Opinions... Everyone's Got One!

A transdisciplinary theme that currently runs through all of our subjects is that we all have our own opinions about things. 

In math, the students created survey questions to ask their classmates. We discussed some of the problems with voting by a show of hands such as how we may change our opinions based on what our friends or others say, or complications such as trying to keep track of who has voted and who hasn't, or those who have voted more than once. With this in mind, we came to the conclusion that the best way to get an honest answer was by asking each classmate individually. To do this, students went one-by-one around the room to ask their classmates (all while staying at least 1 meter away) they even asked and answered Yeonjae questions via Google Meet.

Our writing this week also focussed on giving arguments to support our opinions as the students worked on writing speeches to convince Mr. Waite that they need more equipment to play with during outside playtime. Next Monday morning, they will have the chance to give their speech to Mr. Waite! Let's see if they are able to convince him!

In music, the students gave their opinions to collaboratively answered the question, "What is Music?" by using Google's online whiteboard called Jamboard and then wrote their own definition of what music is.

In unit time with the Grade 4 students, we established the classroom Roles and Responsibilities and started to examine what responsibilities and rights we have as citizens. We watched a short video on human rights in class today, and during lunchtime, we have been watching a documentary called He Named Me Malala about Malala Yousafzai who is a Pakistani child activist who spoke out against the Taliban for the right for girls to be educated.

As our unit content was a bit heavy, we enjoyed a lighter topic during art as the students created their own bookmarks by following instructional videos on YouTube.

Homework Grid

From today, the Grade 3 students will be receiving a Homework Grid to be completed every 2 weeks. This year they are asked to complete at least 3 lines of activities from the grid over the course of two weeks. Activities with a star must be completed. 

PTA Representatives for Grade 3

I am thrilled to announce that after much deliberation and threats of just picking someone randomly that Simran's mother, Roshi Mohinani and Yua's mom, Saori Tamura will be the PTA representatives for our class this year! Thank you both, for volunteering your time this year, and thank you to Aita's mom, Nao and Roshi for all of their hard work on the PTA last year.

Library on Monday

Please remind your children to pack their library books on Mondays so that they can get a new selection of books that interest them each week. During arrival time each morning, the students spend about 20 minutes reading quietly to themselves in order to practice the skills and develop their understanding and language ability so it is extremely important that they have a selection of books to read from. We often use the book that they are reading to focus on literary skills during the week. For example, this week we looked at the setting in their books and focused on finding both literal and inferred details that tell about the setting.