This week we celebrated literacy with Concordia's Book Week. What a fun week it was. Every day there was a special event happening for students, staff and our families, too.

MONDAY: Book Week Kick-Off with a jungle-themed assembly.

We took an "oath" promising to read, read, read!! (This reading agreement is below) At the assembly, we were given a school challenge - to read more than 20,000 minutes from Monday to Thursday.

TUESDAY: Book Character Parade

The whole school dressed up and had a book character parade in the morning. We also visited a photo booth for a class "book character" photo.

WEDNESDAY: Drop Everything And Read in our Pyjamas AND a special play

We started our day not with a normal reading workshop, but with DEAR (Drop Everything And Read). We left the classroom to get cozy with a book outside. The library moved all of it's furniture outdoors for us to be comfortable in. We took our book and and found a place to read in our PJs. Ahhh...it was wonderful to have this uninterrupted time to get lost in our books.

We ended our day in a terrific way. After reading, and then writing, our own adapted fairy tales, we got to watch a play about the three little pigs. It was not just any ordinary play. It was an adapted fairy tale of the traditional three little pigs story called "Law and Order." We learned the true story today!

THURSDAY: Book Week's Closing Ceremony

One of the things we worked on all week was decorating our doorway. We chose two of our favorite read-aloud books, "Mrs. Piggle Wiggle" and "Sideways Stories from Wayside School." At the closing assembly we earned a prize.

FRIDAY: Ice Cream Party!! Yippee!!

The elementary students not only read for 20, 000 minutes this week, but we more than doubled that goal! Ice cream on a Friday was the perfect way to end this awesome Book Week!

We celebrated another reading unit this week!

Our celebration for this unit got us talking about the last teaching point:

Readers of biographies don't just learn about a person's life, they see a bigger message in the story.

Each of us chose one person whose biography we enjoyed reading. Then we thought about the big message that this person's life taught us. We created "Biography Heads" of our chosen person and wrote what his or her life meant to us on the back.

When you come to our Active Global Citizen Day on April 26th you can view our "Biography Heads." They are on display in and outside of our classroom.

Here's a few snapshots showing you some of the "Biography Heads" - on the back is written the BIG message from the person's life.

As we finished Unit 8, we got deeper into division. We also started geometry! This week we used paper money to help us with division. We also went form station to station to explore area with geoboards, missing fraction parts with fraction circles, and placing fractions on a number line from 0 to 1.

This week we also learned that we can learn a lot from each other.

Of course, we learn from our teacher. We can also deepen our own learning when we teach someone else what we know. In Math we helped teach each other how to solve problems that others didn't know. When we did this, we learned a lot more than just getting help from Ms. Stuart Gunay or trying to solve something on our own (and we also got to talk to our friends!).

Biographies, biographies, biographies! Oh, My!

We continue to read biographies of people throughout history who have accomplished great things or made a contribution to society and the world.

It's been unbelievable to see how strong your child is in making inferences and finding evidence in the text to support their thinking.

We have five new biography book clubs happening right now. As students are reading, they are also asking questions, making predictions, taking notes, and learning how to discuss the book with their group on focused topics.

Ask your child to share more surprising details that they learned about the man or woman in the book they are reading.

This Week's Teaching Points:

• Biographies don't just teach us about a person's life. They also teach information about the world (the culture, the time period, and setting where the person grew up). We can pause when we read to reflect on what information we have just learned.
• Readers of biographies pay attention to historical and political references AND the description of places and events. We can make lists to keep track of key events, names, and important words that come up in our book.
• Readers of biographies keep an eye out for the main idea. We can read a chunk of text and ask, "What is this part mainly about?"
• Biographies are usually organized into predictable sections: a person's early life, youth, struggle, achievements, and contribution to history.
• Readers of biographies know that their book is only one source of information about a person's life. We can look to other sources to get more information about this person.

We're writing Persuasive Speeches!

This unit has been a lot of fun as students write persuasive speeches. These young authors have A LOT of opinions and ideas to share about topics they're passionate about!

Speeches will be given to our audience of parents, grade 3, and other Concordia staff on April 26 (details to arrive on Monday, April 9).

Another group is Eun Seong, Leonor, Hye Ryu and Colton. They want to spread the news about animals that are endangered and threatened because of human cruelty. They have ambitions to create a website, design posters and logos, and Colton and Leonor are writing books about the problem.

This week we started our second to last unit. Unit 8 reinforces what students know of multiplication and division.

Here's what we can do:

• Use rulers to measure to the nearest 1/4 inch.
• Solve extended math multiplication and division facts.
• Find factors of counting numbers.
• Make a conjecture about a word problem and make arguments for or against.
• Continue to use < , > , = to compare fractions.
• Write equivalent fractions.