Update from Ms. R

This week's homework is to write a fiction story in the homework writing journal about a magic _________ (noun - student's choice).

Important Dates:

April 2 (evening) - Parent/Teacher interviews
April 3 - P.A. Day (no classes for students) - Parent/Teacher interviews (morning)
April 9 - 12:45 PM Room 5 students are in charge of the school recognition assembly
April 10 - Good Friday Holiday - no classes
April 13 - Easter Monday Holiday - no classes

News for March 27

News for March 27

This week in math the students reviewed and continued to learn about money.

The class "conducted" the spring movement of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Ms. Lindsay brought in her clarinet and talked about how it works. We also listened to many types of music that feature the clarinet. She also played a beautiful song!

The students honoured their personal questions about the world by writing a little book that lists these questions. Later we will be choosing and researching one of these questions per child.

Our fairy tale unit continues with the class hearing the story of Goldilocks, The Three Little Pigs, Rumpelstiltskin, Thumbelina and Jack and the Beanstalk. The student's have created a fairytale "checklist" to help them recognize the features of fairy tales in each story. The children reviewed how to use a Venn diagram, and used one to compare what was the same and what was different in the stories The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The students have begun to plan their own retell of the story Jack and the Beanstalk.

The students reviewed the parts of speech learned so far, nouns, adjectives and verbs. They learned about adverbs and how adverbs make writing more interesting. They also did a "Madlibs" exercise to help them write a crazy fairy tale by identifying the parts of speech.

The class learned more about how pioneers lived their lives. The children made looms out of cardboard and used the wool they dyed to learn to weave, a skill important to the pioneers. They are creating wall hangings using natural materials (wool, fleece, wood).

The class was very happy to get the new batch of letters from their pen pals this week. Their friends also made them some origami bookmarks. They started to write letters back at the end of the week.

Room 5 Radio - Mrs. Boyce Interview

This week, the hosts were Grace, Nicole and Sophia.

Update from Ms. R

The Woolyhoodwink movies are now ready! To view them, please go to our sister blog at:

http://planet5movies.blogspot.com

The homework this week is to complete the "My Questions" booklet and is due on Friday.

Update from Ms. R

Over the holiday, there is no assigned homework. There will be a small activity assigned on the Monday after the break. HOWEVER, each child promised me that they will READ EVERYDAY.

I hope all the Room 5 families have a safe and happy holiday.

News for March 13

News for March 13

This week the students were very busy! The big news of the week was our 100 Books party. On Friday we invited parents, staff and students to our celebration. Each of the students chose their favourite book and then wrote a book report about it. They also did an art activity based on their favourite part of the book using clear plastic, sharpie markers and chalk pastels.

The day of the party each student rotated jobs (e.g., keeping the floor clean; greeting guests at the door). On each desk was the student's book report and the book of poetry that they made. Early in the week the class measured how tall, how long and how much the 100 books weighed. They also tallied the number of fiction/non-fiction books, boy author/girl author, and hardcover/softcover books. We also made posters illustrating this information and made a video to show on our TV news and at the party.

We finished listening to the CD of "The Composer is Dead" by Lemony Snicket. This is a mystery story that also reviews the different instruments of the orchestra.

The students did (and wrote about) an experiment making wool felt (another way to make fleece stronger). They each put a piece of fleece in one of their shoes and at the end of the day, all that pressure, heat and sweat did a great job of felting the fleece into a solid piece of wool fabric.

In math, the students continued to learn about Canadian coins and learned a game using pennies and dimes and one die to "roll to $1.oo". They then wrote about their strategies on how to win the game.

Friday afternoon, the children each made a new art journal. They folded, decorated, put beads in the binding and sewed the paper to the cover. We made 19 journals in less than one hour!

Room 5 Radio - Mr. Lee Interview

This week we interviewed the grade 1/2 teacher at our school, Mr. Lee. This week the hosts were Ansh and Cole.

New Song by Room 5

Music and poetry were integrated when the students wrote their own lyrics to the Beatles song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Then, they chose the lines in their lyrics that they thought were the best and we blended them all together to make a Room 5 version of the song. We hope you enjoy our new version of this old song!

Room 5 Radio - Ms. Pepper Ventresca Interview

This week we interviewed Ms. Pepper Ventresca. She is the teacher of the sign language/oral support primary class. The hosts this week were Parsa and Razan.

Update from Ms. R

This week's homework is to write a non-fiction story in the homework writing journal. Topic suggestions were to write about our student teacher Ms. Lindsay or to write about our school's Penny Challenge fundraiser. The "clipboard" group brought home a paper clock that they made, to help them practise how to tell analog time to the quarter hour (e.g., 8:00, 8:15, 8:30, 8:45 - watch the position of the hour hand!).

March 6 News

News for March 6









This week the class worked hard to finish off their poetry books. They wrote a new poem based on the nursery rhyme classic "Little Jack Horner".

The students learned more about how wool was used in daily life during pioneer times. They finished dyeing the wool and learned how to card and spin fleece. They experimented to learn why spinning fleece makes it stronger (see Raika and Sophia demonstrate "the power of the twist" in a video in this blog).

In music, the students heard a second version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" this time by Elton John, to compare with the version by the Beatles. Each child worked to write their own lyrics to this song. We then "blended" the students' new lyrics together and recorded the class singing the Room 5 version. This will be posted this week.

In math, the workbook group finished off the unit on division and the clipboard group continued to learn to tell digtal and analog time to the quarter hour.

The class finished their abstract art painting by creating a collage of a large letter with smaller words and images that begin with that letter on the large letter. These are now on display in our classroom.

Our school began a fundraiser by collecting a lot of pennies. The students used their "ten frame" strategy to count the over 1 kilogram of pennies we had every day (yes...we weighed them!).