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