Wednesday, April 2

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty awesome day today, especially in the afternoon.

We've been learning about matter, and forces, in science, and today the students designed their own device to apply consistent contact force onto a ball. Basically the devices were made from K-Nex, and involved a swinging mallet-type thing, that collides with a ball and makes it move. I was super impressed by how well the students independently built, tested, and modified their creations - I'm seeing a big improvement in their resilience, teamwork, and flexibility, compared to when we started building simple machines. Here are a few creations I managed to catch in action:

The 'Prototype'

We worked on Book in a Box planning templates. In preparation for writing paragraphs on each item in the box, students took notes on important aspects of characters, events, settings, and themes in their chosen novels. I gave them some guiding questions to help with this.

In math, the Grade 3s worked on division and multiplication worksheets. They've pretty much learned everything they need to about division, and now its just a matter of practicing it, and moving from reliable, concrete strategies (for example, physically dividing counters into equal groups), to more abstract ones (using skip-counting with no materials). 

The Grade 4s, and a few brave Grade 3s, started learning long division, using the Stamp Game. The Stamp Game is my all-time favourite Montessori material because it does such a good job of representing the processes involved in the standard division algorithm. Today, the students just used the Stamp Game, while I modeled the algorithm on the board. Tomorrow, they'll start using the algorithm alongside the Stamp Game, and eventually, they'll be able to just use the algorithm, while still understanding how and why it works.

Have a nice night,

Zac