Give peace a chance

Today I give thanks for having the most excellent group of 8 and 9 year olds in the universe. We had a fantastic day in grade 3 with tons of fun in science, tons of learning in math and a great debate during our current event time.

In Science we began constructing pieces of playground equipment. The only rule was that they had to create a blueprint for they piece of equipment. Students used paper clips, tape, straws, cardboard, egg cartons, pipe cleaners and salt dough and they came up with some great things.

In Math we continued working on addition and regrouping. We came up with a strategy of taking the numbers to their expanded form and then adding them together in their easier place value groups. We had a lot of success, kids even chose to keep doing math rather than going outside for recess.

Finally in Social Studies we decided to debate and discuss the issue of hostilities between Israel and Gaza. We watched news clips looked at maps and discussed some of the history and then the kids entered into a debate on what they think should happen. It was very interesting to see what the kids thought. We had some that thought it would be best for Israel to leave the people of Gaza alone and give them more areas to settle and that should solve the problem. Others thought that they should just split up the West Bank area and share it equally. A final group talked about how Israel should only go after Hamas and leave the innocent people in Gaza alone. It was very cool to see that they understood the impact on quality of life living in this region would have and in their simple uncomplicated opinions that the right thing to do would be to help the innocent and protect your families. Of course we came to no conclusion but the ideas floating around the room were very cool to watch develop :)

Teaching is the BEST

-Mr.G