News for October 7

News for October 7

This week we did our first formal research project. As a connection to our field trip to see the movie, "Dolphin Tale", the class researched facts about dolphins. The students generated questions and answers and we talked about how to communicate non-fiction information on a poster. Also they each had a photo of a dolphin from an old calendar to inspire them. The children then wrote sentences containing their chosen facts from the pool of information the class had put on a mind map diagram. The students then created posters communicating their information, plus an appropriate title. The students worked together to create a poster display in the stairwell outside of our classroom. Individual students were then filmed reading one "Did you know?" fact from his/her poster. The class movie can be found at the end of this posting.

Our cursive writing practice continued with the letters, "g" and "d".

In math, the students continued with the unit on place value and how to use what they know about place value to help them compare and evaluate numbers. For example, deciding which number in a list is the greatest. We also reviewed the use of the symbols, ">, <, =". We are continuing to review addition/subtraction strategies by learning double facts (e.g., 5+5=10) and double plus one facts (e.g., 5+6 is like 5+5 +1). The students also wrote their first math test.

The students went to two assemblies this week. One was for the QSP magazine fundraising campaign that began on Tuesday. The other was a monthly recognition assembly, where two of Room 5's students, Anna and Dalton, were recognized for their demonstration of the key attribute "respect" at our school.

The class talked a lot about thankfulness this week. In honour of Canadian Thanksgiving, we had a class feast on Friday. As a link to our discussion of the folktale, "Stone Soup" , the students worked together to make the food for our feast. The children each brought in a vegetable to contribute to our vegetable soup pot. The students cleaned and chopped the vegetables for the soup. They also each had a turn shaking whipping cream to make butter. (Adding a bit of salt as well and as a result the class finally figured out the only thing that humans eat that hasn't been alive...salt.) We also mixed and baked bread and had a great discussion about the role of yeast in bread. While the food was cooking, the children wrote in their journals about things for which they are thankful. Some of the sentiments were quite touching. For example, "I am thankful for my Mom and Dad and sister because I know that they love me." At the end of our feast, the students played a community-building game, where the students each thanked another student in the class for helping them.

The students created the second piece of fabric for their pillows by tie-dying fabric blue. They learned how to twist and manipulate the white fabric using elastics, plastic marbles and clothespins. They also learned about how dye stays in fabric and doesn't wash out (add salt!)

In our guided reading groups this week, the children each had a chance to read some new non-fiction books using 3D glasses.

We now have a "Rocks and minerals discovery area" in the class where the students have contributed their rocks and will display our research and related books and samples.

Books read aloud this week:

Thankfulness by Cynthia Roberts

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig (The author of the original "Shrek".)

Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth

Here is our movie, "All About Dolphins":