How We Express Ourselves

Grade 3s and 4s began their day working on revising and learning the following capitalization rules:

• The first word in every sentence
• The word I
• Holidays and special days
• Months of the year, days of the week, BUT NOT SEASONS

They also enjoyed 20 minutes of independent reading time in class.

In spelling, they worked on list 7 words and in arithmetic the practiced counting money amounts with nickels and pennies.

We began a now unit of inquiry today titled The Poet's Society which falls under the transdisciplinary theme How we express ourselves. Students were introduced to the central idea for this them -  Through artists' expression,we get and give a glimpse of the artist's mind. The children were also introduced to our lines of inquiry for this unit, to which their responses were, "Huh?" Through experience we know that that is always our reactions to lines of inquiry and by the end of the unit we are very comfortable with explaining concepts.

Our first inquiry question for students to discuss with a partner was, "What makes a piece of writing a poem?" Students responses are on display in our classroom. The poetic form students were introduced to today is the cinquain poem. Ask your child to tell you why a cinquain poem is called a cinquain poem and what is unique about each line in the poem.

We ended our day with math. Grade 3s worked on mental math strategies called subtract tens then subtract ones to subtract 2-digit numbers. Grade 4s worked on reviewing measurement concepts they learned in grade 3. They will continue to revise whole numbers tomorrow and write their unit test on Wednesday.

Reminders:

• MMS 3 p. 42 & 43
• MMS 4 Study pages 12 - 33 Test postponed (again) to Wednesday
• Arithmetic p. 45 & 46
• Spelling - List 7