Presentations and Treasure Hunting

 We began the week with student presentations on the different ways that religions have influenced the world around us from art, buildings, and customs to what we eat and even how we say farewell at funerals.

We also discussed the importance of showing tolerance and acceptance for other people's beliefs and religions by looking at some examples of what intolerance for religion looks like through images of events such as 9/11.

The highlight of the week was the start of our fourth unit of the year under the transdisciplinary theme of Where We Are in Place and Time! A whole unit on maps!!

What better way to start a unit on maps than to go on a treasure hunt where X literally marks the spot! The students were split up into 6 groups, each with a map to one of 6 'treasures' to be found around the school. Before finding the treasure, the students had to find the other members in their group which was a bit of a challenge in itself as there were 3 different maps, and 2 different versions of each map with a different treasure for each group.

Once they found their partner(s) and before they could leave the class they had to take a few minutes to look closely at their maps to figure out where they thought their treasure was hidden. Was it on the first floor? second floor? or outside? This was not easy as two of maps were architectural floor plans of the school building and another was a hand-drawn map of empty playground space at the back of the MPR. 

When they could correctly identify where they thought their treasure was, they could leave the class to go hunt for the treasure. Most were hidden in plain sight, a couple of them were camouflaged nicely. (Unfortunately, one wasn't quite hidden enough and a student from another class unwittingly removed it so our treasure hunters couldn't find it, but we managed to track it down! The treasures were in brown envelopes (recycled from the PTA-made Advent calendar). Can you spot the hidden treasure in the fish tank photo below?

Once they found the treasures they returned to class and had to guess at what some of the difficult words meant before finding the definitions in the dictionary. Then as a class, we put the puzzle pieces of the Central Idea for the unit together, along with the definitions and ideas that the students had.

Next week, we'll find out what the students really know about maps!

Report Cards

Half of Grade 3 is over already and reports will be in your email inbox at 3:30. Please read them over together with your child, after all, it is all about them! 

Conferences

We will also have our conferences next week, so the students have been busy reflecting on the first half of the year and we will discuss their progress so far.