Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the math worksheet (grade 2) and the EQAO practice questions (grade 3).

Pioneer day is now going to be on Tuesday, May 4. Please remember that your child will be eating lunch at school that day. I apologize for the change. It's hard to compete with "Pizza Lunch"!

Please send your child to school with a hat and sunscreen. The children are outside for morning and afternoon recess, lunch recess and for the track and field unit in gym. That is a total of one and a half hours outside each day.

News for April 30

News for April 30

This week, the big news was our school assembly and our class was in charge. The students did a lot of writing, planning and practising. Despite several serious computer problems that disrupted the program, the children managed the changes very well. The students loved showing their work in the movies we have made during the year.

In math, the children finished the unit on motion geometry by reviewing flips/turns/slides and moving around points on a grid. On Friday, we started the unit on probability by doing math experiments to help predict how many red and blue cubes were in a sealed box.

As a class we have enjoyed listening to read alouds of five of the Martha the dog books by Susan Meddaugh. We did reading response activities to help the children learn how to write complete answers to questions like, "Why do you think Bob the dog was so mean? Use your own ideas and information from the text in your answer." Finally, the students each picked their favourite of the Martha books and started to write a book report.

In science the bean seeds started to sprout. The students took 2 of the three beans growing on the moist paper towel and planted them in soil. They drew and wrote observations each day, learning the parts of the plants and asking questions. Two class experiments were to give one plant too much water and to put one plant in the dark to see how they grow.

The class learned the cursive letters b, e, l, f, n and m.

In computer class, the students visited the website for the Martha the dog books at:

http://pbskids.org/martha

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to interview an adult and ask him or her to tell a story about his or her childhood. Write this story in the homework writing journal.

Important dates:

Thursday, April 29 - 12:45 PM - All School Assembly - Our class is in charge. Families are welcome to join us!

Friday, April 30 - Room 5 Pioneer Day - April 30, 1810. Students will be staying for lunch. We will be preparing food, so there is no need to bring a lunch.

News for April 23

News for April 23

This week the students started a special project. As part of our pioneer unit, the children made objects out of clay. Darryl, who is a gifted pottery artist, taught the class about how to use clay to make a plate and a small bowl. After they are dry they will go into a 1000C kiln (oven). In about two weeks, the students will glaze (paint) their plates and bowls.

The class learned the cursive letters p, s, o, h, k.

The students worked in groups to finish their pioneer village. They made a movie showing the model of the building they researched and reporting on the information they learned. This movie can be found at the end of this posting.

In math, the students started the unit on motion geometry. They learned about how to move around on a grid (up, down, left, right) and how to move an object (turn/rotation, slide/translation, flip/reflection).

The students learned how to "cork". This is a type of knitting using a wooden spool with 4 pegs on top. Pioneers would make these by hammering nails into the top of a used spool of thread.

The children used charcoal to make an illustration to go with their pioneer stories. The charcoal we used was made from willow tree sticks that have been burned.

The students worked with a partner to begin to design a map of a modern village. This is prior to our discussions on the things that are the same and those that are different between a pioneer village and a modern one.

The students set up a science experiment to watch lima beans growing. We will be observing these next week.

The children learned about the life of a real cat named, Dewey Readmore books who was a library cat for 19 years. They wrote about how they knew Dewey liked being a library cat and we saw a video of him in the library. You can watch this video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jGpvvLmwbs

Here is the video of the pioneer village building projects.

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the math and cursive writing review worksheets. These were given to the students on Friday.

News for April 16

News for April 16

The big news this week was the visit of the author Andrea Beck to our school. Ms. Beck is best known for her books featuring the Elliot Moose character. The students learned how to draw Elliot Moose and made lots of drawings to decorate a "thank you" poster for Ms. Beck. This poster was given to her at the end of her talk. She was so pleased she said she would put a picture of the poster we made on her website!

The students finished writing their pioneer stories. These will be typed up and the students will make them into books next week. After reading aloud the book "The Golden Rule" the class talked about the importance of this rule (treat people the way you want to be treated) and how it is followed by people in different countries and of different religions. The students then answered some multiple choice questions and wrote longer answers to comprehension questions.

The students found the spelling and rhyming partners for the word wall word "old". They found 16 different rhyming words. The class noticed that our word wall word "young" has a homonym, "Yonge" Street. After some research we learned that Yonge Street was made 217 years ago, in 1793. It is one of the longest streets in the world, measuring 1896 kilometres. It is named after Sir George Yonge who was a member of the British government who was an expert on the streets in ancient Rome.

The cursive letters we learned this week were: y, w, t, r, j.

In math, the students finished the unit on capacity by reviewing concepts of litre (L) and millilitre (mL). A key concept is that there are about 4 glasses of liquid in one litre. They started the unit on mass by learning about the relative weights of different things and the standard unit of the kilogram (kg).

The students worked in their research groups to finish the models of the buildings in our pioneer village and to write the good copy of the information that they learned about their group's building.

In computers, the children visited the author Andrea Beck's website and played a "capacity" math game. Here are the links to these sites:

http://www.andreabeck.com/

http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/allgames.html

Here is the art challenge video, based on the artwork the students made last week:

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a story of your choice (fiction or non-fiction) in the homework writing journal.
The grade 3 students received an EQAO review sheet that is to be completed as homework.
All homework is due next Friday (April 16).

Please note:

If your child goes home for lunch and it is raining heavily, please remind the children to go to the lunchroom, if they come back to school before lunchtime ends. Students are not allowed to be in the hallways as there is no supervision until 12:35.

News for April 9

News for April 9

This (short) week, the students continued to learn the lower case cursive letters (q, g, i, u). They finished analyzing the poem, "A Corner of Bread" that they started reading last week.

In math, the grade 2 students spent the week on addition and subtraction strategies. The grade 3 students reviewed the unit on fractions and wrote an end-of-unit test.

The students played a writing game called, "The Three Sentence Challenge" where each child had to write 3 sentences about an object with enough description so that I could guess what the mystery object was.

The class was divided into 5 groups to do research on the different kinds of buildings in a pioneer village. After researching the buildings, they began to construct log cabin style buildings.

We finished the read aloud chapter book, "Pioneer Kids" from the Canadian Flyer series of books. The students learned the song, "When I First Came To This Land" as an extension activity to our pioneer unit.

The children worked very hard to find rhyming words for the word wall word "night". After sorting the words into rhyming and spelling partners (e.g., light and fight) and rhyming but not spelling partners (e.g., kite and polite), we found 28 words that rhyme with "night"!

The students made new paintings for our classroom. The challenge was to create a piece of art using paint and one rectangle of purple paper.

Every week the students work on making structures using playing cards, dominos or lego pieces. This week a few children made a tower of dominos that broke our previous height record... 18 stories high!

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the grade appropriate math worksheet sent home with the students on Thursday.

News for April 1

News for April 1

There was a lot going on during this short week. The class attended two special presentations in the gym. One was a visit from the Earth Rangers. This is an environmental group that spoke to the students about the importance of keeping the fresh water on earth clean and to show two unusual animals: Sonic the European barn owl and Shelly the painted turtle.

The second special event was a play called "The Name Of The Tree" by the Little Red Theatre. This play was based on an African folktale.

In math, Ms. Rodrigues led students through some discovery activities learning about capacity and they also did some more work on fractions, looking a parts of a set of objects.

The students started to learn how to do lower case cursive writing. This week they did "a", "d" and "g".

After reading aloud the book "The Zlooksh", Ms. Rodrigues, helped the students write a continuing adventure for the characters in the story.

The class did a shared reading of the narrative poem, "A Corner Of Bread" and analyzed the parts of the story that the poem tells.

The class learned about the Jewish holiday of Passover and shared some matzo bread. The children also used fancy Japanese paper to cover a styrofoam egg. Since an egg cannot be covered by a flat piece of paper, each student tore the patterned paper into small pieces to collage on the surface of the eggs.

In computers, the students visited the website for the Earth Rangers:

http://www.earthrangers.com/

(The unlock codes, for some of the games, are: CFMS29, CDAT29, MBAO29, SSYS29, SLIE29, MPBO29, MCB029, CBNV29).