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.

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