Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Helping Our Friends Learn Symetry

After a lesson about symmetry, we played a simple game on the white boards to help our friends practice symmetry. Each student drew a line of symmetry and a design on one side of the line. The students swapped and exchanged boards so the partner could draw the matching image along the line of symmetry. You can even play it at home with paper! It was great fun and the game is simple, simple, simple.

I find that students either "get it" right away or they have some challenge so the take home message is.... practice, practice, practice.








 

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Assembly Reflection

After our assembly last Friday, I thought about how best to get my students to reflect on the experience. I created this reflection sheet to use with our conversation.

As a teacher tip, at the bottom of the document, where it says Peer feedback for me, I had the students leave their paper on their desks and everyone circulated and wrote positive feedback to their classmates. After about 5 minutes, the students returned to their desks and read the positive comments. It worked out really well and I will use this process for peer feedback in the future.

Feel free to click on the image to download it and use it in your classroom.




Friday, January 18, 2013

Grade 3 Business and Economics Assembly

Today Grade 3 took the lead at the assembly. It was fantastic and feedback is filling my in box with appreciation and praise. The students did so well. They wrote the play script themselves, decided as a team which props they would need and made them, decided on the roles of each student, created the quiz show questions and pretty much organized much of the event. It was really student centered. And to think... we pulled it off only two weeks after returning from the holiday. Great work students!





 

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Hero Spotlight: Erik Weihenmayer

Our new PYP Unit is about Heroes. Our central idea is that "our choice of hero is impacted by when and where we live." Each class will be studying a variety of heroes under the categories: Inspirational Heroes, Environmental Heroes, Civil Rights Heroes and Inventor Heroes.

Today, one reading group read an interview book from Reading A-Z about Erik Weihenmayer. He is a man who is blind, but is inspiring people all over the world to not give up when faced with challenges. The students were amazed to learn that he can kayak, rock climb, ride bikes (tandem) and even go to the movie theater. What is most surprising is that he can climb mountains just as fast as people who can see. He uses his other senses to do it.


If you want to learn more about this amazing man, check out his website at Touch The Top! In addition, for all of the adults out there, he has a book called Touch the Top of the World if you want to check it out!

 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Cinquain Poetry

This week we began our poetry unit. We wrote acrostic poems, practice alliteration, reviewed the importance of using carefully chosen words and wrote cinquain poems. Here are a few of our student poems from this week.

-->
Television
Voice, wordy
Playing, singing, watching
Good to watch television
Loud

By Ally



Friends
Kind, honest
Caring, committed, accepting
Friends are friends and they never break up
B.F.F.!

By Maya

 

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Business Fair

The First Annual IST Grade 3 Business Fair was a fantastic success. It was such a fun day and it turned out better than I ever could have imagined. The project was the perfect culmination of our past two units on Economics and Advertising and the students really demonstrated their learning. In addition to the products, students created advertisements for their business that included a logo and slogan.

While we had many sweets for sale, I was happy to have a variety of booths. The students were very creative with their ideas. A few students sold cookies and treats, there was a massage parlor, a nail salon, jewelery and plates for sale and a lemonade stand. The kids had such a fun time selling their products to visitors and talking about their learning.








It was also nice to visit other classrooms and see our competitors :-) I want to send a huge thank you to everyone who purchased items that day and especially to the numerous parent volunteers! We could not have done it without you. All of our hard work really paid off and in total we raised about 3.5 million Tanzanian Shillings! That is about 2,200 USD. Incredible!