Ms. R has no electricity!

Sorry for not posting this week. My home has been without electricity for almost a week. I will post when I am back at home.

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a story in the homework writing journal. The story can be fiction or non-fiction. There is also a math worksheet that reviews the geometry concepts learned this week.

Note: The Toronto District School Board has named Friday, December 20 as a PA or "Professional Activity" day. Please know that, based on a directive provided by the Ministry of Education, permanent contract teachers will be taking December 20th as an unpaid day and therefore will not be at work on this day.

Important dates:

December 19 - Last day of school for 2013
December 20 - P. A. Day
December 23 to January 3 - Winter Holidays
January 6, 2014 - First day of school for 2014

News for December 13

News for December 13

This week we reached Day #71 of school! Only 116 days of school left. (We like to count things in Room 5!)

In math we continued the unit on geometry by learning more about two-dimensional or flat shapes (polygons). The students learned the three parts of each shape sides, vertices (corners) and angles. The students learned that the number of sides is the same as the number of vertices and angles for any shape. The class is required to name and understand the properties of all shapes from a circle (0 sides) to an octagon (8 sides). The students also reviewed the shape names and properties while learning how to fold a paper plane (as a connection to one of our read aloud books).

Our school has a tradition of having a Holiday Post Office in our school to have children practice their letter writing skills. The students reviewed how to write a letter and learned how to properly address an envelope.

The class learned how to play the word game "Mad Libs". Before starting the students learned what a noun and an adjective is. A noun is a word that is a person, place or thing (for example, Domo, school or pencil). An adjective is a word that describes a noun (for example, big, dry or blue).

There was a twist in our guided reading this week. The students learned about the history of various popular holiday songs and read aloud the lyrics. Then we sang the songs together.

The students finished their fiction animal stories featuring the same type of animals that they researched for their science posters. The children shared some information from their posters in a video. This video can be seen at the end of this posting.

The class finally finished the measurement of the distance from Room 5 to the gym using the non-standard unit of a paper chain. It took 750 paper chains to go all the way down the hall. What a great way to practice counting by 10's and 50's.

In science, the students began to learn about the properties of solids, liquids and gases by experimenting with water. The children looked at ice and watched it melt. They watched water boil. They learned how to use thermometers and how they are used to measure how much heat is in something. They learned the basic temperatures that are important to humans, measured in degrees Celsius:

0C - water freezes
20C - room temperature - water is a liquid
37C - human body temperature
100C - water boils - water becomes water vapour or steam

In computers, the students had a chance to create snowflakes on the computer! Here is the link:

snowflakes.barkleyus.com

Here is the class sharing some of their animal research information:


Books read aloud this week:

The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns
The Christmas Alphabet Pop-Up Book by Robert Sabuda
The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers
Water - Up, Down and All Around by Natalie Rosinsky
A Porcupine in a Pine Tree (Canadian 12 Days of Christmas) by Helaine Becker

Update from Ms. R

This week the homework is to visit the class blog with an adult and teach him/her about the photos and words posted each week. Afterward, each student is to complete a teaching reflection worksheet on how the lesson went. There is also a geometry worksheet to be completed. This homework is due on Friday, December 13.

Important Dates:

December  9 - Classes walk to Hodgson for concert rehearsal
December 10 (eve) - Winter Concert @ Hodgson Senior Public School - (students to arrive at 6:30 PM)
December 19 - Last day of school for 2013
December 20 - P. A. Day
December 23 to January 3 - Winter Holidays
January 6, 2014 - First day of school for 2014

News for December 6

News for December 6

This week the students started some new projects! One of our big, looooong projects is creating a long paper chain to estimate the distance from our class to the gym. So far, the class has made over 280 chains.

In math, the students finished up the unit on graphs and data management by finishing their individual surveys and putting the information on posters. These posters are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom.The students also wrote an end-of-unit final review worksheet. At the end of the week we started the geometry unit by reviewing the names and properties of two-dimensional shapes.

In writing, the students started a new writing challenge. The goal is to write a fiction story, using the animal from his/her science research as the main character in the story. This story will be the longest stories the students have written all year as each one must be at least two pages long.

The children are almost finished their science animal research posters. Each student wrote the animal fact sentences on the posters, drew and glued on a drawing of the animal and used stencils to create a title.

The class learned a lot about snow this week! As part of our new unit on the properties of liquids and solids, the children read the true story about "Snowflake Bentley" who was the first person to photograph snow over 100 years ago. Did you know that snowflakes are made in the shape of hexagons (six-sided shapes) because of the shape of a water molecule (H2O)? We also learned how snowflake crystals are formed from water drops in clouds, starting with a speck (of dirt for example). The different patterns are due to temperature, wind movement and the amount of water in the air. The children grew their own crystals on pipe cleaners using borax and hot water.

Another way to make snowflakes, of course is to make them out of paper. The children learned how to fold the paper, remember where the centre is and cut out chunks of paper to create lacey paper snowflakes.

The class had a chance to watch a classic holiday film, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.

In the computer lab, the students played some games on this animal site:

www.a-z-animals.com

Books read aloud this week:

Snowflake Bentley - The story of the first person to photograph snowflakes by Jacqueline Martin
The Story of Snow - The science of winter's wonder by Mark Cassino
The Snow Must Go On by Molly Wigand
Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin
365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the math worksheet on graphing and to write a fiction story in the homework writing journal. The challenge is to write a story about what happens in our classroom after Ms. R turns off all the lights, locks the door and leaves for the day. Will the chairs dance? Will the fish do origami? Will the stuffed animals sit at the desks like students and Domo be the teacher?

We said good bye to our student teacher, Ms. Katie on Friday. We wish her all the best in her future teaching adventures!

News for November 29

News for November 29

This week the students finished up their poems they wrote for the poetry unit. The poems were put into a large class book which is now available for the students to read during independent reading time. Each child also picked their favourite poem to read aloud and be videotaped. The video can be viewed at the end of this posting.

The class learned about advent calendars and how they are used in the Christian tradition to count the days to Christmas. We used the idea to create our own version of an advent calendar (adventus is Latin for arrival) to count the days to the winter holidays. The students created gift envelopes containing treats and surprises for each number. The star student picks a name of the child who gets the advent envelope for the day.

The class learned about the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and how a candle is lit on a menorah every day for eight days. They each helped to grate potatoes to make potato latkes. After they were fried they got to eat them with applesauce. The students learned how to play the dreidel game and how, the past they used "gelt" or money to play the game (we used little blocks but the children had a chance to try chocolate gelt coins).

After talking about the proper way to write a letter, each child wrote a letter to the Peace Crane Project in Hiroshima, Japan, to tell them about what our class and the Paper Engineering Club did to make 1,000 paper cranes for peace.

In guided reading, the groups read together the book, I'm Lying As Still As I Can. This book introduces the reasons why we aren't really completely still on earth. The earth rotates creating day and night. The earth travels around the sun on a 365 day trip creating a year. The solar system moves within the Milky Way Galaxy and galaxies are in the universe that is always expanding. Of course, gravity keeps us "stuck" on the earth so people don't realize all the different ways that the earth is moving.

In science, the children learned the names for their animal babies. Did you know that a baby rattlesnake is called a "snakelet"? Or a baby electric eel is called and "elver"?

In math, the students created their own survey questions to ask the children of the class. The students moved around the classroom to answer questions like "Do you have a pet?" and "Do you have a brother or a sister?" These results will be tallied and graphed next week.

Officer Jan from the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department visited our school this week to talk to all the grade two students about personal safety.

Our amaryllis plant is now almost 24 cm tall! It's become so big that we had to add more paper to our graph to show how big it is. We also have a "Christmas" cactus in the class that will soon bloom with bright pink flowers.

Here is our poetry video:

Books read aloud this week:

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams (finished)
Yancy and Bear by Hazel Hutchins
I Have a Little Dreidel by Maxie Baum
Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci by Joseph D'Agnese
Life-Size Farm Animals by Teruyuki Kamiya

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the math worksheet about graphing and for each student to teach an adult how to play the word game "How to turn a hen into a fox". The students are also required to complete a reflection sheet to write about how each student felt about his/her teaching experience. This homework is due on Friday, November 29th.

Please note:

1.  There are active cases of head lice currently in our school. Below please find a lice fact sheet:

http://app06.ottawa.ca/cs/groups/content/@webottawa/documents/pdf/mdaw/mdy5/~edisp/con062989.pdf

2.  Because our school runs on a five day schedule, our LIBRARY DAY is now on the MONDAY of each week.

Important Dates:

Week of November 25 - School-wide dental screening
November 29 - Pajama Day - Please wear your winter P. J.'s!
December  6 - Movie afternoon #2
December  9 - Classes walk to Hodgson for concert rehearsal
December 10 (eve) - Winter Concert @ Hodgson Senior Public School - (students to arrive at 6:30 PM)
December 19 - Last day of school for 2013
December 20 - P. A. Day
December 23 to January 3 - Winter Holidays
January 6, 2014 - First day of school for 2014

News for November 22

News for November 22

This week the students continued to work on their science research posters. Each child has chosen an animal and is now creating a poster to communicate the results of their research. Using information from encyclopedias and library books, the children are learning some very cool facts and writing them down on their research sheets. (Did you know that a whale shark can grow to be 12 metres tall? That's two metres taller than our school!) The children also practiced a drawing technique where the artist breaks down the image into shapes to help draw the picture. Then they used this technique to draw pictures of their research animals and glued them on their posters.

The class continued the unit on poetry by writing poems using information they got from their five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste). It was fun to write poems about lemons by actually seeing, listening to, feeling, smelling and tasting lemons! The students also began to learn about rhyming words and began to write some rhyming poems.

In math, the children began the unit on graphs and how humans use these information pictures to get information. The class learned the vocabulary words survey, survey question, tally marks, data, graph, key, pictograph and bar graph. The children reviewed how to use and count tally marks. They learned how to read information from pictographs and bar graphs. They also learned how to figure out how many people answered a survey question and how to compare one answer to another. (For example, "There are 16 more people that have a zippered lunch bag than have a velcro lunch bag.")  The students also answer a daily survey question and analyze the resultant bar graph. (Did you know that the favourite snack in our class is potato chips?)

The students ended our social studies unit by reviewing all the work they did and each child wrote a reflection on what they liked to do the best and why.

The class did a couple of new working with words activities this week. They played around with the beginning sounds of the homophones write/right. The students managed to find 22 rhyming words! The children also played the word game "How to turn a hen into a fox" by replacing letters in the words. This helped the children review the vowels and consonants in the alphabet and helped them play with letter sounds.

The class watched a video of the lion from one of our read aloud books. The book Christian the Lion tells the story of a real lion that lived in London, England and was successfully re-introduced into a wildlife park in Kenya. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5vRPKIS5UM

We also learned about the friendship between a tortoise and a hippo when we read the book, Owen and Mzee: The story of a remarkable friendship. Here is the link to their website:

owenandmzee.com

The children worked in groups to read the scripts for a Reader's Theatre play based on the nursery rhyme "Old Mother Hubbard". The students worked hard to make sure that they faced the audience and read their lines clearly and loudly.

Our class project to create a large 100 chart in the stairwell is now over halfway finished. On Friday, the number "56" was added to the chart.

Books read aloud this week:

Christian the Lion (part 2) by Anthony "Ace" Bourke and John Randall
Owen and Mzee by Craig Hatkoff
The Velveteen Rabbit (chapter book) by Margery WIlliams

Update from Ms. R

Thank you to all the families for coming by the classroom this week to talk about the wonderful work the children have done so far this year.

The homework for this week is to write a story in the homework writing journal that includes the six colour words we have been studying for our word wall. The words are the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and the secondary colours (green, orange and purple). The students were also asked to do some preliminary research on the animals they picked for their science projects.

News for November 14

News for November 14

This four-day week the students finished up the math unit on linear measurement by learning about metres and kilometres. The children learned how to measure things that can't easily be measured by using rulers and metre sticks by measuring using a piece of string and then measuring the string. The class used this method to measure the height of the school! We wrote a letter to Pat the chief caretaker last week and asked for his help. He came to our class and told us that he would be happy to help us. The children also estimated how tall the school was. So, he climbed up to the roof and dropped down a line of orange plastic ribbon. Then we measured the ribbon by arranging it in a straight line down the hallway. It measured 10 m and 37 cm ! (Congratulations to Ivy whose estimate of 10 m and 6 cm was the closest.)

The students worked very hard to finish their family trees. They wrote out the names of their parents and their mother's parents (maternal grandparents) and father's parents (paternal grandparents). The students then glued this information along with sentences about their favourite new and old traditions and the reason their parents chose their first names. These finished family trees are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom.

The students learned about shape poems (also called concrete poems) this week and wrote some original shape poems. 

The children used playdoh to create colour wheels. A colour wheel shows how the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and secondary colours (green, orange and purple) are related. The students actually made their own secondary colours by mixing together primary colours (for example, blue + yellow = green). The students also learned that mixing all the colours together make brown and mixing white with a colour makes a tint and mixing black with a colour makes a shade.

Each child picked an animal to research for his/her individual science project. The students learned how to use stencils to create titles on their posters.

Finally, on Thursday, each student wrote a letter to his/her parents to thank them for coming to our class for a parent-teacher interviews and pointing out things for them to look at during their visit. 

Books read aloud this week:

Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Suess

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess

Christian the Lion by Anthony (Ace) Bourke and John Rendall

Remembrance Day

How to fold a paper (peace) crane

Here is a video showing the steps to fold a paper (peace) crane:

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the math (measurement) and language (poetry) homework sheet. This homework is due on THURSDAY, November 14th.

Important dates:

November 13 - Progress Report Cards are sent home.
November 14 (after school and evening) - Parent/Teacher interviews
November 15 - P. A. Day - No classes - Parent/Teacher interviews (morning)
November 22 - Parent Council's Movie Night
December 20 - P. A. Day
December 23 to January 3 - Winter Holidays
January 6, 2014 - First day of school for 2014

News for November 8

News for November 8

Our Amaryllis plant is growing!  The students are excited about our daily “Amaryllis Update”.  Each day, the Student of the Day gets to measure and chart the growth of our amaryllis plant.  It is now over 3.5 cm tall.  

This week, the students began the unit on linear measurement in math.  The students explored non-standard units of measure, such as measuring with cubes and straws.  Students became skilled at estimating, measuring and recording with non-standard units of measure through measuring their height and the length of their legs, hands and thumbs.  

Towards the end of the week, the students started to learn more about standard units of measure, starting with the  centimetre. The students wondered about the height of our school and if it could be measured. To answer this question, the class wrote a letter to the school’s head caretaker, Pat.  He visited our class on Friday and said he would be happy to help us with this project. The students will work with Pat next week to actually measure the height of the school. 

Over the past week, Room 5 has been busy listening to, talking about and writing poems as part of our poetry unit. Many poems were read aloud to the class and the students even got a chance to listen to a recording of the poet, Michael Rosen reading some of his poems. The children thought carefully about how poets choose words to help the reader create images in his/her mind. The students wrote “acrostic” poems (ones in which the first letter of each line spells out a particular word) including one about their favourite food.  These poems were so descriptive that we got hungry just reading them!

We also talked about trees this week -- actual trees and family trees.  As part of our social studies unit on “Changing Family and Community Traditions”, the students have started to create their own family trees, pulling together some of the  research they have done on their families and their traditions.  

The students talked a lot about Remembrance Day this week. The children learned about the symbols for peace (peace signs, poppies, white doves, paper cranes) and the reason why Canada observes Remembrance Day on November 11th. (The reason is that the end of World War I took effect at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of that year, November 11, 1918.) The children practiced the Remembrance Day song they learned last week. They cut out the large poppies they painted last week and even learned how to fold an origami paper (peace) crane. Each student folded two cranes, one to keep and one to send to the Hiroshima Peace Project in Japan. Some children also got a chance to work with a partner to fold really big paper cranes use large pieces of paper. These painted poppies and large paper cranes will be used to decorate the gym for the Remembrance Day assembly next Monday.

Finally the children wrote 33 words about what peace means to them. The number 33 was picked because 11 + 11+ 11 = 33, using the symbolic number of 11 from the time and date we observe Remembrance Day. The class made a video of all the peace activities we did this week, including each student reading aloud her/his peace message. (This video will be posted in a separate blog posting).

Books read aloud this week:   

Length by Henry Arthur Pluckrose 

A Poke in the I by Paul B. Janeczko and Chris Raschka

The Peace Book by Todd Parr

Sadako (And the Thousand Paper Cranes) by Eleanor Coerr

Where Poppies Grow by Linda Granfield

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a story (fiction or non-fiction) in the homework writing journal. The students can choose to write about anything they wish. Some suggestions from the class were: Halloween, the Grand Canyon or sewing pillows...

Please note:

The cold weather has finally arrived! Please make sure that your child arrives at school dressed to spend time outdoors. The children are outside for 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the afternoon and 30 minutes at lunchtime.

ALL STUDENTS need to have "indoor shoes" to keep at school. Children must have footwear on at all times when they are in school. If students wear boots to school and do not have indoor shoes, they must wear their boots all day.

News for November 1

 

 

News for November 1

 

Halloween week is a busy week at school. Early in the week the students made little spiders. On Wednesday, we carved a "Domo pumpkin" for sale at the Fall Family night. On Thursday, we made caramel apples! First the students unwrapped caramel candies and melted them in a pot with a bit of cream until smooth. Next each student pressed a popsicle stick into an apple. Then the apples were dipped into the caramel. Finally, each child added sprinkles to his/her caramel apple and put it on a non-stick mat to harden. The students participated in our school's annual Halloween Parade around the neighbourhood. It was wonderful to see all the children's costumes. After recess, the students settled in to enjoy their Halloween treats (and watch some Pink Panther cartoons).

The students finished writing, drawing and inking their comic strips. These are now on display in the classroom along with their rough copy to show the process of planning to final good copy.

Our pillow project was finally finished this week. The students stuffed and hand-sewed their pillows and are now using them to make themselves comfortable in their chairs when they sit at their desks. The children then learned about "procedural writing" and how it is used to write instructions on how to do something.

Using the key words, first, next, then, finally, each child wrote about the steps to create a pillow. This project used the full writer's process of planning, rough copy, editing and good copy stages. This writing was turned into a group of "How to make a pillow" books which are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom.

The children learned how to play a cooperative writing game called "Dice Stories". The students work with partners and take turns rolling a die and writing only that number of words. The stories can get very silly!

In math, the students learned about decreasing or shrinking patterns and how to recognize them and figure out the pattern rule. After reviewing the three types of patterns (repeating, growing (increasing) and shrinking (decreasing), the class completed the final assessment.

Our class planted a flower bulb called an Amaryllis. We are measuring and graphing it's growth over the next several weeks.

On Friday, we started to talk about Remembrance Day and the symbols of peace in our world. The children painted red poppies on large pieces of paper. The class also learned a Remembrance Day song and the American Sign Language signs that go with the words. 

Books read aloud this week:

Scary Poems for Rotten Kids by Sean Ohuigin

Halloween by Molly Aloian

Domo Unplugged by Holly Kowitt

Happy Haunting Amelia Bedelia by Herman Parish

Squirrelly Gray by James Kochalka 



Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete the math and language worksheets based on our math unit on patterning. This homework is due on Friday, November 8th.

Our school's Book Fair begins next week and runs in the library from Monday, October 28 to Friday, November 1. Our class will be visiting the book fair on Monday morning. Students will be writing "wish lists" of materials that they would like to buy. They can return to the book fair during the week to purchase items that they want.

News for October 25

News for October 25

This week our school had some sad news about our school office administrator, Norah. Norah will be leaving our school to work at another job. Our class had a great opportunity to make her feel special by creating beautiful tissue paper flowers to make a special crown and throne for her good bye ceremony at an assembly on Friday. She loved her hat!

The children used the story planner drawings that they created last week to write fiction stories. The goal was to write a story that contained information in their art. For example, if a grey cat was in the picture then the student should write that the cat was grey in his/her
 story. This approach to story writing helps the students include more details in their written work. These stories are now typed and will be displayed in the classroom along with the pictures that inspired the stories.

In math, the class continued the unit on patterning by looking at repeating patterns with two attributes changing. Then the class focused on learning about increasing (or growing) patterns. The key concepts with these types of patterns is to look at the pattern rule to determine what one has to do to the last term in the pattern to get the next term. For example, 2,4,6, _, the next term is 8 and the pattern rule is add 2 (or +2 or skip counting by two's). The class also worked in pairs to make an increasing pattern connection to our read aloud book, Six Dinner Sid to try and figure out how many dinners Sid the cat ate in one week.

In science, the students read more facts about snails. They also learned how to make a diagram and how a diagram is different from an art drawing. Diagrams are pictures that show true information and have labels in the form of arrows and words. The students learned how to draw a snail diagram showing the parts of a snail. Each child then took a snail fact and wrote it on a page with a snail diagram to create our class book of snail facts.

The class learned how to make plaster of Paris cast sculptures. The children each made imprints of snail shell spiral patterns into plasticine. Then plaster of Paris (a mineral called gypsum) was mixed with water and poured on top. When it dried, the plaster sculpture showed the patterns and designs of the snail shells. The students then wrote about the project in their writing journals.

The students created more comics this week. They learned how to write "narrative boxes" (usually at the top of a panel) to give more information about the story, like a narrator would do. They also learned how to make sound bubbles to add sound effects to their stories. The children are now working on a new four-panel comic strip with an emphasis on the story having a title panel, a beginning, middle and end panel to go with a three part story format.

In guided reading this week, the students read the first half of a chapter book, The Sea Dog. The goals for this week and next week is to discuss how the author uses words in the story and the illustrator uses details in the pictures to give information that isn't obvious. For example, by answering the question, "Why did the boy not want to learn how to swim?", the students can say that he was scared of the ocean but must explain how they knew that. (One piece of evidence was that the boy knew that sometimes the sea was so strong that it broke big ships into little pieces.)

Books read aloud this week:

The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen
Six Dinner Sid by Inga Moore
Binky the Space Cat by Ashely Spires
Pattern by Henry Pluckrose
Follow the Line Through the House by Laura Ljungkvist