To mark Hari Raya, Grade 4 have read books, created decorations and explored sketch-noting as a way to record their information about Ramadan and the Hari Raya celebration.
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To mark this year's Earth Day, we made connections to our Unit of Inquiry learning.
Everyone identified a key characteristic that sets Earth apart from the other planets in our solar system. For example, Earth is special because it has Then they clarified what that meant we needed to protect. Lastly, the students were able to identify an action that we could take to help. This week was our annual Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths (STEAM) week, during which the students enjoy a wide variety of workshops, presentations, guest speakers and learning engagements.
In class, Grade 3 explored the idea of life on Mars. This involved research and the planning and building of model settlements. We identified key areas that our settlement would have to address in order for humans to survive and included these in our designs. Decisions were made about location (near the equator for warmer temperatures or the poles for access to buried ice?) and the style of habitat (under or above ground?). The students created individual sketches and then collaborated to incorporate the best aspects into group designs. The models will be shared in the next blog. We also explored Computer Science by using the coding programme Scratch to animate a space encounter. Later in the week we:
It was wonderful to hear the questions and conversations the students had, showing their knowledge and curiosity about the universe and life. We tuned in to our last How We Express Ourselves unit of inquiry. The Central Idea was "The way we communicate perspectives can impact their influence on others".
One of our lines of inquiry explores how concepts are expressed. To better understand this, the students inquired into what a concept is, how they can explain and express different concepts and what their personal perspective or point of views are. We created a class definition of a concept as "the main idea about what something is or how it works". We quickly realised that there are many, many different concepts. Using lists, the students selected different concepts. They created collages to represent and express a certain concept. Later, they expressed a concept in words and shared their understandings and opinions with their classmates. We began to make connections with movies, books and songs that expressed a particular concept. For example, Anjali said that Martin Luther King Jr's speech showed his perspective on "freedom". Una reflected that the Shawn Mendes' song, Wonder, was about the concept of "love". Vivaan cited the Back to the Future movie as an expression of "time". The students designed measurement challenges for their classmates which we shared on a padlet: padlet.com/sophiecrawshaw/wdmaqluuzso2s8xf
They showed great enthusiasm and creativity and some of their tasks included accurately measuring toy animals, running around the perimeter of the Green Space and estimating the time it took and racing to create a specified length in centimetres using paper-clips. This week all the children were involved in lots of Christmas crafts and games.
The children created various Christmas trees around Block 5. We also wrote our gifts and wishes for the world to place around our classroom trees. Fun Kahoots taught us some of the Christmas traditions from around the world and we reflected on what Christmas meant to different people, creating word clouds to show this thinking. As we come to the end of Semester One, we would like to wish everyone a lovely holiday and a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! Our recent focus on poetry has included: listening to, reciting and reading a wide range of poems, sharing our thoughts and responses, identifying features and building our understanding of the poet's message. We have explored many specific literary devices that poets use, such as alliteration, repetition, rhythm, rhyme, similes and metaphors, personification and onomatopoeia. The children then applied these to different poetic forms: haiku, acrostic, shape, rhyming couplets, free verse, diamante, limericks.... They have each chosen their favourite poem. Please enjoy! The children have really enjoyed our Sharing the Planet unit, where we have been inquiring into how "Accessibility to the Earth's natural resources provides challenges for the global community". Here is a snap-shop of what we have been up to. We tuned in with a Gallery Walk, using the visible thinking routine of I see, I think, I wonder to guide us and prompt questions. We later used the images and prompts to inspire persuasive letter writing. Throughout the unit, the students have been interpreting and discussing real-world data connected to natural resources, alongside research from other sources. The students have applied their research findings to their own maps (both 2-D and 3-D). Mind-maps and graphic organisers have helped to organise and sort information. Perspective has been a key concept and the students have been able to identify and describe different viewpoints and perspectives around issues as well as connect opposing views. To share our learning and the understandings gained from this unit, students first co-constructed can statements (what they thought they should be able to do to show their understanding) and worked in groups to create videos. The students came in a great range of Halloween costumes today- you can see these as well as what everyone said about this spooky celebration below.
To inspire some creative writing, students took a story walk around Block 5 to get ideas about possible spooky settings, characters, action words, speech and problems that they could use in their independent writing. Back in class, the students chose to write Halloween stories or comics. This week, we began tuning in to our new unit under the Trans-disciplinary Theme of How we Organise Ourselves. The Central Idea for this unit is: Government systems influence the lives of citizens and we will be inquiring into different government systems and decision-making processes.
Ahead of this, the students were asked to tackle the task of how to organise our class library. How could we go about this? Could we organise it by Ms. Sophie's likes and dislikes? What is the purpose of organising it? The questions led the class to suggest we share ideas and vote. They explained we should then go with the majority even though sometimes not everyone agrees. The suggestions had to make it easier for everyone to find the kind of books they were looking for. The children went a step further in their decision-making process by then combining suggestions of colour-coding and genre groups. The word compromise was even used. Carrying, sorting, categorising/grouping and labelling then ensued- with these stages all being suggested by the class. Later in the week, they got into smaller groups and were tasked with imagining they were in charge of the Primary School for a day. What would their group do? Observations and reflections at the end included:
As we move into introducing and unpacking our Central Idea, the students will now develop and deepen their understandings of decision-making and how this can differ around the world. |
Welcome to Grade 3
We have had a great first week settling back into school routines and meeting new teachers and students. We thought a lot about what helps us learn and the Learner Profiles that we want to develop more this year. Here is what we came up with for our Class Agreement- what we all agree that we want to do this year.
Here are some final thoughts from the students this week.
Zoe: I'm happy to see my friends again. Shuri: It was fun to come back to school and see my friends. Alisa: It was fun and I feel good. Tyler: I feel good about Grade 3 and learnt more about the Learner Profiles this week. Lucia: My favourite thing this week was when I got to design and decorate my desk organiser. Una: It was nice to meet our new Performing Arts teacher and I'm excited to be in Grade 3 this year! Ashritha: It was nice to meet our new librarian and be back in Block 5. Vivaan: I enjoyed designing our desk storage and I used origami ninja stars on mine. Haruto: I'm excited to be able to play in Lion's Den again. Aurellia: I'm so excited to start the weekend but I enjoyed Art, reading and playtime this week. Takumi: I liked playing in the Lion's Den and the new cover is good. Brown: It was fun and very good! Anjali: It was a great week and I had a lot of fun. AUTHORABOUT THE AUTHORS Archives
April 2022
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