News for September 13

News for September 13

We started off the week, learning our "word wall words" for the week. Each week the children will work to learn how to spell these words using a variety of activities. Words are chosen from grade-appropriate word lists, high-frequency irregular words, common homophones, vocabulary words and words identified from the children's writing as commonly misspelled. On Fridays, we have a traditional style spelling test as a send off for the words to become a part of our class Word Wall. The children are expected to spell these words correctly in all their writing.

The students reviewed the parts of the writing process but focussed on planning their writing. All good writers think and plan their writing before starting to write the sentences. The class learned how to create a "bubble planner" in their journals. This type of writing planner is completed with key words to establish who is in the story, what is the setting, what is the problem and how is it solved. The class then started to write a fiction story about a penny (since we are doing a class project on the Canadian penny). The stories were finished this week and each student had a chance to edit his/her work with either Ms. Katie or myself.

The class made a lot of progress on our penny project. We are trying to collect pennies from 1920 to 2012. The students learned that the 1936 penny is the most valuable and is worth $400, 000! They also found out that Canada made over 35 billion pennies. That amount weighs the same as 2 Titanic ships and laid out end-to-end would circle the equator 16 times!

The children learned about one of the elements of design: the line. They experimented with different types of lines and on big paper, they each drew one long continuous line, first with pencil then with a black Sharpie marker. Then they coloured in the spaces with crayons. After finishing their work, each child reflected on their artwork and wrote about how it was made and what the finished art reminded them of. This artwork is now on display in the hall outside of our classroom.

Another class project was continued this week. We are creating a huge "100 chart" on the wall in the stairwell by our class, to help us count the days of school. Each day the star student designs the number of the day, slips the paper into a CD case and the case is put up on the wall in order. So far, we have 9 pieces of number art to represent 9 days of school so far (178 days to go...)

In math, the students worked on reviewing addition math strategies. Using the knowledge of the different ways to make 10 (e.g., 6+4=10 and 4+6=10), double facts (7+7=14) and double plus one facts (7+8 can be thought of as 7+7+1=15) helps students increase their addition speed. The children also played some games with 100 charts and playing cards to help them practice their addition facts.

Because one of the ways to write the date in my class is to write 12IX13 (12th of September 2013), we explored Roman Numerals. The class learned that before the Arabic number system (0 to 9), humans used the Roman Numeral number system. In this system, I = 1, V = 5 and X = 10. The children learned the Roman Numerals I to XII (or 1 to 12) to correspond to the twelve months of the year. The main reason humans no longer use the Roman Numeral system is there is no zero in that system!

The students worked with a partner to add up the single digits in our current (Arabic) number system. On big sheets of paper and using counters, they added 0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9. It wasn't easy to do but every group managed to figure out the correct answer!

The class also had a chance to do some origami. Origami is a great way to improve eye-hand coordination, to follow sequential directions and review geometric concepts. The students folded two puppet head models that could "talk".

Books read aloud this week:

What's Missing by Tilman Reitzle
The Garden of Abdul Gasazi by Chris Van Allsburg
Count on Canada by Charles Pachter
On a Beam of Light (A story about Albert Einstein) by Jennifer Berne