Drama in Grade 3

 This week was full of drama as we began our 6th and final unit of inquiry of the year! 

We began by breaking into 3 groups to Brainstorm what the students already knew about drama. It was interesting to see how different each group sorted out their thinking.

We also played a few dramatic games, such as Charades to practice some acting skills! We also came up with a list of different dramatic performance and media types and began summarizing them and collated a selection of videos that explained each type into a Padlet.

To understand more about what we will be doing throughout this unit, continue reading the full unit details below:

Central Idea: 

Drama is a universal artform that allows us to express ideas and feelings

Lines of Inquiry:

- Drama as a universal art form 
- How people communicate through dramatic arts 

Key Concepts

Form, Function, Responsibility

Approaches to Learning

Social, Communication

Learner Profile 

Communicator, Risk-Taker, Caring

Learning Goals / Success Criteria:
- Students will summarize the main features of different types of dramatic performances

- Students will identify similarities between different types of dramatic performances/media
- Students will role-play a character 
- Students will cooperate and collaborate with others to perform a short performance.

Action:

Students will have the opportunity to choose a type of performance to showcase what they've been learning.

How to Support Your Child at Home:

Discuss different features and elements (plot, characters, etc.) when watching movies or shows together.

Final Scholastic Book Order for this year

If you'd like to order some English language books for your child to read over the long summer holidays then check out Scholastic.

The due date to place the orders is Friday, May 14th. This will be the last Scholastic book order for this school year.

Yearbook Cover Contest

Your child's artwork could be featured on the cover of this year's yearbook! A blank A4 page was sent home with Grade 3 today. The picture does not have to be submitted on that page, it could be created in another format (paint, pastel, etc. on a separate page and submitted either a physical copy or emailed digitally.

Theme: sharing and caring.

Deadline: Monday, May 10th.

Format: vertically (portrait)

Taking Action for the Future

 This week the students have been hard at work on taking action to inform others about the importance of preserving resources for future generations. They began by choosing one of the three main resources that we had focussed on throughout the unit: Water, Food, and Renewable Energy Sources. Most worked with a partner and were given an open-ended task to share what they had learnt about the problems and possible solutions with others, with their main audience to be the Grade 1 class as inspiration for them as they begin their unit on Sharing the Planet. Students could choose to share their knowledge and findings of their topic any way they want, be it a video, slideshow presentation, song, or poster! 

The requirements were to: 

Identify and explain the problem:

- How it relates to limited natural resources and to humanity's future.  

- What challenges we face in relation to the problem.

Show the problem - Some photos, or other visuals.

Identify and explain some possible Solutions and Adaptations:

- What are some of the ways that we can make changes or solve the problem?

-How do those solutions or adaptations help solve the problem?

To ensure that they can successfully meet the expectations for the projects we created a general rubric for the project together, and then students who were making videos, posters, slideshows or a song all met together and decided on the criteria that were relevant to their presentation format. For example, those that were making a video stated that to be successful their voices must be loud and clear on the video. So Emerging would be if their voice was either too quiet or too loud. Developing would be if their voice was just a bit too quiet or loud. Mastering would be if their voice was just right. And Excelling would be if their voices were just right, and included some emotion and energy.

Most of the week was spent creating the slideshows and videos which will be shared with Grade 1 on Monday. A few of the groups have some work to finish up over the weekend, and a couple groups need to record their voice-overs on their videos on Monday. 

We do have a couple almost finished already, and I will share them on the blog next week! But in the meantime here is a sneak peek!

Click here to check out this video by Kanna and Sakura on Food Waste!

Photo Day

Speaking of next week, please be reminded that Thursday, April 29th will be photo day so dress your child appropriately for how they'd like to look in their class photo!

Information Writing

 Last week, the Grade 3 students began our third writing unit of the year on information writing. this week, the students were given the opportunity to share their wealth of knowledge on any topic that they felt passionate or knowledgeable about. Rather than focus on writing, we focussed on planning and speaking. Students chose a topic, then came up with 5 subtopics and then were asked to "teach" about their topic to a small group of their peers. Topics ranged from soccer player Lionel Messi, to the Hindu light festival of Diwali.

Two of our reading groups finished up their first novels of the year and have now moved on to two new novels: The Fourteenth Goldfish, and The Last Kids on Earth, while the third group continues to read the novel Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake. In order to give the students more time to get their reading assignments and homework completed, each group will just meet once a week. Please remind them to do their reading and reading assignment work and to bring it back on the appropriate day, as I have yet to have one group finish and bring in all of their work on time! The Jake Atlas group meets on Tuesdays, Last Kids on Earth on Wednesdays and The Fourteenth Goldfish gets together on Thursdays.

Finally, this week in our unit of inquiry into how humanity's future is dependent on resources we looked into renewable and non-renewable energy sources. Students were assigned an energy source to look into and find videos that explained it, then summarized and shared the ones that they found useful on our class' Energy Padlet. We also had a lesson that focussed on choosing a renewable energy source for a town, and had us looking at the advantages and disadvantages of alternate energy sources.

Photo Day

Thursday, April 29th will be photo day. Class and individual photos will be taken. Students can wear a school shirt or other outfit for the photos.

Farewell Party for Kanna O, Food Waste and Multiplication

 Tuesday was Kanna's final day and we had fun celebrating with a farewell Hanami picnic lunch at the park. After eating, most of the boys were happy to play soccer on the large field while the girls and a few others enjoyed playing on the playground equipment.

We will miss Kanna and wish her the best of luck at her new school.

Food Resources: No Hunger

This week the main topic for our unit of inquiry was the goal of No Hunger. We watched a touching video showing just how poor some people in the world are and how they eat leftovers from McDonald's to survive. This led us to inquire into the issue of food waste, and the grade 3 and 4 students quickly organized an experiment to help us measure how much food is wasted here within our school. Pairs of students went to each of the PS, Grade 1, 3 and 5/6 classes to explain what we were doing and why. They distributed plastic bags for each class to dump their leftover food into, and then collected the bags at the end of lunch. We then weighed each bag and added up a total, 2.05kg. To get a better idea of just how much food that is, the students estimated that it would be enough food to share with a family of 4 or 5 people. We also used some multiplication skills to calculate just how much food might be wasted over the course of our 180 school days and were shocked when it came up at 369kg! 

In math, we continued to explore multiplication as repeated addition and worked with a partner to calculate how many dots were displayed on a set of dice without counting each dot individually.

Finally, a big thanks to the PTA for the chocolate Easter Eggs! The students were happy to get them just in time for snack time today!

Multiply, Divide, Add a New Student and Subtract Another

 Not only did the students return after Spring Break, but so did the warm weather! From the students' stories about their holidays, it sounds like everyone had a nice break. We didn't waste any time getting back to work as we resumed our Sharing the Planet unit and focussed on perhaps the most vital of all the natural resources - Water!

New Math Unit

We also changed our focus in math, from geometry to multiplication and division. Students were tasked with figuring out how many students could share 36 crackers. As this was an open-ended task, there were many possible answers and the students worked together with a partner. They were given tiles to represent the 36 crackers and many came up with different approaches to solving the problem. Some focused on using the tiles and then recorded their findings by drawing them out, while others used their prior knowledge of multiplication and division facts to approach the problem. 

Plus One

Grade Three gained a new member this week as Haruki joined the class on April 1st! No joke! We are happy to welcome him to DSKI!

Minus One

Sadly, we will also be losing a friend next week as Kanna O. will be leaving us. Her last day will be Tuesday, April 6th. We wish her all the best at her new school and hope that she'll come back to visit sometime.

Farewell Picnic

In honour of Kanna's last day, I would like to try (if the weather is nice) to have a picnic lunch/ farewell party for her on Tuesday. Please have your child pack a picnic sheet to eat lunch on, if they want to bring a snack to share make sure that they are individually packaged. I will remind them again on Monday.