Fractions and Historical Fiction

Good day everyone;

This past week was a busy one.  The winter concert was a great way to end the week. It was amazing to see the work that the students do with Mr. Fowler. The students in 3P are a musical bunch.  Dita and Jihyun  did a great job introducing some of the performances.  For those who may not have been there on Friday, I have uploaded the grade 3 instrumental piece from their rehearsal on Thursday:

In the classroom this week we were busy wrapping up our unit of inquiry, Where We Are in Place and Time.  This unit was essentially a study of history, about important contributions made by various inventors, explorers and scientists.  We had the pleasure of welcoming some very famous people to our classroom, including but not limited to Isaac Newton, Henry Ford, Mirzo Ulugbek, and even Orville and Wilbur Wright.  Obviously the students were dressed up and in character.   :)  I was very pleased with the quality of their presentations and research, particularly the improvement over the last research projects from our previous unit of inquiry, How We Organize Ourselves.  The students were able to present their research verbally.  They were attentive to citing their sources of their research,  but also to deciphering between information which was relevant and which was not.    

In Language Arts this week, we continued our work with historical biographies, which is very much connected to our unit of inquiry.  The students used their background knowledge of their chosen inventor/explorer or scientist, and wrote a story.  They followed the basic structure of historical fiction, which is to base their story on a true major events or characters, but to also introduce story ideas and events which are fictional. We anticipate that this is going to be an ongoing literacy project, which will extend well into the spring.  As a class, we have decided to self publish an anthology of historical fiction.  Our objective is to print the book so each student can have a copy.  We will also give copies to the school library for other students to sign out.  The 3P students are very excited.  But they know that to get the book to print, it will require a great deal of pre-writing, planning, writing, editing and revising.  We will have more information about this in a few weeks.

In Math this week, we revisited shape congruence through the use of Chinese tangrams, tessellation, and reviewed the language of 3D and 2D shapes, and measuring angles.  On Friday we began our investigation into fractions, both in sets and whole unit format. This will be our precursor to working with decimals over the next few weeks.

Be sure to see the pictures above from the summative assessments, the winter concert, as well as other classroom learning activities.

Have a great Sunday!

Tomorrow we are happy to welcome our new student, Yejin.


All the best,

Mr. Shawn

Pictures from the Week of Jan 21-25

Back At It!

Welcome to 2019!  I wish all students and their families a very prosperous New Year, filled with happiness and a lot of learning! 


This week, the students were working on their research projects for our Unit of Inquiry.  They have each chosen a famous inventor, explorer or discoverer who made an important contribution.  They will be presenting their research using a variety of media.    They are very busy, documenting their research, taking notes, citing their sources, sorting information for relevance, and organizing their thoughts.  For their presentations they have a variety of choices of tools to use; from posters to models of inventions, to a book using the Book Creator App, a "Green Screen" video, among others. In addition, all students will be dressing up and getting into the "character" of their particular famous person.  The presentations will be made in class on the Monday, the week after next.  This will be the second presentation they do now in class and I can tell from the quality of their research that they will be pleased with their efforts, and that they will demonstrate more confidence and effective presentation skills.  I am looking forward to hearing them. 

This week in math we have been learning about measuring angles with protractors, but also about features such as obtuse and acute, and degrees.  Their work in Mental Math continues on a weekly basis.

This week we also continued our read-aloud of Ernest Shackleton's Journey to the South Pole.  It is an incredible account of valour, perseverance and hardship.  The students are quite captivated by the this non-fiction work.  The students have been doing a character sketch of Shackleton in their writing book.

Although this past week was only a four day week, we achieved quite a lot.

I look forward to sharing their learning experiences with you and your child on Tuesday during Student-Parent-Teacher meetings.  If you are uncertain about your time, please let me know!

All the best!

Mr. Shawn and Ms. Olga