Term 2 Week 14
Dear Parents,
Thank you very much to those who participated in Teacher Appreciation Week! It was really thoughtful and caring! I really appreciate it!
This week we had a wonderful time at the big gym playing basketball! It was great to see the students from every grade having fun together!
In English this week, we worked on prefixes. We practiced adding un, dis, and mis to the front of the word to change the meaning of the word to its opposite. We started reading two tales from other countries "How Turtle Got His Shell" and "Why Tiger Can't Climb Trees". We made predictions, read for enjoyment, identified and retold key story elements, and answered cause and effect questions. We also had fun finding prefixes in the stories. We worked on creating our own stories by building up interesting settings and characters.
In Maths class, we focused on 3D shapes. We looked at how the base of the shape often gives the shape its name. We worked on figuring out how many faces, edges, and corners a 3D shape has, even when we can only see the shape from one side. We practiced drawing unusual shapes from different angles. The students really loved building 3D shapes from paper models, which helped us to understand the nets of a shape. We enjoyed using a magnet set to make the shapes. The most fun thing was when we made shapes from clay and cut through them to find what the shape looked like from the inside (a cross section of a shape). It was a great way to help visualise 3D shapes, and it was so much fun! We also used our map reading skills to help with our inquiry.
We had another busy week in UOI! Although we already finished our summative assessments last week, we had some unfinished work to do! Each student had decided to do a real action for Sharing the Planet. With summatives and Science Week out of the way, we had time to go back and wrap up our actions. It's activities like this that make me realise just how much I love IB! These 3rd Grade students are empowered to take real action and do real things that affect our world!
We started the week by watching a video of Greta Thunberg speaking at the United Nations. Some students had already researched her for merit homework and knew a lot about her. We talked about how cool it is that she is "just a child" yet she is a world famous environmental activist. We felt inspired by her and finished our chosen actions to help the Earth. Students had chosen either group or individual actions:
-posters/brochures to be put up around the school to encourage other students and teachers not to litter and to recycle
-a recycling box for the teachers' office
-a brochure about apps you can download to help the Earth
-flyers for each child to take home about not wasting paper
-a letter to the government to ask for trash cans and recycling bins at Horie Park
-a letter to the government to ask for trash cans and recyling bins around the streets near school
I was impressed that students decided on, researched, and completed these actions with very little teacher guidance. These are wonderful skills for these children to learn. We reflected that if every 3rd Grader around the world took on these small actions, it could all add up to big action that will help protect our Earth for the future. Well done to each child in the class!
We also made some more environmentally friendly choices in the classroom too:
-keeping the lights off if it's not too dark
-reusing scrap paper
-not laminating
-recycling plastic
I would love to teach Sharing the Planet all year...but we had to move on to our 5th unit-How We Express Ourselves (last year's 6th unit-we've switched the order this year). This will be our unit that will determine our Year End Performance. We began by brainstorming what we think of when we hear this unit. We then looked at our central idea, Personal experiences provide inspiration for an artist to create, and our lines of inquiry and related concepts.
We gave our own personal definitions of what art is, and filled in a KWL chart sharing what we already know and what we want to know about art and inspirations. We read the story of a famous artist, Henri Matisse, and used his style to make some art of our own using scissors, glue, and scrap paper.
Important:
-We will practice for the ISA tests on Monday and Tuesday. Please come to school by 8:30!
Have a great weekend!
Ms. Stacy.
Thank you very much to those who participated in Teacher Appreciation Week! It was really thoughtful and caring! I really appreciate it!
This week we had a wonderful time at the big gym playing basketball! It was great to see the students from every grade having fun together!
In English this week, we worked on prefixes. We practiced adding un, dis, and mis to the front of the word to change the meaning of the word to its opposite. We started reading two tales from other countries "How Turtle Got His Shell" and "Why Tiger Can't Climb Trees". We made predictions, read for enjoyment, identified and retold key story elements, and answered cause and effect questions. We also had fun finding prefixes in the stories. We worked on creating our own stories by building up interesting settings and characters.
In Maths class, we focused on 3D shapes. We looked at how the base of the shape often gives the shape its name. We worked on figuring out how many faces, edges, and corners a 3D shape has, even when we can only see the shape from one side. We practiced drawing unusual shapes from different angles. The students really loved building 3D shapes from paper models, which helped us to understand the nets of a shape. We enjoyed using a magnet set to make the shapes. The most fun thing was when we made shapes from clay and cut through them to find what the shape looked like from the inside (a cross section of a shape). It was a great way to help visualise 3D shapes, and it was so much fun! We also used our map reading skills to help with our inquiry.
We had another busy week in UOI! Although we already finished our summative assessments last week, we had some unfinished work to do! Each student had decided to do a real action for Sharing the Planet. With summatives and Science Week out of the way, we had time to go back and wrap up our actions. It's activities like this that make me realise just how much I love IB! These 3rd Grade students are empowered to take real action and do real things that affect our world!
We started the week by watching a video of Greta Thunberg speaking at the United Nations. Some students had already researched her for merit homework and knew a lot about her. We talked about how cool it is that she is "just a child" yet she is a world famous environmental activist. We felt inspired by her and finished our chosen actions to help the Earth. Students had chosen either group or individual actions:
-posters/brochures to be put up around the school to encourage other students and teachers not to litter and to recycle
-a recycling box for the teachers' office
-a brochure about apps you can download to help the Earth
-flyers for each child to take home about not wasting paper
-a letter to the government to ask for trash cans and recycling bins at Horie Park
-a letter to the government to ask for trash cans and recyling bins around the streets near school
I was impressed that students decided on, researched, and completed these actions with very little teacher guidance. These are wonderful skills for these children to learn. We reflected that if every 3rd Grader around the world took on these small actions, it could all add up to big action that will help protect our Earth for the future. Well done to each child in the class!
We also made some more environmentally friendly choices in the classroom too:
-keeping the lights off if it's not too dark
-reusing scrap paper
-not laminating
-recycling plastic
I would love to teach Sharing the Planet all year...but we had to move on to our 5th unit-How We Express Ourselves (last year's 6th unit-we've switched the order this year). This will be our unit that will determine our Year End Performance. We began by brainstorming what we think of when we hear this unit. We then looked at our central idea, Personal experiences provide inspiration for an artist to create, and our lines of inquiry and related concepts.
We gave our own personal definitions of what art is, and filled in a KWL chart sharing what we already know and what we want to know about art and inspirations. We read the story of a famous artist, Henri Matisse, and used his style to make some art of our own using scissors, glue, and scrap paper.
Important:
-We will practice for the ISA tests on Monday and Tuesday. Please come to school by 8:30!
Have a great weekend!
Ms. Stacy.
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