This week our school celebrated Earth Week! The class also went to 4 assemblies...
We started out the week by attending the performance of the play "Arabian Nights" by The Little Red Theatre. On Tuesday, the students went to an assembly to talk about "Jump Rope for Heart" where the children learned about how to keep one's heart healthy and about the jump rope event on May 4th. On Thursday, the class attended a performance of the Ache Brasil dance company (www.achebrasil.com). Finally, on Friday, the children attended an Earth Day assembly to finish off our week of Earth Day activities. Doron and Jacob from our class worked hard in the school's eco-club to help with events this week. Did you know that the "eco-" in eco-club comes from the Greek word "eco" meaning house. (For example, the word ecology means "study of the house", for the earth is like the house that we all live in.)
The students used oral storytelling to review the parts of a narrative (story) and to work with a partner to create stories that used a variety of odd characters, settings and problems. The teams presented their stories to the class.
In math, the children continued the unit on fractions by looking at fractions of a set of objects, equivalent fractions, and ordering fractions from smallest to largest. We also talked about how a particular fraction can be expressed many ways (as a number fraction, as part of a whole, as a part of a set of objects and as a word fraction). Did you know the word fraction comes from the Latin word "fractio" which means "to break"?
In science, the class talked about sound being a form of energy that is projected through solids, liquids and gases by vibrations. The students learned about the structure of the ear and some interesting facts about sound. Did you know that the howler monkey is the loudest animal on earth and can be heard 5 kilometres away? The children also learned about a "foley artist", the person that does sound effects for movies, TV and radio. They watched the videos below to learn how a foley artist makes sound effects and how they record sounds in a type of "sound bank" for future projects.
http://youtu.be/DKDjLseCyVw
http://youtu.be/1y2bCDB5hEw
The class also watched a music video by the band OK GO, where they used a car to play the instruments!
http://youtu.be/MejbOFk7H6c
For Earth Week, the students created puzzle pieces with positive eco-messages on them for the ecology project at www.paradigmshiftproject.org. We had an "ABC Day" or anything-but-the-car day to encourage students to walk or take the TTC to school. Our school had a door decorating challenge to reuse materials to create a beautiful eco-display. Our class challenge was for each student to use only a kleenex box, scissors and masking tape to create a work of art.There were so many amazing ideas. The good news is that our classroom door came in second place and we won a popsicle party!
Books read aloud this week:
Banjo of Destiny by Cary Fagan (chapter book - continued)
The students viewed the video below to see and hear a banjo being played:
http://youtu.be/8wp18pJDnfQ
No comments:
Post a Comment