Student Movies

The movies that the students made, starring the "Magnet Man" characters they created, are now posted on our sister blog at:

http://planet5movies.blogspot.com/

Just click on the above link to see all 7 movies!

Update from Ms. R

The homework over the holiday is...there is no homework! HOWEVER, it is expected that the children read every day.

Our piano-playing snowman was a popular toy in our classroom. He has a holiday message for you:

News for December 18

News for December 18

Another busy week, as we counted down the days (with our advent calendar!) to the winter holidays.

The big news was our school's Holiday Concert on Thursday night. The children's performance was amazing and they charmed the audience with their introductions to the songs.

The students worked in pairs to complete their geometry discovery project, investigating the different shapes that can be made using 4 right angle triangles. We also had some time to talk about Roman Numerals (from 1=I to 12= XII).

Everyday this week the children went to the gym to have a holiday sing-a-long. This is always a lot of fun with the whole school stomping to the thumpity thump thump in "Frosty the Snowman" and doing the actions to "The 12 Days of Christmas".

We counted the number of words on our word wall - 81 words this term! The children solved and created word search puzzles using these words.

We made fudge to serve at our class party. Simply using low heat, we melted chocolate chips (340g package) and sweetened condensed milk (300 ml can) together. Then the liquid fudge was poured into a 20 cm by 20 cm pan and left it in the fridge overnight. The fudge was cut into squares and enjoyed by all.

We were lucky to have the author Joan Yolleck come to our class this week. We read her book, "Paris in the Spring with Picasso" and the next day she came to Room 5 to "test" her new book with the students. She read the story of the jazz singer Nina Simone (who was a child prodigy on the piano). The children gave Ms. Yolleck good comments and asked interesting questions that

will help her make the book even better.

The students worked with partners to film their magnet man movies this week. These movies will be posted on our sister blog at:

http://planet5movies.blogspot.com/.

We listened to the winter movement of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" in honour of the first day of winter on December 21. We also reviewed where the earth is in the orbit around the sun and why Canada experiences the cold (due to the tilt of the earth).

In computers, the students watched movies of snowflake crystals being formed. The website is:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/movies/movies.htm.

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to practise singing the two songs the students will be performing at the Holiday Concert. The lyrics (words) for the two songs were sent home with the children on Friday.

Important Dates:

Dec. 17 - Holiday Concert and bake sale -6:00 to 6:45 the JK/SK students will perform, followed by an intermission from 6:45 to 7:00. From 7:00 to 8:00 grades 1 to 8 students will perform.

Dec. 18 - Last day of school for 2009

Dec. 19 to Jan. 3 - Winter Holidays

Jan. 4 - First day of school for 2010

Note:

I am currenty working with Dr. Dale Willows (from O.I.S.E/University of Toronto) to create a "virtual classroom" for a teacher resource website she is developing.

On Thursday evening, the classroom was transformed into a movie studio to allow for filming not only our classroom but also short videos of me explaining the student projects and giving teaching tips. After almost 6 hours of filming, we created a virtual tour of the classroom and over 20 short films!

(Here the videographer is setting up the lights.)

News for December 11

News for December 11

The big news this week was the first snow! A tradition in my class is to watch the short movie, "Frosty the Snowman", where the first snowfall is a magical one.

The students finished writing their magnet man stories this week by printing a good copy on very long paper. Each child then rolled up the paper into a cylinder and held it closed with a paper clip. Then magnet man could hold on to his story by grabbing the metal paper clip. Next the students worked in pairs to create movies starring their characters. They are responsible for the set and props, titles, credits, music, the problem and the solution and of course the acting!

The students did some word games using their knowledge of letter sounds. They managed to turn a hen into a fox and a cat into a pig, just by changing one letter at a time.

In math, the class continued the geometry unit. This week we looked at angles, parallel lines, shapes that are congruent and sorting figures by one attribute (for example, shapes that have a right angle). The students also worked in pairs to create as many different shapes from 4 right angle triangles as they could figure out.

The whole school is participating in our annual "Holiday Post Office". The students reviewed the standard way to write a letter and started writing letters to other teachers and students in the school. The children also learned how to fold their letters into an origami evergreen tree.

We looked at a couple of "mix and match" books this week and combined that art technique with what we know about nouns, adjectives and verbs. The students did the artwork to create two different "mix and match" class books.

On Friday, we learned about the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. The students learned how to play the game of dreidel and enjoyed eating chocolate "gelt" (money) and homemade mini jelly donuts.

In computers, the children cut virtual snowflakes using the following website:

http://www.addictinggames.com/createasnowflake.html

Update from Ms. R

Thank you to all the families for coming by our classroom to visit this week! I really enjoyed talking to you about all the great things your children have done so far this year!

The homework for this week is to complete the grade appropriate math (geometry) worksheet. This was sent home with the children on Thursday.

Important Dates:

December 17 (evening) - Holiday Concert
December 18 - last day of school for December
January 4, 2010 - first day of school for January

News for December 3

News for December 3

This four-day week was busy in Room 5.
At the beginning of the week, the students learned about the Christian tradition of making "advent " calendars to mark the days until Christmas. The word "advent" means arrival in Latin, so we decided to create our own version of this type of calendar, counting down the days until the winter holidays begin. Each student folded a modular origami container (actually a hexahedron) and filled it with some small toys and treats and a handwritten wish for a happy holiday. Every day after the morning message,

the star student picks out a name and that student gets the special treat for that day (on Friday, there were 10 days left before the holidays).

The grade two students went to see a presentation by the Toronto Police Department about personal safety. During this time, the grade 3 students did their first EQAO practice by completing a reading activity.

As an extension activity to our study of the Willy Wonka movie, the children each "invented" a new candy. The task was to create a candy name, a candy company name, a label and a poster advertising the candy. These are now on display in our hallway.

The students shared their jokes and riddles. They enjoyed reading joke books from our school library and each student selected a joke, practised reading it aloud and then were filmed telling the joke. These were turned into a little movie:



The class learned about "Snowflake Bentley" the first man to photograph snowflakes over 140 years ago. The students then had time to create paper snowflakes to decorate our class and some were so inspired they made extras to take home!

In math, we started a unit on 2D geometry (2D = two dimensional or flat). We reviewed the names of shapes and the students hunted for examples of those shapes around the classroom. They discovered that the easiest shape to find is a rectangle. Squares and circles could be found but were a bit harder to find and pentagons/hexagons/heptagons/octogons are really hard to find. Starting this week, each child began the day doing two math problems on blackboards, to keep practising addition and subtraction questions.

As a connection to our science unit on magnets, the students created a "magnet man" figure with magnets on the ends of his hands and feet. The children are now planning stories starring this new character.

In computers, we looked at Google maps to see satellite photos of our school. The children also played some math addition and subtraction games. The sites are:
http://maps.google.com/ and http://www.funbrain.com/.