This week we spent some time inquiring into our first line of inquiry into how "cultures use and interpret movements differently."
We played a game of Kahoot which tested our knowledge of various gestures from different places.
Then, each of the students had a chance to try to convey a message to the rest of the class without talking as we played a game of Charades. Some of the phrases they had to get their teammates to say were, "Wait! Stay here!" "I love you!" and "I love dancing!" Can you tell which was what in the three photos below? (To be honest, I think I was the last in the class to know the new way to say, "I love you!")
The students also worked on expressing themselves in groups without talking as they were tasked with acting out a small skit or story with a beginning, middle, and ending and had their classmates interpret what they were acting out.
On Wednesday, March 16th the students helped me celebrate my birthday in class. They decorated the class and bombarded me with letters and gifts. Thank you to everyone for making my special day even more special!
On Wednesday, the students met with the other members of their reading groups to share what they thought about the first chapters of their books.
This morning, we visited the exhibition by the Early Years students in the small MPR. The students really enjoyed checking out some of the interactive objects.
Have a wonderful spring break everyone and see you back in school on Monday, March 28th. Please note that we will no longer have swimming on Monday afternoons as the schedule will return to Japanese followed by two periods of PE.
Speaking of PE, we began our athletics unit this week with some running and practice throwing the javelins for our Sports Day competition which will be coming up at the end of April!
This week was all About Books, Culture, Dance, and Events!
On Monday, the students worked hard to finish up their 3D physical maps so that we could wrap up the map unit. They did a great job painting them and labeling some notable physical features. They also added map features such as a title, compass rose and legends to tell what the different colours on the map meant.
We also enjoyed dressing up in our national costumes and got to be one of the first classes to visit the wonderful culture week displays down in the school’s entrance area.
Tuesday, was a busy day as we had a culture week lesson about writing a haiku poem before recess.
The students wrote their own haiku poems later on in the week during language time.
Then after morning recess, Pauline’s mom joined us to share a bit of French culture and cuisine with the class as she explained about the tradition of making crêpes for Candlemas. She demonstrated how to make them and then everyone had a chance to practice flipping one and adding their favorite topping to it. We could choose from sugar, jam, Nutella or Canadian Maple syrup! I’m not sure which part they enjoyed more, eating them or flipping them! If you would like to make some at home yourself, please see the recipe here!
Then after filling up on delicious crêpes, we wore silly hats to kick off our new unit on how different cultures use movements to express themselves. Grade 3 demonstrated that they have a lot of coordination and rhythm as they took on the challenge of learning the Cha Cha Slide dance!
In math, we’ve been sliding, flipping and turning too as we’ve taken a break from division to focus on geometric translations, reflections and rotations.
On Wednesday, we got to be nice and cozy in the classroom in our pajamas! Linke’s mom came in and took some photos for us in the MPR with the book and culture week display and we had a chance to show off our Cha Cha Slide dance moves!
During our weekly plan lesson, we made up for the PE lesson that we missed last week when it was raining so we got to play some soccer in our pj’s! Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of that, but I do have a few from when we played soccer on Tuesday!
On Thursday, we had Silly Sock day and we tried to make it a bit of a competition in the class to see who would have the silliest socks! Everyone had two votes and was not allowed to vote for themselves. All the students were very principled as they followed that rule and our first-place winner was Luke with the most original socks as they were hand-decorated. Sarang and Soichiro tied for 2nd place and Mizuki came in third.
Also on Thursday, for culture week Leon brought in and shared with us how to do a Japanese cultural activity: Katanuki. This is something that is often done at festivals and is quite challenging (even I could not do it successfully!) as it involves cutting a shape out of a thin piece of hardened sugar using a toothpick or thumbtack. The first student to succeed at it was Brithney! Thank you to Leon and Ms. Le Henne for this fun activity!
In the later part of the week, the students worked hard as they created learner profile posters featuring characters from their favourite books! They really did a great job!!
Finally, Friday was Favourite Character Day. So most students came to school as one of their favourite characters! We also started our reading groups this week, and I think we’re off to a good start because Luke came dressed as the main character of his group’s book, The Last Kids on Earth!
