Friday, October 12th

I hope you all had a great short work week due to the Thanksgiving long weekend. I have thoroughly enjoyed my many turkey sandwiches this week for lunch. If your child has not informed you yet about our overarching question for the year, it is…. What is the story, told and untold? We will be relating back to this question throughout the school year and connect all areas of the curriculum to it.

What learning took place this week?

Last week I introduced our BIG question with the work we have been doing with the sunflower. We discussed what is the TOLD story of the sunflower (what you visibile observe) and then proceeded to deconstruct the sunflower to determine the UNTOLD story. It was a wonderful introduction to the BIG question as well as to the concept of deconstruction. This week, the students and I have been working on connecting Numbers in Nature through Fibonacci’s work. Students understanding, and were wowed, to see how many elements of nature include numbers within the sequence. Not only did students investigate the growing pattern in plants/flowers but pinecones, fruits and vegetables. We will continue this work in the weeks to come.

We have now completed Chapters 1-8 of A Boy Called Bat. Students have been working on various comprehension responses to these chapters, as well as dialogue with peers. We have worked on creating #hashtag summaries for the first four chapters, shared likes/dislikes about the section, and made predictions on what events will take place next. We were also so lucky to do a Google chat with the students from Clay Centre, Kansas whom we have connected with. It was exciting to make this connection and we hope to do a video chat next week.

Quality of Life has been another focus this week. As a whole group, we have discussed one’s quality of life and what makes them feel happy, healthy, comfortable, and safe/secure. We have just started looking at various bedrooms of children living in various parts of the world to compare/contrast the quality of life, and how the students in Room 7’s quality may differ than others. We have just begun this task but the engagement of the students I have observed thus far has been fascinating. I am looking forward to seeing what the weeks to come bring.

Instrument building and has been our focus this week. Students were given a tour of the iLab, gathered the necessary resources for their project, and completed a detailed iLab plan. Construction is well underway and will be completed early next week in preparation for the assembly on Friday. Students were asked to construct an instrument that would incorporate the responses to the following questions:

How can you increase the volume of your musical instrument?

How can you change the pitch of your musical instrument?

How does this affect the vibrations or frequency of your musical

instrument?

Upcoming Events:

*Monday, October 15th - National Music Centre, Studio Bell Field Study

*Friday, October 19th - Grade 3 Assembly at 11:00am

*Friday, October 26th - Non-Instructional Day (No School)

The weekend looks like a good one so get out and enjoy the sunshine. Once again, please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Teresa Giffen