This week the class finished up a few projects so that we can begin new projects next week!
The time capsules are finally finished and sealed away in a box for the next 168 school days. It's not to be opened until June 26, 2015! The students finished their books by adding a page with their photo on it and creating a front and back cover for the book. Together we wrote a big letter to the "future students of Room 5" writing about all the things we've done so far this year. It will be interesting to read this letter 9 months from now.
The children made sock puppets! They learned how to make a mouth and practised how to speak and make the puppet talk at the same time. They drew eyes, practised character voices and gave names to their puppets. They worked in groups of three to create puppet plays and wrote down the characters, setting, problem and solution for the story. Finally, the students performed their plays for the rest of the class.
In science, the students continued to research information about snails. Using highlighters and working in pairs they read the information and shared the facts that they learned. Then they took the facts from their research and created individual pages for our class book. Did you know that a snail has tongue called a radula that has thousands of teeth to rip up food? This book is now available for children to choose to read during independent reading time.
To learn more about the natural structure of the snail shell, we did an experiment on egg shells. We put an egg into vinegar and left it overnight. The next day the acetic acid in the vinegar had combined with the calcium carbonate in the shell and made lots of carbon dioxide bubbles. When we took the egg out of the vinegar it was still the shape of an egg but the shell was soft and sort of bouncy! So the calcium carbonate is what makes shells hard.
In math, the students learned about ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc) versus cardinal numbers (1,2,3 etc.) and when it is appropriate to use ordinal numbers. The children also explored the concept of 1000 to understand better just how big 1000 really is. Finally, at the end of the week, the class learned about "rounding" numbers (for example, rounding the number 48 to the nearest ten is 50 because 48 is closer to 50 than 40).
The children learned about the life of Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope to raise money for cancer research. The class made a great connection between the prosthetic tail of Winter the dolphin and Terry Fox's prosthetic leg.
Books read aloud this week:
My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett (chapter book)
Terry Fox by Maxine Trottier
The Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow- a story about colour (DVD)
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