Despite losing a day this week to the closing of the school because there was no heat in the classrooms, the students of Room 5 got back to work during this first week back at school.
In math, the students finished up the first half of our geometry unit on two-dimensional shapes. They reviewed the features of 2D shapes (vertices and sides) and the names of the shapes. The children traced around various shapes to create a drawing of a building. Then, each child counted the number of different shapes they used to draw their building and finally they wrote about what happens in their building and why it is important. Among the buildings created were a hotel, fire station, jelly factory and many more!
The students learned about the ancient Chinese puzzle called the Tangram. Tangram puzzles are made up of 7 different geometric shapes and are used to create pictures. The goal is to position the puzzle pieces to match the shape of the picture. The children had lots of practice solving these puzzles and proved to themselves that they got faster at solving the puzzles the more they practiced. Then each child created his/her own tangram puzzle and the students got to solve each other's puzzles. Finally, we had a fun "contest" to see who was the fastest tangram puzzle solver. Congratulations to Lola U. and Padmira!
The class said "good bye" to the 95 word wall words we've studied so far, as they were taken down to make room for the next words. The children created their own personal dictionaries by writing down the word wall words in alphabetical order. Each child now has a reference book to look at for the correct spelling of these words.
In science, the students read about liquids and solids and how they are different. This week we focused on how liquid water turns into solid ice. Each child had their own plastic bottle with water in it. All the bottles were kept outside for two days. Since it was below O degrees Celsius outside, of course the water froze into ice BUT the surprising things were that the ice was bigger than the liquid water and that the ice floated on top of the liquid water as the ice melted.
In guided reading, the students worked in groups to read the fairy tale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and started to compile a list of things that make a fairy tale different from other fiction stories.
On Friday, the children started to create a new large painting project by designing a frame for the painting using coloured masking tape.
Books read aloud this week:
Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown (chapter book) - We are lucky to have a class set of these books. The students and I read aloud the chapters together.
Three Pigs, One Wolf and Seven Magic Shapes by Grace Maccarone
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