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Friday, May 4, 2018

UN Meeting and Sharing the Planet

I apologize for no blog update last week.  


How the World Works

To close our our How the World Works UOI, the children conducted special UN Meetings on the issue of child labour in mines.  Each was tasked with representing a particular stakeholder group--the child miners, the mine owners, the families of the child miners, the technology manufacturers who purchase the minerals and the consumers.  While representing their stakeholder groups, they were also required to use their problem solving skills arrive at collaborative resolutions which were acceptable to all stakeholders.  I am proud of their participation.  They were engaged, argumentative (in the positive sense 😊 ) and presented their ideas well.  I am equally proud of the grade 4 students who acted as the moderators.  They were chosen because they participated as stakeholders last year. I look forward to bringing our current grade 3 students back next year!















Sharing the Planet 

As we are knee deep in our new Unit of Inquiry, Sharing the Planet, it always amazes me how deeply students think about issues, usually in ways we as teachers don't realize.  One student today wondered about the role of God in the sustainability of water.  It is certainly an investigation that she will pursue, which will give meaning and context to her.  The central idea for this UOI is we can make choices to support the sustainability of earths finite resources." As the students explore about various natural resources, and the challenges faced by each of them, it provides a rich opportunity to make deeper connections through formulating ideas and opinions as a result of research, writing, presenting and persuasion skills (although most would agree their children already possess persuasion skills 😆 )

In math this week we have been focused on working out the average (mean), median and mode for data sets.  In language arts we are doing some bullet point research about natural resources, and still working on our book reports and group reading as an ongoing effort.  Ask your child about homonyms!  It is a relief to be finished the Rainbow Sheep stories.  Be sure to read the previous post about this! 















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