News for November 20

News for November 20

This week the class learned more about forces with a focus on magnets. The circle table was filled with different kinds of magnets and was a very popular activity with all the students (especially the very powerful sphere magnet). The students also created, through paper engineering, a paper windmill toy to illustrate how the force of air creates movement.

In math, the children worked hard to move from using place value blocks to using the standard algorithm (or method) for two-digit addition and subtraction. The grade two's focused on questions without regrouping and the grade three's practised with questions that require regrouping (also referred to trading or borrowing).

The class learned about synonyms, words that have the same meaning. We all tried very hard to say "synonym" and not "cinnamon"!. We played a game to help us learn 37 different sets of synonyms.

The research posters are now displayed in the hallway by the stairs. Each student marked the location of his/her country on a world map and wrote a reflection on what they think they did well on the poster and what they could do next time to make the poster even better. The students listened to the song "Everywhere Man" by Johnny Cash and learned our class version that lists all 19 countries that we learned about from our research.

The children finished the "Flat Stanley" class project this week. First each student chose a place to take Stanley to and had their photo taken. Next they each wrote a letter to Mrs. Callaghan's class telling why they chose that place (and thanking them for sending Flat Stanley to us). Then they each created a new Flat Stanley to send back with the letters. Finally, everything was put together to send back to England.
At the beginning of the week we visitied the Flat Stanley website to learn more about his books and play games:
http://www.flatstanleybooks.com/