Our Day in the Life series for this school year continues in Grade 3 with Aditya, Class of 2032!
Grade 3 students travel from classroom to classroom with their Learning Expert Teacher (LET). They have six classes a day, five with their Subject Expert Teachers (SET), a mid-morning and mid-afternoon recess, along with their lunch and recess time. Their first class of the day begins at 8:15 AM and their last class ends at 3:50 PM.
Aditya begins his day with his first class, READ. His LET, Ms. Jayapal, leads this class every day. This class teaches students to develop their social and emotional skills through direct instruction, collaboration, and practical application of social-emotional skills. In today’s lesson, Aditya participated in a dialogue about books he and his classmates were reading. The group wrote down interesting facts from the book discussion in their Communication Journal and reflected on the main takeaways from these stories. Although this class is only twenty minutes long, it plays an important role in getting his mind warmed up for the rest of the school day.
After his warmup, Aditya heads to Music with SET Ms. Zhang. He has Music once a week for 85 minutes. Aditya has all his Fine Arts courses – Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Music, and Engineering & Technology – four times a week. This course is designed to provide essential experiences in the five conceptual areas of music: rhythm, melody, harmony, form, and expression. Ms. Zhang focused on rhythm and expression in today’s class and had a fun Lunar New Year lesson plan ready.
Students participated in singing the Happy Lunar New Year song in both Mandarin and English and they even had the chance to do a solo song greeting in Mandarin. When asked who would like to participate in the greeting, Aditya was one of the first to volunteer. He did an exceptional job singing, “Xīn Nián Kuài Lè Tù Nián Dà Jí” which translates to Happy New Year of the Rabbit.
Aditya heads for a quick break to grab a snack. He has a 10-minute morning recess every day.
After recess, Aditya has Mandarin class with SET Ms. Han. Grade 3 students have Mandarin class every day for 40 minutes. This course is designed to help our primary students learn Mandarin through lessons that are rich in oral language, interactive, and project-based. There are two Mandarin classes that we offer, Heritage and Non-Heritage. Since Aditya is new to learning Mandarin, he is in the Non-Heritage Mandarin class.
In Aditya’s Non-Heritage Mandarin class, communication skills are organized by themes. The theme of the class was learning about the history of the Lunar New Year and the importance of traditions. With the instruction of Ms. Han, the class created mini Chinese lanterns out of yellow and red pipe cleaners. Aditya was thrilled with the outcome.
Next, Aditya heads to the field for his Physical Education & Sports class with his SET Mr. Butler. Aditya has PE every day for 40 minutes. This class aims to build students’ mind, body, and character through physical activity. Students will learn the importance of good sportsmanship and respect for other participants as they learn mechanics for a variety of sports. Aditya and his classmates played volleyball and learned that each player had to work together to accomplish their goals for the win.
After working up a sweat in PE, Aditya heads for lunch. Grade 3 students eat their lunch in the multipurpose room before heading outside for recess. Today’s lunch was mac n’ cheese with veggies and apple sauce from our hot lunch provider. Students can bring their own lunch or purchase one from our provider, My Green Lunch. The lunch period is 40 minutes long.
After lunch, Aditya makes his way to his SET Ms. Moran’s classroom for Math & Science. These subjects are taught together in an integrated 85-minute block five times a week and teach students number sense and operations, measurement, patterns, and data analysis. The class also covers essential science topics, including science as a process, life science, physical science, and earth and space science.
Ms. Moran had her students work on fractions that included a variety of formatted questions. Aditya quickly went into problem-solving mode and worked with his classmates to find the answers. He informed his teacher that he highly favored the fraction questions that were associated with a geological map.
After Math & Science, Aditya takes a quick 10-minute afternoon recess. During this time, he hung out with his friends and ate a snack.
For his last class of the day, Aditya has Humanities with SET Mr. Rees. This class is also taught in an 85-minute block five times a week and strengthens students’ critical thinking skills through reading fiction and nonfiction texts. Through novel studies, they deepen their understanding of critical comprehension and vocabulary skills, making them more effective readers.
Aditya learned about possessive nouns and the proper way to use them. Mr. Rees had the class come up with sentences containing possessive nouns and the students collaborated to find the correct way to write them.
There is one special class that Aditya didn’t have this day, but does have once a week, Connections. This course will ask students to use hands-on approaches to create unique solutions to scenario-based problems and make connections across the curriculum, which requires the utilization of knowledge and skills taught in their other classes. The course is designed to increase interpersonal skills, build critical thinking skills, and allow students to showcase and refine their creative minds. Connections is taught by his LET Ms. Jayapal and is an 85-minute course.
Thank you to Aditya and his family for allowing us to document his Day in the Life!
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