David Greenberg, Author and Poet

We have the pleasure of hosting Children's author and poet, David Greenberg this week at TIS.  Today, grade 3 students had a chance to listen to him recite his poetry, as well as give us thoughts about writing in general.  He was very entertaining and he was certainly the highlight of the day! On Thursday, he will lead a session on poetry writing.  We are so fortunate.

Recent 3P Pictures

Week of February 11-15

This week the students of grade 3P were very engaged in the arts.  For this Unit of Inquiry, How We Express Ourselves, there is a great deal of exposure to many forms of art.  We are learning that even poetry is a form of art.  In our research, we have learned that there are far more musical instruments than we have even heard of, that there are so many regional, and instruments which are native to countries, and regions within countries.  In Somalia, we learned that they play the mouth bow, which is a string instrument which is similar to a violin bow.  And of course there are so many instruments unique to central Asia.

This week we collated our collective "Starry Night" painting by Vincent Van Gogh.  As part of the process, the students each painted one square grid of the giant painting.   They quickly realized that to reproduce his work authentically, they would need to collaborate more about color, line and texture.  It is our goal to paint this again collectively, but this time the students have realized that it would work much better if they paint it in small "expert" groups, whereby each group focuses on one image within the painting.  For example, one group will focus on painting only the stars.  They will have to collaborate to agree on color, the direction of the line and texture.   Of course being able to collaborate and work in small groups is a critical skill.  

One of our writing focuses has been poetry.  Hopefully parent(s) received Valentine's day poem from your child.  The format of the poem was a cinquain.  A cinqain poem is a five line poem, which uses a particular syllabic style, and usually does not rhyme.  This poem was on the heels of an acrostic poem which they wrote earlier in the week.  They are learning to love poems.  They especially love it when we read from famed children's poet, Shel Silverstein.  As part of our unit, we are asking your children to recite a poem from their home language.   I am hopeful that your child has discussed this with you.  We will have more information about our upcoming poetry event, our Poetry Slam, shortly.

We have been progressing with our routine language and math activities.   Our historical fiction writing is just entering the revision and editing stage, although many are still writing their stories.  This will continue for a couple of months.  There are some pretty imaginative stories being developed!  Fraction bingo was popular during our math olympics this week.  We routinely engage in explicit teaching situations about number sense, which contributes to students gaining confidence about the strategies they use to solve mathematical problems. It is in keeping with our belief that with knowledge of strategies, we can all be competent in math. 

It was a very engaging week.  

Next week there is a special PE assembly, and Poet David Greenberg is visiting our campus. Our Grade 3 classes have two workshops with Mr. Greenberg, including a poetry writing session.  It promises to be an exciting week!

Have a great weekend!

Mr. Shawn and Ms. Olga 

Music as Art

This week we had the pleasure to watch two accomplished musicians play for us in our classroom, as we explored the arts.  It was wonderful for students in 3P to make connections between emotion and music right before our eyes, as they noted how Bach's music was brought to life by the emotion of the two musicians.  Well done Tony and Mr. Fowler!!

Pictures from Week of Jan 27 -- Feb 1

Poetry and Fraction Understandings

Well that week flew by!  We began the week by documenting and collating our summative assessments from our previous UOI, as well as and other learning such as our Mental Math into our google folders.  While we have busy weeks, we also take the time to take stock about our learning.  Parents have access to these folders at any time, but expect an email from your child soon, inviting you to take a look at their learning again.  As much as students are sharing their learning with you, they are also learning important organizational skills by sorting and maintaining their learning in an organized structure.

This week in language they continued their work with their historical writing projects for the book we will self publish by the end of the year.  It will be a project that will require a great deal of rewriting, editing, and revision before it meets the standard for published work.  The students are excited to use the language of publishing writers.  It will be an ongoing process until May.  

This week, they were exposed to poetry.  We have lofty goals for this as well. The children will be performing during our "poetry slam". We will have more information about this later.  This week we introduced the basic features of rhyme, rhythm and form of basic poetry.  Next week they will write their first poem, an acrostic poem.

In Math this week, we continued our routine activities.  One game the students often play is Yahtzie, which helps them build on their basic addition/multiplication/division facts.  They learn how to make decisions based on chance and probability, and use the above mentioned skills to keep score.  It is a great game for math.  This week the students also constructed greater understanding of the relationship among fractions, both for sets and units.  For example, knowing that they would prefer 1/4 of a pizza versus 1/5 is not an easy concept for grade 3 students.  As well, understanding that two quarters is the same as a hal, or 2/6 is the same as 1/3 are other difficult understanding, which we are building on.  In math, it is critical to have the conceptual understanding that underpins the facts.  Students understand some fractions already, such as one student who knows that she uses fractions when baking, by measuring how much sugar to pour into a bowl.  Learning is best when it is authentic.  

This week we had the pleasure to meet David Greenberg through a Skype conversation.  He is coming to our campus in a few weeks, and the students were able to ask him some very pertinent questions prior to his visit.  Friday was World Read Aloud Day.  TIS was but one of thousands of students taking part in literacy activities.   

Finally, this week we really sunk our teeth into our new Unit of Inquiry (UOI), How We Express Ourselves.  We did a great deal of "big idea" building and thinking.   What is Art?  Are we all artistic?  How is emotion and art connected?  What kind of skills are required.   What is interpretation and perspective, and how are these terms related?  This week we revisited the elements of art, which is something the students are well versed in, thanks to their art teacher, Ms. Åsa Lind.  Ask your child about their music/line art they produced in our classroom this week.  Be sure to ask how they incorporated music, emotion and line to produce their artwork.  

It was a great week of learning.