Greetings. This week was a VERY busy week. Our grade 3 students wrote the provincial SLA (Student Learning Assessment) for math and language arts. I'll be happy to share the individual results with you. The SLAs meant we had a pretty hectic schedule, as they consist of 2 parts, a written and a computer portion for both reading/writing and math. Our grade 4s participated as well in the written portions since it provides us with a good benchmark for them, too. In between all this, we managed to get some other things done!

In science, we are designing our eco-columns. We are taking our time, trying to think like engineers and designers, and putting in our best effort. This means many drafts before we'll be happy with our final project. We watched (and will watch again) the following video to help us understand how design, peer feedback, and putting in a hard effort can result in extraordinary results. Take a look for yourself: Austin's Butterfly. This video shows what a first-grade student was capable of, and it really provoked our grade 3-4s to push themselves to achieve!

In reading, we now have our book club groups up and running. We continue to work on our Reading Powers, and the children are showing a good understanding of connecting, as well as visualizing and inferring. Right now, we are focusing on three types of connections: connections to self, connections to other texts, and connections to the world.

In writing, we are combining a few disciplines. We are beginning to work on a field guide of animals and plants for the countries we are studying in Social Studies. This project will link language arts, science (plant and animal life cycles), and social studies (our study of Peru, Ukraine, Tunisia, and India). We'll incorporate the lessons from Austin's Butterfly to make our field guide as good as we can, writing and re-writing, drawing and re-drawing our work.

In physical education, we had a special guest this past week: Rob "Frisbee Rob" Mcleod. Rob is a Guiness World Record holder for frisbee, and he has been teaching the children a variety of fun techniques that are developing their hand-eye coordination, accuracy, balance, and movement skills. They are loving it. Rob is also putting out a challenge that we'll be developing: stay off of digital devices for a week. Parents can help by tracking their child and encouraging them to read a book, play outside, do something other than use their devices. They can also write a brief note as 'proof' their child did it. The winner will receive a special frisbee from Rob. More details to follow. P.S. We could still use some 2L pop bottles!