News for September 9

News for September 9, 2011

On Tuesday, the students entered Room 5 and sat at their desks. Each student was given a "supply basket" which held pencils, eraser, pencil sharpener, scissors, glue stick and a ruler. The children then began to practise printing the alphabet in capitals and lower case. After assigning each letter of the alphabet numbers, the students used this code to work out the answer to a mystery sentence (Ms. R likes cats!) Also we talked about how just 26 letters can be arranged to make the over one million words in the English language.

The class worked in small groups to establish the rules of behaviour for various places in our school.

The children worked together to make display letters for our class. They designed unique colour patterns in wax crayon and cut out the letters. The letters were used to create a message on the bulletin board across from our classroom. "Welcome back from Room 5."

We discussed how to pick a book to read that will be interesting and at the appropriate reading level. One of the most important guidelines for this is the "five finger rule". That means if you count on one hand the words you don't know on a page, that means the book is above your reading level.

In math, the class talked about numbers. It is amazing to think that the 10 digits we use can be arranged to make any number. The students wrote in their journals about numbers that are important to them and why. For example, 43 is important because it is the number in the address of our school.

Each child created his/her own 100 chart. We used these charts to look at odd/even numbers, skip counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. They also used the charts to play a math game. We read aloud a book titled, "One Million Dots" so that the students could get some idea of how large a number one million is. Did you know that to draw one million dots, you would have to draw a dot every second for 11 and half days!

The grade 4 students began their French classes. The students go to French class for one 40 minute period every day. The grade 3 students stay with me to work on strategies for the EQAO test that occurs in June. This week the grade 3's worked on addition and subtraction strategies.

Students are required to write the date several times a day. They can choose from, fro example, Thursday, September 8, 2011 or Sept. 8/11 or 8IX11. The latter one contains the Roman Numeral IX which means "9". So, the class took the time to learn a little bit about Roman Numerals. Did you know that there is no Roman Numeral for zero?

The class worked together to brainstorm some ideas for class jobs and for topics they would like to learn about this year.

After reading aloud the book, "Do Unto Otters - A Book About Manners", the students wrote in their journals the quote from the Greek philosopher, Socrates, "Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you". Then they wrote about what that quote means to them.

The children began writing their first stories by planning their writing by first painting a picture, then using a graphic organizer to answer the 5 W's (who, what, when, where, why and how), then begin writing the story.

* Read Aloud Books This Week:

- The Incredible Book-Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers

- Do Unto Otters - A Book About Manners by Laurie Keller

- One Million Dots by Andrew Clements