We have had a busy five day week, delving deeper into our science inquiry, "How does human interaction with animals change an identity?", focusing on utilizing addition strategies to solve a problem, reflecting on the decisions we made to create our Kandinsky inspired art, and introducing our social studies investigations around quality of life, global interactions, and global citizenship. Science InquiryAn Oct. 11 article in the Calgary Herald, "Banff National Park trying to help ESL visitors understand wildlife rules" prompted us to explore rules that might be appropriate for interactions with animals. Our rules include:
Students have been asked to have a conversation with parents and bring in or email an image or story about their family's interaction with wild animals. This will support our continued conversation about interactions between animals and humans and how these interactions influence identity. In math, we have continued to explore expanded form and place value through a problem about palindromes. Students were asked to select a 3 digit number, reverse it and and the two numbers together. If the sum was not a palindrome, students would repeat steps 1 and 2, reversing the sum and adding, until they reached a palindrome. They were asked to look for patterns so they could predict which 3-digit numbers would create a palindrome in 1 step? in 2 steps? in 3 steps? The energy in our rooms has been amazing as some students are now working in the ten millions, and even after 10 steps still have not found a palindrome in their number. Students finished their Kandinsky inspired paintings and are working towards completing written reflections around the decisions they made as an artist. They have been thinking about including specific examples from their work and making connections to other art works or ideas. One part of my painting that I am proud of is my background and the lines. I like the top background because it is dark turquoise. I like the way that I made a gold colour from brown and yellow. I was trying to make this kind of look like a lollipop but then I thought that there would be too many circles so I made one circle on the side. On some parts of the bottom background it is more red than orangish-yellow. I chose my background because it is dark and light. I was really just trying to make a light turquoise but it ended up dark.I tried to use all the colours but black. I kind of thought that I should have made one part of the rectangle yellow to match the background but now I realize that would just make it a blank space of background. ~ Eddie ~ When I made my painting I really thought about spacing out my shapes. For example, if I put a triangle at the far end of my page, I would not put another triangle right beside it. I also really thought about spacing out my colours. That way my painting does not have too much of the same colour too close to each other. I made my painting like a mosaic by connecting everything with lines. I really liked the way that in Kandinsky’s painting he sometimes put groups of lines in circles so that’s what I did. Those are the parts of my painting I am proud of. ~ Robin~ As we investigate the ideas around quality of life and being global citizens in Social Studies, students were given a choice to take up one of the following ideas: Why do we fight? What is Peace? Peacemakers in the World. Ideas that students explore will be presented at our Remembrance Day Assembly along with our ceremony to honour our Canadian soldiers on November 10th. Symbols of peace that the students have identified:
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October and Winter Poetry As we continue to use the adjectives that we began exploring with Rosemary Nixon, students developed poems about October and winter. October Scary Beautiful, colourful, Fall fun Halowe'en is spooky, fun and ghosty October ~ Dawson ~ October Trick or treaters getting ready for Halloween While pumpkin pie sits in a flaming hot oven October ~ Eddie ~ October Flickering lights Glow on Halloween As the candy tumbled into bags. Leaves flew To the hard ground As you step You can hear the crunch Of the helpless leaves. ~ Lauren ~ Crystal chandeliers Of icy snow Gliding down A stream with Kids tobogganing. ~ Carter ~ What is Art?We asked our classes this question and received a variety of responses - from different art techniques, styles, and mediums to where we see art and also descriptive words about what art is. Here are some of their responses.
Wassily Kandisky (1866 – 1944), a Russian painter, was credited with painting one of the first truly abstract art works. To begin the conversation about how definitions of art change based upon your perspective, and your identity, we looked at his development as a painter, as well as other art styles that were being created during that time. Students explored the colors, lines, and shapes in one of Kandinsky's paintings, Composition VIII. Using the Colours, Lines, Shapes Thinking Routine (similar to the See, Think, Wonder routine we used in science), students described the colours, lines, and shapes that they noticed. - overlapping - colours of the rainbow - he did not put his work in order - his work is messy - there are lots of colors - lines are pointing in all different ways ~ Lachlan ~ I see that in the top left corner, there is what looks like a target to me except not only using red and white, but a shadowy purple, pitch black, and a light pink. If you follow it out it fades away. ~ Ava ~ I see a white that looks fresh, a black as black as charcoal, a scarlet red, a triangle that is filled with sea green and sky blue. I also see a purple that reminds me of Mrs. Austman’s glasses. There is a mustard yellow and a light grey about 2 shades lighter than an elephant…I see a big triangle in the middle that is filled with a misty white. I see a tic tac toe board and a music bar. ~ Eva ~ Check back next week to see some of the student paintings and reflections based upon this investigation..
In math, we have begun working on the continued development of our understanding of number. Through this study we will explore different ways to represent numbers and look at the recurring pattern in our place value chart that helps us to create and record larger numbers. Students have created numbers with Base Ten materials, represented them with symbols in a chart, and are learning about writing numbers in expanded form. As we continue to explore the world of larger numbers, students will continue to focus on reading and writing larger numbers (to 1 000 for grade 3 and 10 000 for grade 4) as well as to developing mental math strategies for adding and subtracting 2 and 3-digit numbers. Students have been developing an understanding of our science inquiry question in our continued science study of animal classification and life cycles. We gave our students a list of words (our inquiry question, in a scrambled order) and asked them to rearrange them to make a question that made sense using all of the words. does, how, change, an, interaction, identity, with, an, human, animals' Students focused on many characteristics of language to support them with this task, including:
After seeing the possibilities the students created, we actually changed our question to: "How does human interaction with animals change an identity?" allowing us to focus more broadly on both animal and human identity. A follow-up activity to support students with understanding the question, was to work to develop definitions of "interaction" and "identity". Using ideas of other students and the dictionary definition we developed a class definition of interaction and began to explore what makes an identity. Students began by brainstorming ideas of what makes them who they are. We continued the conversation around what makes your identity, thinking about significant features that allow us to recognize a person. Some of the students' ideas included:
Students then thought about a particular experience that changed or influenced their identity and drew a related picture. |
AuthorsMrs. Montanaro, Mr. Messer and Mrs. Austman teach grades 3/4 at Elbow Park School in Calgary AB. Archives
April 2017
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