News for June 18

News for June 18

The big news for this week was the videotaping in the classroom on Monday. Dr. Dale Willows, from OISE/University of Toronto, came to our class with 4 members of a camera crew to record how we learn in Room 5. It was very interesting to see how videos are made! These lessons will be part of a teacher resource website being launched in September 2011.

In math, the students worked with a partner to solve a toothpick challenge. It took several days to do this. The challenge was to find all the different ways to arrange 4 toothpicks so that every toothpick is touching at least one other toothpick and the toothpicks must touch end-to-end or at a right angle. After they solved the challenge, the next step was to glue the toothpicks to cards and put the cards in order so that to move from one pattern to the next, only one toothpick can be moved.

In science, every child finished his/her bird research project. After finishing the research, each student wrote the information into sentences and then drew a picture of the bird. Finally, they wrote the sentences on poster paper and put on the drawing. Each student then chose a "cool fact" and presented it to the class. The posters are now on display in the hallway. The students listened to a song by the Italian composer, Enrico Toselli, where bird songs were included in the playing of the song that featured a violin. Also, we made a video of the students saying the cool facts and it can be seen at the end of this posting.

The class reviewed the features of maps and the four major direction words north, south, east and west. Each student made a map of the classroom and designed a "compass rose" to show the directions on the map. We are working to use the words north, south, east and west as we move around the school.

The children worked hard to create special gifts and cards for the families that celebrate Father's Day.

Finally, after reading the letters the students wrote to her, the principal, Mrs. Boyce, came to our class to officially give us permission to research, make and chew bubble gum in our class next week. It pays off to create well-written, convincing letters!