Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the grade appropriate, two-sided math worksheet on graphing.

* Please make sure that your child arrives at school on time. The schoolyard is supervised by two teachers from 8:30 to 8:40 AM. The school day starts when the bell rings at 8:40 AM.

Important Dates:

February 11 - The 100th Day of School! There will be a math celebration in the morning. If you are able to volunteer to help from 9:00 to 11:30, please let Ms. R know.

February 15 - Family Day - no classes on this day.

News for January 29

News for January 29

This week we concentrated on our math data management unit. This involves doing research using surveys and then making graphs to help communicate the results. As a class, the students ate 3 different kinds of rice cakes. The class then voted on the one they liked the best. We tallied the results and graphed the information. The results were:

cheddar cheese rice cake 8 votes

buttered popcorn rice cake 7 votes

caramel corn rice cake 2 votes

We decided to tell the company that makes the rice cakes about our research so we wrote a letter together to The Quaker Company. We also told them about our suggestions for new flavours.

The students then each created his/her own survey question for the class to answer. The children then tallied and graphed the results and wrote about what the research told them about the students in our class. For example, one survey showed an equal number of students have a brother than do not have a brother and another survey showed that all the students like pizza! The students did a good copy of their projects and these are now on display in our hallway.

In writing, the class talked about the "big idea" in a story. This is a difficult concept for children so we discussed this for several days. For example, we read the book "Henry The Dog With No Tail". The big idea in the story could be friendship or being careful what you wish for. The next step for students is to be able to tell/write why they think it is the big idea by using information from the story (proof) and their own ideas (making connections).

The class learned about the 6 elements of design (colour, line, texture, space, form, shape). We read several books about being an artist, about developing an "artist's eye" when creating artwork and when looking around at the world and how everyone is an artist in his/her own way. The children experimented with 8 different types of art materials to see how the materials made different kinds of marks on paper. At the end of the week, the students started creating a new artwork using the elements of colour and line.

This week we started our dance unit. The students experimented with moving their bodies to different types of music, using their arms and legs to show the different rhythms. They even used long pieces of yarn to help them create dance moves!

In computers, the children did some computer artwork on these sites:

http://www.mrpicassohead.com/

http://sketch.odopod.com/sketches/new

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a ficton story in the homework writing journal. Each student chose 2 pictures to tape into his/her journal. The challenge is to write a story that uses the ideas in the pictures.

News for January 22

News for January 22

This week the students worked hard in science to learn how to make strong and stable structures out of paper. They saw how folding or rolling paper into cylinders made the paper stronger. The students also learned that triangles are one of the strongest shapes and that a "strut" within a structure adds to strength and stability. The best structure held 46 books! We made a movie of this project and it's at the end of this post.

In math we began the unit on data management. The class reviewed sorting rules using two attributes. They learned about using tally marks to keep track of answers to a survey question. Then they practiced how to show this information on bar graphs and picographs (picture graphs). We also worked on interpreting the information in different graphs.

This photo is of the students in gym class this week.

The class learned about shape poems (also called concrete poems) and wrote some of their own. We also touched on how poets often compare things to give more information with fewer words, as in "my cat is as grey as a rainy day". They also wrote their own poems in this style.

The children learned about rhythms in poems as poems come "alive" when they are read out loud. To show this we practised saying poems and clapping the beats at the same time. (Clapping to the nursery rhyme "From Wibbleton to Wobbleton" was a class favourite.) Later in the week, the children read aloud the words/poetry/lyrics to some songs and listened to how the feeling of the words changed when they heard the songs played.

Our school bake sale, to raise money for aid to Haiti, was a great success. Thanks for all your support! The students wrote a non-fiction story about this important project.

In computers, the students visited the site:

http://creative.lego.com/

(Please note there is a problem with the audio track on this video.)

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the reading comprehension activity sent home with the children on Friday.

NOTE

On Tuesday, January 19, our school will be having a bake sale to raise money for aid in Haiti. Your family may contribute in two ways:

1. You can make baked goods to sell on Tuesday. Have your child bring the food to class and we will make sure it gets to the bake sale.

2. You can have your child bring money to buy treats. Our class will visit the bake sale as a group, but students will also be able to go during recess.

News for January 15

News for January 15

This week the children continued the unit on poetry. We listened to and talked about nursery rhymes. The students were amazed that often all I had to do was read two or three words and they knew the rest of the poem. So much poetry is already inside them! The class wrote their own poems based on the nursery rhyme, "Little Jack Horner".

In math, the children continued the geometry unit by created 3D figures by folding and taping paper "nets". We hung the different prisms and pyramids on our class tree to create a "geome-tree". The students also made skeletons of geometric figures using toothpicks (edges) and pieces of plasticene (vertices) and wrote a list poem about one of their models. At the end of the week, both grades wrote a math test to end the unit.

The students finished the fiction stories based on the large paintings they created last week. These stories are now typed and on display in the hallway outside our classroom.

In science the students used lego in many different ways to investigate stability in structures. We talked about how, when designing a structure, one needs to make sure it is stable and that it serves a purpose. The students worked in pairs to create a structure out of a bin of lego. The groups created an animal hospital, a used vehicle store, a bank, a coffee shop, an auto parts factory, a bridge, a police station, a museum and a candy factory. The students then presented their designs to the class pointing out the features of the structure. Also, we looked at and talked about many different structural landmarks around the world. Some are so well constructed they have lasted hundreds, even thousands of years.

The class watched the DVD of Dr. Seuss' rhyming story, "Horton Hears a Who". After discussing the parts of the story, they wrote about what the problem was in the story and what Horton meant when he said, "a person is a person, no matter how small".

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a fiction story in the homework writing journal. The story needs to have something to do with snow. Suggestions were: characters with "snow" names (like two dogs named Snowflake and Snowball); what would happen if snow tasted like vanilla ice cream; everything in the story made out of snow (like a house and the furniture).

Please note: There are writing rules now taped to the front of each journal. Please make sure that you follow these rules when you are creating your story!

Homework is due the following Friday.

News for January 8

News for January 8

This week we began talking about poetry. The students listened to poems, wrote poems and read poems. The students wrote list poems in their journals, then after reviewing 2D shapes, they wrote list poems about pictures they drew using 2D shapes (these are now on display in our hallway). This is a list poem we wrote together:

Our Aquarium

fish (2 goldfish and 1 algae eater)
water (to swim in)
cylinders (3 tubes)
little stones (pink and yellow)
plant (pretty and to play in)

The class studied the rhyming stories of Dr. Seuss. We noticed that often Dr. Seus made up words to make a rhyme (for example, "There's a findow in my window"). The students used this idea to create our version of his book, "There's a Wocket in my Pocket". The children each wrote and illustrated a part of this story. We also shared a read together of "Chicken Soup with Rice" by Maurice Sendak and listed the rhyming words to see which were rhyming and spelling partners (for example, nice and twice) and which were rhyming partners but not spelling partners (for example, soup and droop).


The students made large folders to use a portfolios for storing their best work from term one. Each term they will put selected work into these portfolios to help them see how they have improved over the school year.


In math, the students reviewed 2D shapes. They learned about Chinese tangram puzzles. These are 7 shapes, or tans, that are arranged into different pictures. The children were challenged to solve tangram puzzles in 30 seconds - and each student managed to do 17 puzzles in under 10 minutes! Then they each designed an original tangram puzzle and the class then solved all the student-made tangrams. Later in the week, the class studied 3D figures and reviewed the parts of a 3D figure (faces, vertices and edges).

We talked a lot about the world's new tallest building, the Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emerates. It is over 160 stories high and is as tall as the CN tower with the Eiffel tower on top. That is almost one kilometer! During computer time we watched a video on how they built it. It can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LjTWSKbfiU.
We also played tangram games and Dr. Seuss story games at these sites:
http://addictinggames.com/tangramgame.html
www.seussville.com/games

The children started to write fiction stories this week and they each created a large painting of the most exciting part of the story.