News for January 13
It was a busy first week of 2012. The big news this week was the arrival of our new student teacher, Ms. Tan. Ms. Tan is a student at the Institute of Child Study at OISE/University of Toronto, the same master's degree program from which I graduated.
The students reviewed the parts of speech and how to identify them in written and oral sentences. The children also did a creative writing exercise where they attempted to write a complete short story in just 10 minutes.
Our Word Wall is full! Before the word cards are taken down, the students each made his/her own personal dictionary. They counted, folded, cut and printed to put all the word wall words into their personal dictionaries.
In math, the class continued the geometry unit by reviewing two-dimensional shapes. They learned the concepts of angles (acute, right and obtuse), congruent figures (same size, same shape) and parallel lines (lines that never cross. The grade 4 students learned how to use a protractor to measure angles and the grade 3 used pattern blocks to investigate relationships between the different two-dimensional shapes. As a group, the children did an activity to prove that adding sides and angles to a shapes eventually leads to a shape with so many sides that mathematicians consider it to have no sides at all (the circle). At the end of the week, the class learned about the Chinese puzzle called the tangram and explored solving tangram puzzles using the 7 tans (puzzle pieces). During a round-robin activity, the children progress from taking a minute to solve a tangram puzzle to less than 30 seconds. At the end of the activity, we did a quick competition to see who was the fastest at solving a tangram puzzle and the winners were Serena (grade 4) and Julia (grade 5).
In computers, the students visited the following math sites:
In Social Studies, the class reviewed the names of the Provinces and Territories of Canada and learned where to locate each on a map. They also learned the names and locations of the capital cities. The students also watched a DVD about Canada, which featured highlights and facts from across the country.
The class used what they know about geometry to begin to create works of art that has two-dimensional shapes.
The class discussed what is an advertisement and what makes a successful commercial. They watched some ads and talked about how humour and music make people remember an ad and how that helps sell the product. Here is the ad link:
We started our new class project this week. Room 5 now has an interview show. The students decided who they would like to interview and brainstormed questions that they wanted to ask the show's guests. This week, Doron and Nausheen interviewed Ms. Tan. The video can be found at the end of this posting.
Books read aloud this week:
The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns
The Planets by Darrow Schecter
Grandfather Tang's Story by Ann Tompert
THE ROOM 5 INTERVIEW SHOW!
This week's guest was our new student teacher, Ms. Tan.
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