News for October 28

News for October 28

This week, the students finished their rock story projects by making a presentation box and learning how to write a story review. In the box, the students put the "good copy" of the story he/she wrote and the rock. They had a chance to

create objects from the story and put those in the box as well. Then the students traded story boxes with another student. The other student's job was to read the story, look at the presentation box and write a review that included writing about their favourite part of the story, what the author did well and what they could do next time to make their writing better. The students took these projects home on Friday.

The children listened to the end of the novel "Stone Fox". Although it was a very sad end to the story, we had an excellent discussion around what we learned about the main characters and how and why the author chose to end the story that way. The students then wrote in their journals about how they felt about the book.

The class began to talk about ways to improve their writing. We began to focus on how to use adjectives and metaphors to help the reader make a "picture" in his/her mind.

In math, the students worked really hard on perfecting the algorithm for adding and subtracting with and without regrouping. The children also practiced the proper way to approach and solve a word problem in order to provide a complete answer. Both grades wrote a unit test on Friday and everyone did very well!

Our paper crane project is progressing nicely. We now have almost 400 paper cranes! The students count the cranes into groups of 10 and then put 50 in a zipper bag to store them. Some students took my challenge to fold a BIG paper crane with a piece of paper 1.5 m square. After a few tries, we managed to make a few.

In science, the students learned how to read a research text and take notes. They also learned how the information is presented, can help them (for example, bold-lettered words). The class now has a better understanding of the three types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. We also talked about a mineral that the students use everyday in class. Graphite! It's in the pencils that they use to do their work. In our computer time, the students watched a short movie about how pencils are made. This video can be found at the end of this posting.

Books read aloud this week:

Stone Fox (novel) was finished.

Halloween Is... by Gail Gibbons

Happy Haunting, Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish

The "lead" in a pencil is actually graphite, a mineral that is mined and is found in igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock. Here is a video the class watched this week about making pencils: