It’s been three whole weeks since we’ve seen each other last, but our return on Monday showed that everyone was well rested and excited to continue on with school!
We switched things up a bit now having math class first thing in the morning and English after break time. In math 3rd year students are using centimeters and meters to measure lengths and 4th year students are exploring the properties of shapes. Week 1 was about finding our current abilities and reorganizing to optimize our learning as we get into perimeter and area the next few weeks.
English we are looking at myths and legends and in our small groups we were able to read and discuss the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. We revisited the story arch from our very first English unit back in September and were able to plot the myth on a story arch. We will continue to read and analyze various myths through out this unit. English language learners continue to show amazing progress through their reading books as well; as we gain fluency the stories will become more and more challenging – keep it up!
Students also jumped right into their word study building up familiarity and confidence with the spelling list. This coming week’s spelling list is long, but the words are not too difficult. The important feature is that all the words share the same long vowel sounds. Focusing on the different vowel teams that make the same sounds is the key.
In IPC we started our unit on the Stone Age. We studied history before back in the start of term 1, but now we are looking much further back into the beginning of human history. This week we focused on understanding the timeline of this era of our history and how we today can study humans from such a distant past. Everyone was keen to discover the roles of archeologists and anthropologists and how their discoveries unlock the clues to how we lived from 3 million years ago. Next week we will do some diorama building so please bring in a shoe box or small parcel box by WEDNESDAY of next week.
In Digital Literacy we started our unit on exploring the concept of coding using Scratch Pad. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun while getting a hang of it so I hope we can continue to play and learn with this program.
Have a wonderful weekend and see everyone Monday!
Mrs. Leah