January 30 News

This week the students learned about and celebrated Chinese New Year. We learned about what people do and eat to celebrate. In our class, we made fried rice with Chinese-style vegetables and ate it with chopsticks. We had oranges, jasmine tea in tiny cups, fortune cookies and Chinese candies.

In Science, the students worked in pairs to use what they learned about structures to make a "stable table". They could only use straws and masking tape to make a structure that was strong and stable enough to hold a "load" of books.

In math, the workbook group continued their study of multiplication and started learning the facts to 10. In theory there are 100 facts to learn but we studied the multiplication table and realized that they already know 79 facts easily and only 21 facts are actually "tricky". The clipboard group worked hard to learn two-digit subtraction with regrouping and how to properly answer a math word problem.

We learned about the pianist and composer Franz Liszt (1811-1885) and listened to his Hungarian Rhapsody #2. We watched and wrote about a movie about his life. The students also watched the pianist Lang Lang play this piece on the computer. You can watch his fingers fly at the piano here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-EGKpbIBuw

In art, we learned about the French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954). At the end of his life his health did not allow him to stand and paint so he did collages with a technique he called "drawing with scissors". The students did a collage only using scissors and glue.

The class began to design a new kind of chair. They focused on what features to add to make it the perfect chair for them.

Room 5 Radio - Ms. Mantello Interview

This week we interviewed Ms. Mantello. Angie and Eve were the hosts.

Update from Ms. R

The homework this week is to write a FICTION story in the homework writing journal. The topics are to write a story about a dragon or what it would be like to live on the sun.

Important Dates:

Feb. 13 - P. A. Day - no school
Feb. 16 - Family Day Holiday - no school

January 23 News

This week the students were busy finishing off their stories and art for their comics which are now on display in our hall. We did a week long guided reading project using the classic book, My
Father's Dragon. The class listened to chapters read aloud each day then did a variety of guided reading comprehension activitities.

In math, the grade three's learned about multiplication. They did activities that linked repeated addition to multiplication (ex. 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 4 X 2 = 8 ), arranging objects into arrays ( rows and columns) and "tricks" to remember muliplication facts. The grade two's explored two digit addition with regrouping using manipulatives and linking the operation to paper and pencil addition.

We started our Room 5 Radio interview show. See interviews posted every week.

In dance, the students moved to many different styles of music and learned how to use metre long ribbons in their dance movements.

In music, we learned two new songs. Kookaburra is about an Australian bird and the students learned how to sing it as a "round". We also learned a song about the sun called "Why Does The Sun Shine". From that song the class learned that the sun is millions of degrees hot, that it is so big that a million earths would fit inside and that it is only a middle-sized star.

We created hanging lanterns using Chinese lai-see envelopes. These will be part of our Chinese New Year celebrations.

Room 5 Radio - Mr. Zamora Interview

This is the first interview for Room 5 Radio. The hosts Alison and Alex interviewed Mr. Zamora.

Update from Ms. R

The homework this week is to complete a math practise sheet. This sheet will be sent home with your child on Friday.

January 14 News and Interview Project

The new format for our weekly blog posts is to show a summary of the week's events in the classroom as always and to post an interview of a Davisville P.S./MTSD staff member in the form of a podcast (audiofile). Pairs of students will do a radio-like interview. Next week, the first "Room 5 Radio" postcast interview of Mr. Zamora will be posted.

This week the students finished the geometry unit in math by folding circles into 3D shapes and building math sculptures. We started the unit on on multiplication (3) and 2-digit addition (2).

In science we talked about what makes a good structure (stability, strength, centre of gravity). The students worked in pairs in the "tower challenge". The challenge was to create the tallest structure possible using only 3 pieces of paper, a metre of string and a metre of tape. Over a few days the students learned from doing and from each other and created a range of possible structures.

The students learned how to draw cartoon style characters and wrote a short story to create their own comics. These are on display in the hall outside our class.

We made a display of our handprints and the handprints of Room 202 and our pen pals from the grade 3 class at the lab school at the University of Toronto. We sent off our letters to our friends this week.

Upate from Ms. R

What a fun time we had this week getting back to classroom routines and learning together. It was a good start to 2009.

In the homework writing journal there is now an editing checklist taped on the front. Please remember to use this checklist when writing your story.

This week's homework is to write a fiction story. Here are two ideas to choose from or pick your own idea.

1. The Octopus's Shoes
2. The Day The Class Clock Went Backwards

January 7 News

January 7 News by Angie and Liam

(Note: Before the holidays we counted 75 different crazy shirts of Mr. Lee!!!)

This week we made (geometry) skeletons using toothpicks and plasticine. My best one was a pentagon-based pyramid (Angie). My best one was a tetrahedron or triangle-based pyramid (Liam).
Pepper's class visited us on Tuesday afternoon because we got letters back from our pen pals. They also sent us their handprints and some bookmarks. After we read the letters we started to write letters back to them being careful to answer the questions that the pen pals asked. We learned to make origami crickets - and they can jump! We made one for us to keep and one to give to our pen pal.
We practised our mental math addition using a regular dice with 6 faces (a cube or hexahedron) and an icosahedron dice (20 faces).
We conducted the "winter" song from the Italian composer Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" to mark the first day of winter (December 21). We are listening to the read aloud book, "The Reasons For The Seasons" by Gail Gibbons. We learned that the time it takes the earth to travel around the sun is one year. The earth spinning around once is a day and the tilt of the earth causes the seasons on earth.
In our art journals we practised drawing cartoon people and animals. My best one was Cat Clarissa (Angie) and my best one was Martin Martian (Liam).

This news was by Liam and Angie.