News for January 17

News for January 17

This week  the students

In math, the class began to study three-dimensional or 3D figures. After learning the parts of a 3D figure (vertices, edges and faces) they practised finding and counting these on 3D models. For grade two the categories of 3D shapes are prisms and pyramids (plus others such as spheres, cylinders and cones). Each child had a chance to create their own 3D figures using toothpicks (the edges) and small balls of plasticine (the vertices). After making their models, the students wrote about what they learned. Finally, they made a display of their work by making a good copy of their writing and a photo of him/herself holding the 3D figures.

The students did a choral reading of the traditional fairy tale, The Elves and the Shoemaker. This was in the form of a script, so children had an opportunity to read the different character parts. The class also added to our list of things found in fairy tales (e.g., fictional characters like giants, elves and trolls).

The class did a "Mad Libs" writing activity to practice what they know about nouns, adjectives and verbs, using the framework of the story Little Red Riding Hood.

This week the students investigated the features of our classroom dictionaries. They found that the words were in alphabetical order and for each word there was a lot of information besides what the word means (e.g., how to pronounce the word). The students generated over 90 vocabulary cards listing words that they didn't know. Also at the back of the dictionaries is information about  calendars, holidays, math units and Canada. This prompted a short lesson on how Canada is divided up into smaller parts called provinces and territories. The students even learned a song to help them remember the names and order of the 10 provinces and 3 territories.

The class read a non-fiction story on the properties of liquid water. Using containers of different sizes and shapes they experimented with the idea that liquids do not have a shape and therefore take on the shape of the container it's in. The next challenge was to take a piece of plasticine and put it in the water (it sank to the bottom) and how they could change the shape of the plasticine to make it float. The children also read about icebergs and how they are like gigantic ice cubes floating in the oceans!

The children used black wax pencils ("China marker") to create drawings inside the colourful picture frames they made last week. These are now on display in our classroom.

Our class was asked by Mr. Grundy's kindergarten class to have a "gingerbread man trap" to help them with their study of the story, The Gingerbread Man. The next day, we did indeed catch a gingerbread man much to the surprise and delight of the kindergarten students!

The class started to plan for our new Internet TV show called "The Room 5 Interview Show". We brainstormed the people that the class would like to know more about and made a list. Watch for our first show starting next week!

Books read aloud this week:

Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown (chapter book - finished)
Goldilocks and Just One Bear by Leigh Hodgkinson
The King's Chessboard (a fairy tale from India) retold by David Birch
The Jolly Postman (fairy tale letters) by Janet and Allen Ahlberg
The Elves and the Shoemaker (traditional fairy tale)