week in Language Arts we will begin to write poetry.  Last week we explored rhythmic and rhyming patterns for acrostic, haiku, shape and cinquain poems.  In math last week we continued our work with fractions.  I sense a growing understanding fractions in 3P.  In a routine math activity, however, we discovered that there is misunderstanding of how to add and subtract integers.  This will certainly be a topic this week coming up!  Grade three--always something to learn, always something to celebrate. 

Pictures from the Week of Feb 5-9

"Audiences Interpret the Arts Differently"

This week students had the chance to interpret many kinds of art.  They were exposed to graffiti, cross-stitching, painting, narrative writing, photography, sculpture, and knitting by welcoming various parents and teachers into our classroom.  In addition, the boys and girls were exposed to other forms of art, whereby they were to focus on, using their observation and presenting skills.  Giving such exposure to students opens their world.  Our next step will be to have the children begin to produce their own art.  As you are probably aware from discussions at home, your child has been thinking and writing about their memories they have.  The goal will be for each student to produce three pieces of art, using three different art forms about their chosen memory.  Our plan will be to have a full-on art exhibit in about 3 weeks.  I will have more information about this at a later date.

We have connected our work in math to our unit of inquiry as well.  Tessellation is an art form which depends on geometric shapes to make patterns.  The picture below is a work in progress which promises to become a beautiful piece of art, but more importantly, the student will develop awareness about how tessellations work.

In math we have also been hard at work with fractions. At this stage in their development, students are learning the difference between expressing fractions from a set of units, and a whole unit.  Of course, it is tricky to understand that the larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.  We use a lot of manipulatives to gain understanding about size of fractions.

In language we have been working on parts of speech, practicing cursive writing, doing our collaborative reading in groups, and our editing/revising for their Rainbow Sheep stories.  The latter is proving to be a very challenging task, as they are experiencing what writers go through by having to do several re-writes and considerable revisions.  Much work remains to be done, but I am seeing progress in their writing skills.  We will begin to explore poetry this week coming up.

Three important pieces of information

• We have a field trip planned for Feb 21st to the Hasti Imam Complex for an exposure to Uzbek Art.  A permission form and more information will go home early this week.
• Tuesday is the toy and book sale.  Tomorrow, (Monday) we are still accepting gently used books and toys for donation.  Be sure to return  the permission form if your child is able to attend the movie night on Tuesday evening.
•  Friday, Feb 16 is a holiday.

Learners hard at work!