The last week of school went by very fast and was only four days long...
We had several assemblies. There were two sing-a-long assemblies and an athletic assembly. At the two sing-a-long assemblies, the students had a chance to sing with other students, some traditional holiday songs. Since the children had learned the history and meaning of the lyrics of many holiday songs during our daily guided reading times last week, this was a great chance to sing these songs with their friends. During the athletic assembly, Francesca honoured the athletic achievements of individual students and teams.
The children created paper lanterns by finding and tracing geometric shapes (for example, circles, triangles and rectangles) on to thick paper and cutting out the shapes. Then they glued on pieces of thin paper behind the shape openings to create windows. They used thin, black markers to draw designs on the windows. Finally, the students each taped the sides to make a box shape and put a battery-operated light inside to create the lantern effect.
Each student had a chance to read an electronic version of our read aloud book, Kate & Pippin, using the book app on an iPad, for a different type of book reading experience.
The class did some games to review the word walls words they have studied so far this year. Then, they were challenged to count how many words were up on the wall. Working in pairs, the children counted the number of words using various strategies (for example, tallying the number of words beginning with each letter, then using skip counting to find the total). The final total was 95 words that they must remember how to spell correctly, for the rest of their lives! (That's an ongoing joke in Room 5.)
Students were given a small, stuffed evergreen tree and asked to use this tree for inspiration to write fiction stories with a focus on adding adjectives to their writing. The students used all the writing stages (planning, rough copy, editing, good copy, front and back book covers) to create small books to attach to the little tree.
After reading Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the students watched the cartoon version to analyze what was the same and what was different between the book and the DVD.
The students reviewed the science concept of solids dissolving in liquids by doing a delicious experiment...making hot chocolate. Then they sat down with some snacks to finish watching the movie Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
Finally, our amaryllis plant has grown to a height of 60 cm and has not one, but two flower bulbs. Many thanks to Bhavya's family for taking care of our plant over the holidays!
Books read aloud this week:
Kate & Pippin: An Unlikely Love Story by Martin Springett
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
Dewey - There's a Cat in the Library! by Vicki Myron
(Dewey's Christmas at the Library by Vicki Myron)
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