G3A Class News
March 19-23
Field Trip to Animals Asia Bear Rescue Center
Here are some photos from our day!
March 12-16
Coming Ahead This Week: Field Trip to Animals Asia Moon Bear Rescue Centre
We are continuing to learn about individuals and organizations that are identifying issues and developing solutions to make our community a better place.
This Thursday, March 22 from 8:30-1:30 the students will have the opportunity to visit the Animals Asia Moon Bear Rescue Centre in Tam Dao. The students will enjoy a tour of the bear sanctuary to observe bears in their "natural" habitats. They will also have the opportunity to talk with the scientists about their work of rescuing bears that are being used for bile extraction. After the tour, the students will eat a picnic lunch before returning back to school.
Please complete this form to give permission for your child to attend. Here is an interesting video if you would like to know more.
World Maths Day Assembly
On Friday afternoon, we had a friendly and fun all-elementary math competition. Eight teams with mixed grade levels competed to see who could answer math questions accurately and FAST.
Special awards were given to Bob and Minh for achieving Platinum level in the World Maths Day Competition last week. Minh received a special award for placing 38 in the world and our Grade 3 received a special award for placing sixth in the world! Well done Grade 3!
Art with Ms. Carter
The students have been learning about weaving in Art class. The students are always very engaged when Ms. Carter has a new art skill for them to learn. We appreciate all her hard work and patience!
Social Studies: Active Global Citizens
This week our guest speaker, Mr. Beard from Simple Coffee shared with us how his social enterprise direct trade coffee business helps coffee farmers and provides jobs. He explained how important it is to give a fair wage to farmers so they can make a better profit. He taught about how coffee goes from farm to the cup.
We are looking for others who are doing good things in the community, so if you or someone you know is involved with a company or organization that helps people, the environment or wildlife, please come and share with us!
Writing
We started the week off with a Writing Celebration with 3B. Two students, Leonor and Polina gave a dramatic reading of their own original fairy tales. We then shared in a large circle one writing technique that we tried to use in our story. Our celebration continued as students read their stories to each other. We also posted our stories on our class blog and are waiting to hear from other students from other schools around the world!
On Wednesday, we launched our persuasive speech unit. Students will be writing and giving speeches about issues they feel strongly about. To get us started, we composed a class persuasive speech to try to convince Mr. Winterstein and Ms. Kappelmann to allow us to do a chick hatching project at school so we can learn about the life cycle of animals. They had many rebuttals and questions for us but the students gave great responses!
Reading
This week, we began our biography book clubs and students are learning about people who made a difference in our world.
As a class, we are reading biographies about people who peacefully fought for the right of all people to be treated equally. We will learn about figures like: Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Mahatma Gandhi
Math
This week the students learned about:
- Comparing fractions
- Fractions more than one
- Solving stories problems with fractions
This Tuesday, March 20, the students will take their Unit 7 Assessment.
March 5-9
Vietnam Tech Conference 2018
This weekend many teachers from Concordia participated in the Vietnam Tech Conference hosted at UNIS. Educators from all over Asia came together to learn and share how we are embedding technology in our teaching to deepen student learning. I had the privilege to learn from Dr. Shabbi Luthra about the future of education. I also had the opportunity to be a presenter and share about the work we are doing at Concordia to teach design thinking and maker mindset through our design challenges. It's fun to be both a learner and a teacher.
Genius Hour Update: Passion Projects
What would you learn if you could choose ANYTHING you wanted to learn? Every Friday for the next six weeks, during Genius Hour, students will be learning or doing something new that they have never tried before. They will document their learning process and share out what they have learned.
Volunteers needed! If you have a passion that you are willing to share with us, we'd love to have you visit. If you have a hobby that you love like knitting, origami, electronics, chess, cooking, gardening, art, etc. let us know and we'll arrange a time for you to share with the class. Check out our website below for more information.
On March 7, our students participated in World Maths Day. This is a fun way for students all around the world to practice their math fluency by competing with students from other countries.
Congratulations to Minh for placing 28th out of the top 100 in the world.
Also, our Concordia Grade 3 classes placed 6th out of the top 100 in the world!
In order to enrich and accelerate our math learning, I am encouraging the students to practice on Khan Academy for 5-10 minutes each day.
Khan Academy adapts to each students' needs so they can practice skills that are just right for them and move to the next level when they are ready.
Students can log in with their school google account which is connected with my class account. I can monitor which skills the students need to work on.
This is not a replacement for the program that we are learning in class but an enrichment since many of my students are ready for higher level skills.
Writing
This week we finished publishing our original fairy tales. Many of the students already shared their stories in their Seesaw account. When you have a chance, check them out! This week we turn our attention to writing speeches to persuade others to take action and CHANGE THE WORLD
Reading
This week we will begin a unit on reading biographies. Biographies are an interesting mix of reading narrative (stories) and reading for information. We will be reading about many significant people. Check in with your child to see who they are learning about.