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What are we going to do with this garbage?

We kicked off our new unit with a brainstorm session of what we could do for Earth Day on April 22nd??

We had a lot of ideas that were sorted into categories but a lot of students were interested in cleaning up our campus.

We remembered that TASOK has a plastic recycling bin that not everyone is using and some 4th graders realized that a lot of the trash they were picking up was snack wrappers. So…students thought about doing some education activities to tell other students about what we had learned about plastic straws, plastic in our oceans and how we could reduce our use of these materials. We brought in Ms. White-Hammond who is the Service Learning Coordinator and HS English teacher.

She introduced us to service learning and the process that we should follow. We wanted to help teach other students but we really don’t have enough information yet so she suggested we begin our investigation.

Now we’ve got some materials to test for their ability to biodegrade and a research spot set up in front of our class. More investigation, hypothesis writing and experimenting to follow….

 

Some pictures from our field trip to Monique’s atelier workshop where she shares the space with the artist, Eddy Mbikulu. Although they are working on separate projects they are both welding and bending metal which they demonstrated with the students. Needless to say that bending ribar was very popular….especially when they figured out that they could bend it easily by using holes on the work space! They also enjoyed using the steel brushes on Eddy’s latest sculpture that will be displayed at Trust Merchant Bank’s Cultural Center starting next week.

 

Back at school in a new year with new topics!

Students have been exploring square products in math this week to set them up for learning square roots later in their math studies. At the third grade level they are learning that products that have a square root will make a square array when modeled.

During Language Arts we’ve been practicing proper nouns and adjectives using the Jolly Phonics books.

Our inquiry focus is on creativity and how needs prompt creativity that is then expressed in a variety of ways. To begin we are exploring the idea of creativity and different aspects of an ambiguous word. Our first brainstorm heeded some good ideas to give our exploration a direction so we focused on creativity in art, building, fashion, cooking and baking to begin.

Students worked on their own artistic creative projects with all sorts of materials available.

We will be building and being creative with an engineering focus soon so our first building creativity project was with Legos.

Next we combined with Ms. Yoko to help open up their creativity as tailors working on a design and sewing project of their own idea. Most had never sewn before so the experience was new and exciting!

We got the pagne cut and then they tried their hands with the needle and thread.

And the final products were made with love.

Then came the big Masterchef-inspired mystery box challenge where students had to get creative with eggs. Students got eggs with other mystery ingredients and then had 30 minutes to coordinate with their group to find/create a recipe.

Finally we met in the cafeteria to do the cooking with their own set of real kitchen utensils.

More reports of learning to follow….

 

 

 

Each morning students are working on typing, spelling, grammar, while also writing and illustrating their own ideas and stories. In the upcoming weeks we’ll be working to revise and edit some of these pieces in order to practice the writing process of drafting-revising-editing-proofreading.

In other specials students are swimming and enjoying books in library.

We are still tuning in to learn more about games, their function, similarities, and differences. Students have learned a variety of physical games in PE and analyzed board games, card games, and games with parts during our afternoon inquiry. We are focused on communication, collaboration, having fun and following instructions.

Several weeks ago we visited Mr. Hopkins Middle School Design class that had been working on creating games. Third grade students enjoyed the experience so much that it seemed fitting to start our next PYP unit on the same topic. Our focus will be how games change over time as well as collaboration and communication as they create their own game based on one from an existing country.

Mornings are, writing, typing and spelling stations first thing in the morning. Each day a student shares their writing piece and illustration that they’ve been working on in the mornings.

In the afternoons we work on our inquiry project ‘Who We Are’. Students are studying biographies and analyzing the cause/effect relationship between events in a person’s life and how they became the person they are today. They’ve worked with partners on interviewing skills asking about countries that are important to the person. They’ve collaborated with their partner and put the interviews into iMovie and learned to add effects. In Art they’ve also been working on their project of describing themselves with adjectives and lines that have the same effect as the adjective.

They’ve also begun to use Google Docs to complete graphic organizers for their narrative writing. Now that everyone has a log in and secure password we are ready to do some real work using computers!

We are building math routines and have begun working in small math groups following our new math program. Some groups work on computers while others working independently, or on special skills with the teacher.

Each morning students are building writing stamina and working on their independent writing projects. When the time is up some students share their writing with the class.

During our inquiry time students spend time at one station enjoying books on our current topic with Ms. Philo.

Although we don’t have computers to take apart students expanded their knowledge of ‘components’ by taking apart other electronics and gadgets and examining all the pieces. They were also practicing the skills of collaboration and using tools safely.

We are also building our collaboration skills by supervised soccer training, community building time and working together to make a ‘thank you’ card for our friends in IT.

We eased into the new year by reflecting on the N-E-S-W of what we Need to know-are Excited about-Scared about-Worried about in 3rd grade. It turns out that the focus of this conversation was very much about homework!

We shared a snack together and worked on some math concepts regarding how we could divide the gingerbread and banana bread that I had baked.

Students have had PE, Art and Music already this week and met all their new teachers.

They’ve also been working on building their tech skills and creating art using the Paint program on the computer. Their focus was:

-using basic drawing tools

-changing the color

-using selection tools

-using text tools to add text features to artwork

Here is some of their artwork.

During our class meeting times we’ve brainstormed some ideas about jobs that might need to be done.

And got our name tags and agendas ready for the year with Typing.com passwords glued in and schedules in the agenda. We’ll be ready to start on the real stuff next week!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The newest batch of 3rd grade students should be arriving tomorrow morning to TASOK! I’m excited to begin my 4th year at the school and thrilled to know many of you already. I’ll be posting pictures of our learning adventure here along with important information for your reference. Looking forward to a great year!