Pictures; Week of Oct 22-26

Probability; Elapsed Time, and Currency

Math is far more than knowing addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  In grade 3P, we spend a fair bit of time practicing these basic math operations, but we also apply our knowledge to other areas of what we call math for everyday living.  This week during our math olympics we were investigating many areas of time and number.  What is the chance that we will roll a 5 on a dice?  If your ideal amount of sleep was 8 and a half hours, and you wake up at 6:15, what time should you go to bed?  How much change would you get if a watermelon was 27,000 cym but you only had a 50,000 cym bill?  These are all relevant questions, even for grade three students.

This week the students also worked hard on researching and writing notes for their time projects.

This weekend is UN Day, one of the best events on the TIS calendar in my view.  It all starts at 10:00 am on Saturday.  The day kicks off with a UN Parade of Nations.  Please ensure your child is dressed in national clothing.  The parade is followed by an assembly of cultural presentations in the gym, and then culminates with a food festival in the park, and country room visits in the secondary building.  It is a fantastic opportunity to learn about other cultures.  I hope to see you there!  And a little bit of selfish promotion...be sure to come shoot a puck in the Canada room!!

Topic Bottles
One final note:  Next week we will ask students to bring in an empty bottle, preferably with a lid.  This is for a learning activity we will begin.  Students will decorate their bottle.  At the beginning of new Units of Inquiry (We are currently on the second of a total of six throughout the year), students will bring home some discussion questions.   The idea is that students will be asked to draw one question out a dinner time for example, and have all members of the family respond and discuss the question.  So please ensure your child brings in a bottle on Monday.  Thank-you! 

Be sure to see the pictures below!  Some of the pictures are from the rehearsal for UN Day.

Student Led Inquiry

For our current unit of inquiry, we in grade 3 have taken a new approach from what we have done in the past.  There is a heavy emphasis on what we refer to as Student Led Inquiry.  Simply put, it is a process of learning that involves a number of important activities for students, including asking their own questions, investigating multiple sources of information for a purpose, thinking critically to make sense of information they’ve found, and establishing and communicating new understandings and knowledge.  Of course these are processes we pursue for all units of inquiry, and this is how it has happened previously.  What makes this more unique this time is that we have presented all of our information much earlier on, so that students have a broad understanding of the central idea from the beginning.  The goal is to make the students much more involved in their personal learning path.  For example, we exposed the students to various "tuning in" resources about our unit, such as videos, books, and discussions.  Our UOI, How We Organize Ourselves, is about how we understand and use time to manage our lives. One student used this preliminary research and knowledge presented, and would now like to pursue knowledge about time zones and the international  date line, and to develop her understanding how it is connected to managing time.  In this way, students build their own repertoire of skills as they research, think critically, and present their ideas.  This way they also link their math and literacy skills which are developing simultaneously. For example, they read, gather and summarize information, both in note and extended form.  They also may build something related to their learning, such as a model of a time keeping device such as a sundial or water clock. They apply their growing math knowledge of time related concepts such as elapsed time, the use of the earth's moving shadow to measure time, and of course how to tell time to the minute. 

This image outlines the research process we use in class.  Students are encouraged to be very participative in class, working and discussing ideas together.  My experience is that during student led inquiries, students gain a great deal of confidence in their research abilities.

In addition to the literacy associated with their research this week, the students were learning about the writing process: prewriting, writing, revising editing and publishing their work.  Most students were in the revising and editing stage, after having chosen a piece of written work they felt they could improve.

In math this week, the students were learning about arrays, area, and grids, and how these terms the are connected to addition and multiplication.

Be sure to see the photos from the week below.

I wish everyone a restful few days with your families.

Pictures: Oct 8-12

How We Organize Ourselves

Our new UOI can best be described as an inquiry into the interconnectedness
between human-made systems and communities.The most important system that humans use for organization is time. As our central idea indicates, an understanding of time impacts how we organize and manage our lives. Last week we tried to see the impact of not having time....at least to an extent. "Fluid time" was an experience whereby we removed all clocks from the classroom, and tried to function as normally as possible. We arrived early to music class, missed some of me-time, and were late for recess numerous times. Needless to say, the students quickly began to dislike the disorganization of fluid time. The students are writing about their experience in their living journal.

Time was also the focus in math this week. Understanding time begins with knowing that a day is a calculation of the rotation of the earth, and a year is the time it takes for the earth to travel around the sun. But in math, understanding time is knowing how to tell time on a face clock, but also how to convert seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months.

Time flies when we're having fun!

Pictures: Oct 1-5