Literacy

F&P Assessment

In every grade (3 times a year) students work with the teachers to complete F&P assessment. Students read a short story out loud (checking for fluency, flow and stamina) and then the rest silently to themselves. Students then are asked a series of questions about what they read. These questions are general comprehension and text analysis. Students then are given an independent reading level as well as a working level. Each grade level is then has a level students should be meeting at the beginning, the middle and end of the year. This is a great way to check-in with student progress and learning.

Table of content sort

In our non-fiction unit, students were asked to put the table of contents in order without given any background information. This was a great way for students to see how table of contents and ideas within a non-fiction piece flow and connect.

Stop, drop and write

Students were asked to stop what they were doing find a place they wanted to work in and just write. It was a great way to allow students to stop what they are doing and just write about anything they want. This allowed students to write with no boundaries and enjoy where they were writing too.

Understanding fiction books

Understanding Character Traits in fiction books.

Common, plural and proper nouns...

Students stood in circle and were given a small ball. They then tossed the ball to someone across the circle from them and said either common, plural or proper noun. Students then had to five seconds to say a noun that falls under the category they were asked. It is a great revision game.

Verb Charades

To review verbs, students were asked to thing of a verb and then preform that verb and others had to guess. It was a great way to ensure that students understand what a verb is and and understand that it is an action word.

Creating Reading and Writing Goals as "I can" statements

(Success Criteria)

Each day students are given a learning intention and then success criteria for each lesson. The success criteria helps students understand what their goals are for the lesson and monitor if they are successful or not. Students then were asked to create their own goals for their writing and reading unit as "I can" statements like their success criteria to show that when they are done this unit they will know they have been successful when they have completed their own success criteria.

Creating Literacy Games

Students were asked to take their knowledge and what they learnt about nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs and create a game that was about the parts of speech. Students were asked to create a game that could be played with their peers in class and it needed to include all four parts of speech and had a set of rules and a title. Students worked as a class to create their own success criteria and rubric and then did peer evaluations based on these rubrics.

James and the Giant Peach Instagram

Our first read a loud of the year was James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Students enjoyed hearing about how the peach grew and grew and eventually rolled down the hill away from the house and began its adventure. Students were asked to pretend that they were one of the bystanders going to visit the peach when it rolled away. As that bystander they captured a picture and put it on instagram with a caption.

Parts of Speech through Music

As MAP tests were approaching, students were reviewing the parts of speech. They were asked to look at a set of song lyrics to find the parts of the speech. We used the Logical Song by Supertramp to find adverbs. We used several other artists including, One Direction, The Beatles and Carly Rae Jepson to help us explore the parts of speech and how they are used in the world around us.

Book Trailers

Throughout the year students read a variety of books in a variety of genres and styles of writing. Students were asked to create book trailers for the Grade 2 students who would be entering Grade 3 in September. These book trailer would help the Grades 2 students explore the types of books they would they would get to read in Grade 3.

Creative Writing

During our lock down students were asked to write a piece of writing in a style they enjoyed. It could be mystery, personal narrative, non-fiction, fantasy etc. We told them to be creative and to have fun with it! Students then recorded themselves reading it for the entire class but also had the chance to share their story in small groups via Google Meet/Zoom.

Math (Numeracy)

Math Games

Students find it a lot easier to practice their math facts through doing versus listening or watching. Throughout the year students are asked to practice their math facts and skills through games. This could be anything from multiplication tic-tac-toe, or Battleship or even a scavenger hunt. In Grade 3 the students played all those games as well created their own math games that focused on the skills that we were focusing on at the moment.

Math Escape Room

At the end of most units, prior to our final assessments students would work in small groups to solve and escape a room that they were "locked" in using the knowledge and learning from our unit. This was a fun and engaging way to review the learning and help them fill missing gaps.

Telling Time

Fractions and Telling Time

When learning to tell time we broke down the clock into fractions to help us understand how to tell time. Students were able to draw and label the clock with the fractions to help them understand quarter past, half past, quarter to and o'clock. Students were able to then identify 5 past and 5 to and worked on telling time to the nearest minute.

Skip Counting and Telling Time

Putting the time in the correct order is something grade 3 students have struggled with. As a result we mixed up the order of the times and asked students to skip count to help ensure that the time was in order. They also worked identifying the pattern within the times to help them order the times.

Creating a schedule

Students were challenged with creating a time table. They were asked to create a time table where they had 40 minutes to complete nine stations. This allowed students to think about how time tables are created and how much time they would need to complete the station and transition.

Time Table - Provocation .pdf

Gallon Man

Gallon Man was cut up and in pieces. Students were challenged to put him back together again without any information on what they were looking at and how they were connected. Students quickly figured out that they were all connected but not necessarily sure how.

Arrays Around the School

Students went on a scavenger hunt around the school to see where they could find arrays. Students took pictures of the arrays and then explained how they know it was an array and then solved the multiplication problem that went a long with that array.

Inquiry (Social Studies and Science)

At DAA, we used the inquiry model to teach social studies and science. This allowed students to explore their own interests within a topic and explore deeper and not just surface level. Students completed a variety of provocations to help them gain insight to what they will be learning.

Weather

KHDA Weather .pdf

Weather Tools: Students were challenged to create a weather tool and then test it out it to see if it worked. Students worked through the Solution Fluency model (Define, Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver and Debrief) to create and build their weather tool. They worked through the booklet to help them organize and reflect on their thinking and learning. Students were very lucky as we had a rainy few days in Dubai to test out their rain gages. Students even got the change to share their weather tools with the Grade 2 students in a museum style set up.

Weather Project.pptx

Weather Around the World Follow Up Activity.docx

Weather Around the World: At DAA we have over 110 nationalities represented at the school, which creates a very diverse and amazing community. Over the holidays a lot of our student population travels either to their home countries or to many other amazing destinations. As a result we asked our students to take pictures of the various types of weather they experienced over the break. This allowed students to see how weather around the world varies.

Weather Lessons with Anthony Farnell

Over the course of our weather unit students explored weather around the world and examined different weather forecasts. Students loved Anthony Farnells from Global News Toronto. Students mailed (emailed) letters to Anthony Farnell with a list of questions they had about meteorology. He even shared about our class on the evening news which made for a very exciting experience.

Skype Lesson with Anthony Farnell

Students had the opportunity to skype with Mr. Farnell to ask them all their weather related questions and meet Storm the Weather Dog. It was an amazing experience to see students dive deeper into the study of meteorology and learn from Anthony Farnell.

Anthony Farnell's Weather School

During lockdown Anthony Farnell made several different videos about weather and how to create their own weather at home. Students were excited to test out these experiment at home and experience a variety of different weathers at home in their kitchen. They were even more excited when Global News shared their videos on instagram and the news.

Animals and Habitats

Animal Adaptations: Students were exploring survival of the fittest in nature. They were looking at how animals have adaptations and inherited traits to help them survive in the wild. They explored this by picking an animal and then being asked a series of questions to see if there animal would survive a variety of different situations including natural disasters, humans invading their habitats as well as random things they could face in the wild. They loved seeing which animal would survive the majority of the situations and how their animal would respond to different situations in the wild. Students then took their learning about animals adaptations and created their own animal. They had to design its own life cycle, what it looked like, its name and where would it live. They planned it first and then put created it on keynote and animated the keynote to move.

World Wildlife Foundations: Each year, students research endangered species and then write persuasive letters on which endangered species the classroom would adopt as class pets for that year. We have adopted a cheetah, a snow leopard, a koala and kangaroo and a polar bear and lion cub,

Creating Biomes:

Students researched and picked a biome that can be found in the world. Students had to build the biome and then a house to go into the biome. They would then test the house against the extreme weather that the biome would face to see if it would survive that extreme weather and natural disaster.

Tug-A-War Forces and Motion

Students explored push and pull through a game of tug-a-war.

Push and Pull with Magnets and Coding

Students explored the world of magnets through the use of lego and coding.

Exploring Google Earth

Students used Google Earth to learn about geographical features around the world.

Ms. Murphy - Passing laws

Students created "laws" for the school and Ms. Tammy Murphy our head of school came and listened to our laws to see if they could be used as new laws for our school community.

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