Week of October 8th, 2017 -18

Reminders for the Week

DEAR Assembly Next Tuesday!

Next Tuesday morning, October 10 at 7:55 am, join us on the elementary lawn to Drop Everything And Read! Bring a book (and probably a hat or sunglasses because it will be sunny), and join the elementary students for some sustained silent reading. Please make sure to pack a book for your child/ren so they can get right to it when we start our reading. We hope you will join us. Modeling reading with your children is a great way to highlight the importance and joy of reading.

Promoting Writing With Your Child

Christy Curran, a literacy consultant with extensive experience as a classroom teacher and coach, is returning to CAC. She will be leading a Coaching Institute with CAC teachers and coaches from other international schools in the region, teaching model lessons in classrooms, and running workshops for teachers and parents. We hope you can join us Wednesday, 11 October, 2:00 to 3:00pm in the 1st Floor Common Room for a presentation on Promoting Writing With Your Child. We are excited to have her back! Christy has worked at the internationally renowned Teachers College Reading and Writing Project as a staff developer.

Guidance New: Listening with Attention

In Guidance students will focus on Listening with Attention.  

Listening with attention is different from merely hearing a person speak. It  is a skill that takes energy and practice. Students will spend time listening to their classmates, without interrupting. They will practice the following listening skills:

1. Face the speaker    

2. Block out distractions in the environment 

3. Concentrate on the speakers words 

4. Refrain from interrupting

READING

As we go deeper into the study of mystery, students will become familiar with the specific language of mystery and will use it to discuss their reading with their partners. They will continue reading with suspicion, asking questions as they read and inferring about the characters in their stories in order to understand how the mystery unfolds and how it can be solved. With every new character being introduced in a story, third grade readers will pause and ask 'Could this person be responsible?', 'Is this character telling the truth or is he/she guilty?’ They will pay attention to the little details in the story that point to whether a character should be on their list of suspects or not.

Key Vocabulary: detective/sleuth, victim, suspect, clues, alibi, witness, red herring, crime, evidence.

WRITING

This week we start our second unit, Poetry. Third Graders are starting a new 4 week writing unit to explore poetry. Throughout this unit students will not only write, but also read a lot of poetry. They will learn images and emotion can be used to shape and write poetry. Over the unit, they will use various methods to produce many pieces of work. They will then work to revise these pieces using techniques, such as figurative language, repetition, imagery, and word choice. At the end of the unit, they will be publishing an anthology made up of each drafted poem, and a reflection on the techniques they tried out and their thoughts on each poem. There will also be various oral presentation components added in to this new unit: each child will share their parent’s favorite poem, as well as presenting their own favorite poem in a routine called “Poem of the Day”.  

MATH

This week our mathematicians will practice solving mixed word problems involving all four operations with units of grams, kilograms, liters, and milliliters. They will also spend time developing their skills and fluency in rounding two and three-digit numbers to the nearest ten, and, by the end of the week, they will be working towards the understanding of how to round three- and four-digit numbers to the nearest hundred.

Also, this week students in grade three will demonstrate their knowledge of problem solving with units of measure on the Mid-Module Assessment. Please remind your mathematician to review the previous Module 2 problem sets and homework as well as important vocabulary in preparation for the assessment.

Key vocabulary: kilogram (kg), gram (g), liter (L), milliliter (mL), estimate, weight, and volume.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Third graders will continue to investigate navigating maps. They will practice using cardinal directions and longitude and latitude lines to find specific locations on a map. Students will dive much deeper into the use of map keys to understand how symbols on a key represent an area or something specific on a map. They will also learn that once they understand the information from the map key is telling them, they can read the map to figure out the story the map tells. 

We continue to monitor our soil experiments, recording our findings.

Global Math Week

From the 15th to 19th October the CAC elementary school will be celebrating Global Math Week, the world’s biggest community mathematics event. The aim of the event is to unite one million students around the globe in a shared experience of joyful uplifting mathematics. During this week at CAC there will be a number of different mathematical activities going on for students and families to enjoy. These include:

• During their math class that week, students will participate in the Global Math Week focus activity - Exploding Dots!
• A Math Trail will be set up around the elementary school grounds. Students and families can complete the tasks during recess or after school and submit their responses each day. At the end of the week a display will showcase the most creative solutions.
• A Problem of the Day will be posed to challenge our most dedicated mathematicians. Parents are allowed (and encouraged) to help!
• A Parent Workshop will provide an opportunity for parents to share in the joy and fun of Exploding Dots alongside their children, and will share some tips for keeping the math fun going at home.

The ultimate goal of Global Math Week is to change the way the world sees math. We want to help our students appreciate math as joyful, relevant, meaningful and creative. Join us in celebrating the wonder of math!

Global Math Week Parent Workshop

Tuesday 17th October, 8:30 - 9:30am