Saturday, September 29, 2012

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to read and follow the steps to draw a cartoon monster and then write a story about the monster. This drawing and story are to be written in the homework writing journal. The children also brought home a math worksheet. This homework is due on Friday, October 5th.

Important Dates:

October 2 - QSP fundraiser assembly - QSP envelopes go home
October 4 - Scholastic orders due
October 5 - Class Thanksgiving celebration
October 8 - Thanksgiving Day - no classes on this day
October 31 - Halloween - Parade after lunch

News for September 28







News for September 28

This week the students learned about the concept of a time capsule. We talked about things that change and don't change over time.The students each made a small book that contained a photo and recorded their height, weight, and outlines of their hands and feet. They also wrote letters to their "future" selves writing about what we've done so far this year and made some predictions about what we might do. All of the envelopes will be sealed away in a box and not opened again until June 27th 2013!

The students watched an old cartoon with a time capsule theme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRnX4quv5W4

In math, the children learned about the concept of least and greatest numbers, the symbols < (less than) and > (greater than) and how to use place value to compare numbers. The class also played a game using cards to create the greatest or smallest four digit number using the same digits.The students also learned how to round numbers to the nearest 10 or 100. Rounding numbers is important for the skill of estimation. On Friday, the class wrote the first math test of the year to finish the unit.

The class had a chance to go to the gym to watch the deaf actor/mime performer, Chris Welsh.

In science, the students continued to learn about the stability of structures. One factor is the nature of the building materials (for example, wood cubes make better structures than glass marbles). The children had a chance to experiment with ways to make paper stronger. Immediately, the students figured out that folding makes the paper more stable. But then, they discovered that rolling and crumpling also are good ways to add stability to paper structures.

The class visited the computer lab for the first time this week. The students reviewed the class blog postings and explored a fun education site: http://www.funbrain.com/

The students learned how to use letter shapes to create simple line drawings. For example, how to use a lower case "h" to learn how to draw a helicopter. (This lesson was also a way to practice following step-by-step written instructions.)

As an extension to our guided reading group activity (where the students read the story, "I Want A Dog"), the class watched an animated version of the story and looked at what was the same and what was different about how the story was told as a book compared to as it was told as a short movie. Here is the link to the movie version:
http://www.nfb.ca/film/i_want_a_dog/

Books Read Aloud This Week:

I Want A Dog  by  Dayal Kaur Khalsa
Julian by Dayal Kaur Khalsa
Ganesha's Sweet Tooth by Sanjay Patel
Iggy Peck Architect by Andrea Beatty
Structures of the World by Room 5
The Diggers by Margaret Wise Brown

Learning ASL with Room 5 - episode 3

This week the students learned to spell their names and their "sign names"..

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Update from Ms. R

Thank you to all the families that joined us in Room 5 for curriculum night! I really enjoyed meeting and talking to everyone and sharing the wonderful work of the students.

The weekly homework is to complete a language worksheet and a math worksheet. These were sent home with the children on Friday. This homework is due on Friday, September 28th.

Daily homework is to read for at least 20 minutes a day (and record the pages read in the Borrow-A-Book notebook) and to practice the word wall words for the week.


News for September 21








News for September 21

The week began with our class winning the "Golden Shoe Award" for the class that ran the most laps for the school's kilometre club. Great going Room 5!

The students worked hard to complete their non-fiction writing reports about our class pet fish. They also learned how to use clear plastic and black tape to make their drawings look like fish tanks. These reports are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom. We also worked together to unpack the writing process and created a wall chart to summarize the stages of writing and they reviewed the ways to create a successful piece of writing.

In our guided reading groups this week, the children talked about how illustrations contribute to the understanding of a story and how authors use italics to get readers to slow down and read those words with a little more power.

In math, the students continued to build upon their knowledge of place value by looking at 3 and 4 digit numbers. Through using the workbook and games, the children discovered that to make the biggest numbers, one must put the biggest digits in the thousands and hundreds places. They also recorded their strategies for winning the Place Value Game in their new math journals. The class also examined ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc.) and learned that regular numbers are called cardinal numbers.

The children reviewed the "5 W's + how" and the ways these 6 words help people understand their reading and plan their writing. The students reviewed the fact that asking and answering questions using the words "why" and "how" show higher level thinking.

The class learned how to use apostrophes to show possession. For example, "Jan's lunch" uses an apostrophe and an s to show the lunch belongs to Jan. However, if the noun already ends in the letter s, then only an apostrophe is necessary. For example, "Jess' lunch".

The students learned about the history of the hamburger while practicing two reading comprehension strategies. The first was to read the questions first before reading the text to have an idea of what to pay attention to in the text. The second was to underline important information as the text is being read. Did you know that the hamburger is so named because hundreds of years ago, the ground meat patty was so popular in  Hamburg, Germany?

This week the class met their Reading Buddies from Room 101 - Ms. Breslaw's JK/SK class. The students had a great time getting to know their buddies and reading books with them. We will be visiting our Reading Buddies every other week.

In science, the students began the unit on structures by exploring what makes a stable structure. Through experimenting with different materials, like playing cards, dice, and pom poms, the children learned different strategies for making structures that didn't fall down.

The class designed and created the second piece of decorated fabric for their pillows this week. After reviewing the different ways to draw lines (e.g., straight, zig-zag), the children drew line designs on white fabric. Then, they sprayed on rubbing alcohol on the fabric and watched the marker ink bleed into the surrounding fabric. We learned that black sharpie ink is actually made up of a very dark purple ink!



Books Read Aloud This Week

The 100 Dresses by Eleanor Estes (chapter book)

Learning ASL with Room 5 - Episode 2

This week our class teaches how to make the hand signs for the 26 letters of the alphabet.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Update from Ms. R

The Terry Fox Run was a great success! Our class raised $49.27 for cancer research.

The class started the Borrow-A-Book program. To assist the daily homework expectation of reading 20 minutes or more a day, students are allowed to borrow chapter books from the class library. The students are to track the number of pages that they read everyday in the notebook provided.

This week the homework is to write a story (fiction or non-fiction) in the homework writing journal based on the picture stamped on the first page of the journal. The students each read and signed an "editing promise" to do their best work in their writing journals. This homework is due on Friday, September  21.

PLEASE NOTE

There has been a change to the school's Curriculum Night. There will not be a BBQ this year. The Curriculum Night will start at 5:30 PM in the gym with a greeting from our new principal, Shona Farrelly. Then parents can proceed to their child's or children's classrooms. The evening will end at 7:00 PM.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

News for September 14






News for September 14

The students began the week with an assembly with Mrs. Farrelly to review the rules of behaviour in our school.

The class had the first word wall words for the year. Each week, the students will study a list of words, that become part of our class word wall. These words are a mixture of irregular words, homophones and word families. Once they become part of our word wall, it is expected that the words are spelled correctly in all writing activities (and, as the students will tell you, "for the rest of my life!")

The students now have a Class Jobs chart. Each week, children take turns doing jobs around the classroom like feeding the fish and taking the attendance down to the office.

Our first big writing assignment is now complete. The students wrote stories based on their paintings and the stories were typed and are now on display in the classroom.

The class welcomed three new fish to the class aquarium. We now have Alpha (a tetra or tetragonopterus), Beta 1, 2, & 3 (platy fish) and George (a pleco or plecostomas). The students each began to write a non-fiction story about our class pets.

The students began a weekly project where they learn, and also teach, new American Sign Language (ASL) signs. This week's words were yes, no, hello, goodbye and thank you. The video they made can be found at the end of this blog post.

We were very lucky this week because one of our interpreters, Wendi, brought in two of her pet reptiles to visit with the students. Gill is a bearded dragon and is 45 cm long. John is a mountain horned dragon and is 21 cm long. Thanks so much to Wendi for sharing her knowledge with our class!

In math, we learned about Roman Numerals. This was the number system until the 14th century when our current number system, Hindu-Arabic numbers, became popular. The students learned the numbers 1-12 because one of the ways to write the date in our class uses Roman Numerals for the months of the year. So since there are 12 months of the year they learned (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X ,XI, XII). Then students reviewed the use of number lines, how to count on a number line and how to estimate number placement on different types of number lines. We also reviewed the concept of place value. First we played a game demonstrating how to use groups of ten to count large numbers of objects. The students chanted "the value of the digit depends on the place that you put it". Because the value of the number 27 is very different from 72, depending on where you put the 2 or the 7.

The students had their first visit to our school's library. Students are allowed to take out one book per week. Day 5 is our library day (currently on Mondays but that will change after Thanksgiving!) Ms. Miller is our librarian since Ms. Mantello is on a medical leave. The children wrote letters and drew pictures as "get well" cards for Ms. Mantello. These letters were mailed to her this week.

The class began a big art project this week...sewing pillows! The first step was to design the fabric for one side of the pillows using brightly coloured fabric paint.

In our guided reading groups, the students read and talked about the traditional poem "Days of the Month" to help them remember how many days in each month:

30 days past September,
April, June and November,
February has 28 alone,
All the rest have 31,
Excepting leap year,
That's the time,
When February's days are 29.

(This poem is over 500 years old!)

Books Read Aloud This Week

The Mystery Glove by Nick Page
Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer
My Life - Terry Fox by Bryan Pezzi
I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff
The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes (chapter book)

Learning ASL With Room 5 - Episode 1

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Update from Ms. R

Welcome back to everyone!

Room 5 is a class of grade three learners and this week was a busy four days as we learned the rules and routines of the classroom and of course, had some fun too.
This year, Room  5 welcomes Wendi and Kelly to our class as our American Sign Language interpreters. We also have a new music/drama/dance teacher, Ms. Kang,  a new physical education teacher, Ms. Piccione and a new librarian, Ms. Miller.
The Planet 5 News blog uses a combination of words, photos, videos and internet links to document what the students are doing each week in the classroom. Important dates and homework information are also included. Please visit each week with your child to talk about and review his/her weekly classroom learning.

Homework for this week:

Daily homework is to read for at least 20 minutes every day.

Weekly homework is assigned weekly, every Friday. Each week students will get language and math homework. Homework can be handed in on any day of the week, but the final due date is the following Friday.

This week, the homework is to complete a double-sided sheet of autobiographical questions (these sheets will become part of our first class book) and some 100 chart math activities. This homework is due on Friday, September 14.

Important Dates:

September 10 - Davisville Kilometre Club begins at AM recess
September 14 - Terry Fox Run - The school continues the fundraising tradition of bringing a "toonie for Terry".
September 20 - Welcome Back BBQ and Curriculum Night 


News for September 7






News for September 7

This week the students learned the rules and routines of the classroom. Each student received a basket of school supplies and a writing journal. Also, each student got an agenda which goes back and forth to school each day. In the agenda,the students write important reminders, word wall words and homework information. (Parents can also use the agenda to write notes to me regarding appointments or questions.)

The children reviewed printing upper case (capital) letters by creating large block letters with crayons and cutting them out for the class to use for bulletin board displays. The students used these letters to make our first bulletin board display in the hallway to spell out the message "WELCOME BACK STUDENTS - FROM ROOM FIVE".

The class then reviewed printing lower case letters by printing the letters in their journals with special attention to the size of the letters. The students discovered there are 7 tall letters (b,d, f, h, k, l, t), 14 middle letters (a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w, x, z) and 5 below-the-line letters (g, j, p, q, y). The class also wrote the famous pangram sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." A pangram  is a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet.

In math, the students reviewed the 10 digits (0 to 9) and how we use these digits to create all numbers from single to multi-digit numbers. Each student made his/her own 100 chart to use as their first "math tool". The children looked at different patterns in the chart, different ways of skip-counting and used the chart to play some addition and subtraction games using dice.

The class reflected on the fact that all the information that we communicate in written and oral English is done with only 26 letterrs and 10 digits.

The children began planning their first fiction stories of the year by painting scenes from their stories using tempra paint and black, permanent (Sharpie) marker. The class reviewed the writing process (plan, rough copy, edit/revise, publish) and planned and began the rough copy of the story in his/her writing journal.

The students talked about art borders and used their ideas to create "blackboard art names" by designing a border around their name using white chalk on black paper. These are now decorating our classroom.

Every week the students get some free creative play time on "Lego Friday". The children also played a variety of cooperative games to learn student names, to work together and to enhance/reinforce learned concepts.

Books Read Aloud This Week

The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
The Book That Eats People by John Perry
Do Not Open This Book! by Michaela Muntean
The Little Red Fish by Taeeun Yoo