News for March 8

News for March 8


The cursive letters learned this week were : u, y, i, j. Each student learned how to write his or her name in cursive. The students then used what they know about reflections and lines of symmetry to create a work of art using the reflections of their cursive names. Then the children wrote about how they made their art and what their art reminded them of.

In math, the students finished up the unit on motion geometry by looking at symmetry. After reviewing the concepts, the children wrote the unit test on Wednesday. Our new unit is on fractions. So far the children have explored the concept of equal parts of a whole.

In our social studies unit on Pioneers, the students learned about how much work the pioneers needed to do just to create fabric out of wool for clothing and blankets. They learned the basic steps to process the wool on the sheep to weaving the final fabric. Along the way, the students got to try using carders (separating the wool fibres), a spinning wheel (spinning wool into yarn) where the twisting of the wool makes it stronger and a swift to hold the yarn while winding the wool into balls. Each child then demonstrated their understanding by creating a short report telling the story of wool using words and actual examples of wool at the various stages. These reports are now on display in the hall outside of our classroom.

The students each made a small weaving loom out of cardboard and began using the wool (which the students dyed) to weave a bookmark.

In writing, the students wrote letters to Tracy of Kobo Books Canada telling her of their experiences using the Kobo ereaders at school. The class made a video demonstrating what they learned from this research project. This video can be found near the end of this posting.

In computers, the children visited a site to practice different ways to move on a grid. Here is the link:

http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/math-games/bike-route/

As a link to our author study of Oliver Jeffers, the students learned how to fold and fly paper airplanes as a link to his book The Great Paper Caper.


Books read aloud this week:

Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep by Teri Sloat
This Moose Is Mine by Oliver Jeffers
How To Catch A Star by Oliver Jeffers
Kate And Pippin by Martin Springett
It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Snow
The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers

The Kobo Books Research Project

Here is a video of children using the ereaders and reading their letters expressing their opinions.





The Room 5 Interview Show!

This week Ms. Kang was interviewed by Akshit and Kashish. She is the music, drama and dance
teacher for our class.
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