Dear Parents,
What a short week, with so much happening! Last week's UN day was a wonderful experience, and a great opportunity to reflect on the diversity of this unique, multicultural community. I hope you enjoyed the parade and morning breakfast.
On Tuesday, the teachers had an in house professional development day. We spent half of the day working towards our CIS accreditation review- a very valuable opportunity to reflect on our practices at UNIS and identify strengths and areas for growth. The morning began with a talk from the very inspiring Sir Ken Robinson, who has long been one of my educational heroes. Sir Ken is renowned for his work in surrounding creativity in education, and supporting the while child. I had the opportunity to sit down with Sir Ken after his talk in order to ask a few questions. He offered up some advice for our third graders which I will soon share in an article. In the meantime, if you have a moment, here is a talk of his worth checking out.
We have some exciting new learning coming up. Here is what to expect your children to be buzzing about.
LITERACY:
In support of our unit in Global Connections, the students will be reading informational texts so that they can build a deeper understanding of the biomes of the world. As a class, we will focus on the strategy of summarizing and paraphrasing, while individual students continue to work towards their specific reading goals.
With the information they gather, the students will be writing report of information. To build these skills, we will be inquiring into paragraph structure and working to understand how writing is organized.
MATH:
We are beginning our unit on multiplication. At the beginning of the unit, we will make connections between repeated addition and multiplication, while looking at making "groups of." Eventually, we will work towards the use of the "x" symbol to represent the multiplication operation, but in the beginning we are working to build a deep understanding of the concept of multiplication as a tool for representing "groups of" as a unit.
UNIT OF STUDY
We are building our ability to ask relevant questions to further our learning, and to wonder about the world around us as we develop an understanding of how the world is organized and how we are all interconnected.
SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING (SEL)
We have just worked on resolving problems by following the "POOCH" strategy.
What a short week, with so much happening! Last week's UN day was a wonderful experience, and a great opportunity to reflect on the diversity of this unique, multicultural community. I hope you enjoyed the parade and morning breakfast.
On Tuesday, the teachers had an in house professional development day. We spent half of the day working towards our CIS accreditation review- a very valuable opportunity to reflect on our practices at UNIS and identify strengths and areas for growth. The morning began with a talk from the very inspiring Sir Ken Robinson, who has long been one of my educational heroes. Sir Ken is renowned for his work in surrounding creativity in education, and supporting the while child. I had the opportunity to sit down with Sir Ken after his talk in order to ask a few questions. He offered up some advice for our third graders which I will soon share in an article. In the meantime, if you have a moment, here is a talk of his worth checking out.
We have some exciting new learning coming up. Here is what to expect your children to be buzzing about.
LITERACY:
In support of our unit in Global Connections, the students will be reading informational texts so that they can build a deeper understanding of the biomes of the world. As a class, we will focus on the strategy of summarizing and paraphrasing, while individual students continue to work towards their specific reading goals.
With the information they gather, the students will be writing report of information. To build these skills, we will be inquiring into paragraph structure and working to understand how writing is organized.
MATH:
We are beginning our unit on multiplication. At the beginning of the unit, we will make connections between repeated addition and multiplication, while looking at making "groups of." Eventually, we will work towards the use of the "x" symbol to represent the multiplication operation, but in the beginning we are working to build a deep understanding of the concept of multiplication as a tool for representing "groups of" as a unit.
UNIT OF STUDY
We are building our ability to ask relevant questions to further our learning, and to wonder about the world around us as we develop an understanding of how the world is organized and how we are all interconnected.
SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING (SEL)
We have just worked on resolving problems by following the "POOCH" strategy.
We are now moving into the steps for making a true apology and taking accountability for our actions. This supports our work in Happiness 101, as we look at ways to be kind to ourselves and others.
NOTES & IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER:
Wednesday, October 30 8:45-9:15; Open House:
Please join us for a brief glimpse into the life of a third grader. The children are excited to share their learning with you. This will take place in our classroom. You are welcome to come in starting at 8:30 so that you can see how our days begin.
Thursday, October 31; Halloween:
A reminder of from the Junior School Office: We do not celebrate Halloween in the Junior School- on Thursday, October 31st, students should NOT bring or wear Halloween costumes to school.
Wednesday, November 20; Field Trip:
There is a permission slip in your child's home folder for our first trip to the Central Park Zoo. Please fill in the slip and return to school with your child. We can take a limited number of chaperones on this trip; if I have the happy problem of too many volunteers, I will choose names from a hat. There will be more opportunities to chaperone after this trip.
As always, thank you for your continued support.
Ms. Threlfall
NOTES & IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER:
Wednesday, October 30 8:45-9:15; Open House:
Please join us for a brief glimpse into the life of a third grader. The children are excited to share their learning with you. This will take place in our classroom. You are welcome to come in starting at 8:30 so that you can see how our days begin.
Thursday, October 31; Halloween:
A reminder of from the Junior School Office: We do not celebrate Halloween in the Junior School- on Thursday, October 31st, students should NOT bring or wear Halloween costumes to school.
Wednesday, November 20; Field Trip:
There is a permission slip in your child's home folder for our first trip to the Central Park Zoo. Please fill in the slip and return to school with your child. We can take a limited number of chaperones on this trip; if I have the happy problem of too many volunteers, I will choose names from a hat. There will be more opportunities to chaperone after this trip.
As always, thank you for your continued support.
Ms. Threlfall