News for January 31

News for January 31

The class began the week with a new math unit on time. We reviewed how humans divide up time into blocks called seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. The class counted how many jumping jacks they could do in one minute. Sometimes a minutes feels like a long time! We also talked about analog and digital clocks. In grade two the children are expected to read and write time to the quarter hour. That means they should be able to read, write and understand analog and digital clocks on the hour (e.g., 2:00), quarter hour (e.g., 2:15), half hour (e.g., 2:30) and three quarters past the hour (e.g., 2:45). The students did a lot of practicing and even made their own analog clocks with the short hour hand and long minute hand to help them practice.

During our library time, the class had a chance to watch a video based on the pattern we had in our calendar this month to show the power of doubling. The students saw that, starting with 1 and doubling that number every day, after 26 days, we got to 33, 554, 432 (32 million, five hundred fifty-four thousand, four hundred thirty-two)! It was a great way to introduce how to read place value to 8 places. Here is the video:



Students finished up their fairy tale stories, making sure to edit his or her writing to catch mistakes before "Old Red " (Ms. R's red pen) sees any mistakes. These stories will be typed and made into books. Also half of the students had a chance to talk or conference with Ms. R to talk about their math and writing and talk about what goals he or she has to improve. The other half of the class will conference with Ms. R next week.

The children learned how to weave fabric using a cardboard loom and the wool we dyed last week. When finished, the fabric will be big enough to make woven bookmarks. Many children are on their second piece of weaving!

We continued our social studies unit by learning some facts about Canada. Did you know that Canada is 147 years old and became a country on July 1, 1867? The students also learned how to find the 13 provinces and territories on a map of Canada as well as the locations of Toronto and Canada's capital city, Ottawa.

The second episode of The Room 5 Interview Show was filmed this week. Jordan and Morgan interviewed Ms. Schneider, the vice-principal at our school. Did you know that she has two children and a dog in her family? Find out more by watching our show! The video can be found in a separate posting.

The class learned more about Chinese New Year (this year is the year of the horse). We cooked a feast of rice with vegetables and ate fortune cookies, shrimp crackers and other goodies. According to the Chinese Zodiac, students born in 2006 were born in the year of the dog but if the birthday is in January, they were born in the year of the rooster.

Finally, on Friday, the class watched a DVD about school bus safety and after lunch they got to actually go on a bus and practice going out the emergency exit.

Books read aloud this week:

The Fairy Tale Princess: Seven Classic Stories From the Enchanted Forest by Su Blackwell
* (We read The Princess and the Pea and The Twelve Dancing Princesses)

The Four Musicians (The Bremen Town Musicians) by The Brothers Grimm

Lighting Our World - A Year of Celebrations by Catherine Rondira

The Gingerbread Man retold by Jim Aylesworth

Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers