Tuesday, March 4

 Hi parents,

We had another pretty good day today. In the morning I gave a (fairly bad) lesson on writing 'conclusions' in paragraphs. It was a bad lesson because it's actually really hard to write a decent concluding sentence to wrap up a grade 3 / 4 level piece of writing - the purpose of a conclusion is to summarize, but it virtually always feels redundant to summarize a paragraph that was only 4 sentences long... anyway, we focused on the idea of at the very least, ending on a high note, with an engaging, interesting sentence that gives a feeling of closure. 

The students were somehow able to read between the lines of my confusing lesson and wrap their paragraphs up skillfully. I was quite proud. Now we just need to do a little editing, and then we'll be ready for good copies. 

From jot notes to paragraphs!

In math, we reviewed regular polygons, and learned about some of the more niche examples of them. For example, heptagons, nonagons, decagons.... While I don't expect students to have all these memorized, or to accurately draw them, I hope that seeing so many examples of regular polygons will help them easily recognize irregular polygons. 

In Science, we started learning about Simple Machines. This is a unit we did for quite a while last year, so we'll spend less time on it this time around, but its always a favourite. The plan is for students to design and build 'leprechaun traps' using simple machines. 

We ended our day with Music.

Have a nice night,

Zac