Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to review the Canada facts learned this week. In order to start the social studies unit on "Living and Working in Ontario", the students reviewed the provinces and territories in Canada and some basic historical facts. Each student was also asked to teach "The Provinces of Canada" song to an adult and reflect on the experience. There is also geometry math review sheet. This homework is due on Thursday, December 4th.

Important Dates:

December 5 - P. A. Day - no classes
December 19 - Last day of classes for 2014
January 5 - First day of classes for 2015

News for November 28

News for November 28

The highlight of this week was our class ice cream party at the end of the day on Tuesday. Hudson won this special event at the Pumpkinfest celebration back in October. The students tried different kinds of ice cream and toppings. Delicious! Thanks Hudson!

Since the class showed an interest in learning cursive capital letters, we reviewed how to write all 26 capital cursive letters. Finally, the students created new name tags for their desks by writing his/her signature and taping it to his/her desk.

In math, the children really honed their skills at recognizing and matching 2D shapes by solving a series of tangram puzzles. At first the students took about a minute to solve a new puzzle by matching all 7 tangrams on the puzzle. By the end of our "contest", the students halved that time to less than 30 seconds per puzzle. The children then designed their own tangram puzzles for their fellow students to solve. Finally, the students had a round robin style competition and the results were very close! Grisha was the fastest when he solved a tangram puzzle in just 10 seconds!

The students wrote a reflection on the shape art they created last week. The students even created letters for the title on the bulletin board using the power polygon shapes. These pieces of art and writing are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom.

The class learned more about our school's bell this week. Did you know that the original Davisville school was only two rooms? It was named after John Davis who owned a pottery factory at Yonge and Davisville. The clay they used in the factory was dug up along the area where Millwood Road is now. John Davis was such an important man in the community that they named the area "Davisville" after him.

The students continued to work on their fiction stories about our school bell. Most of the rough copies are finished and the students are now editing their writing.

The class learned the origin of the names of places important in Canada. The words for Canada (from Kanata meaning "village"), Toronto (from a word meaning "a place where trees stand in the water"), Ontario (from a word meaning "beautiful water") and Ottawa (from a word meaning "traders") all come from First Nations languages. We also learned that Toronto was originally called the City of York until 1834 when the city's name was officially changed to Toronto.

The students learned how to play the strategy game Chinese Checkers. Did you know that the game isn't Chinese and really isn't checkers at all? The game was invented in 1892 in Germany and was later given this name in the United States in 1928 to try and sell more games. After learning the basic rules, the students played each other and shared their different strategies to win. (We have also set up a tournament chart to make sure that everyone gets a chance to play all their fellow students).

The class took some time to discover the math around the Chinese Checkers game board. Did you know that the shape is called a hexagram and is actually a 12 sided polygon called a dodecagon? The students were also challenged to work with a partner to figure out how many
holes are drilled in the board by using what they know about the game pieces (each colour has 10 men).

The class learned about how snowflakes are made in clouds. Each snowflake starts with a tiny speck of dirt for the ice crystals to form on. The pattern of the snowflake depends on the amount of water in the cloud and how cold it is.

The children heard the story of A Street Cat Named Bob this week. It's the true story of how a stray cat changed the life of a man named James, a street musician in London, England. Of course we talked about the connections between this story and the story of Christian the Lion that we read last week. Here is a video of James and Bob:


Books read aloud this week:

My Name is Bob by James Bowen
Where is the World is Bob? by James Bowen
The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen
The Story of Snow by Mark Cassino
Ontario - Yours to Discover by Megan Cuthbert
Infinity and Me by Kate Hosford

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a story (fiction or non-fiction) in the homework writing journal. There is also a review sheet for cursive writing and a math sheet reviewing the 2D geometry concepts covered this week. This homework is due on Friday, November 28th.

***2014 TOY DRIVE***

Room 5 and Sophie and Tatiana from Ms. Hamilton's class are in charge of the school's TOY DRIVE this year. The goal is for each student to bring in a new, unwrapped children's toy to help families in need.

Bring in toys from November 24th to December 12th.

THANK YOU!

News for November 21

News for November 21

This week the students focused on geometry and the names and properties of flat, two-dimensional (2D) shapes. From learning the Greek origins of many of the shape names to creating art designs, the students are getting a deep understanding of these shapes in our world.

The children went on a "shape hunt" and realized that the easiest geometric shape to find in the classroom is the rectangle. They used elastics on geoboards to create polygon shapes and geodot paper to draw polygons.

The students learned about an ancient Chinese puzzle called Tangrams and how these are used to make various pictures. Using the seven tans, shaped like various polygons the student chorally read Grandfather Tang's Story and worked to recreate the animal characters using their tangram puzzles.

We began the Social Studies unit by learning how Canada is divided into 13 smaller parts (10 provinces and 3 territories). We also talked about important facts about Canada, for example, Prime Minister Stephen Harper lives and works in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. Also Canada became a country 147 years ago, on July 1, 1867. The children also learned a song to help them remember not only the names of the province and territories but also the order of them across the country moving from the east coast of Canada to the west coast.

The students began a class research project about the school bell in the special cabinet in our school's office. We went down to the office and read on the bell that it was made by Meneely West foundry in Troy, New York in 1860. Seven years before Canada became a country! We wrote a letter to Mrs. Farrelly to ask for her help with this project and she lent us a book on the history of Davisville School.

The students made a video about their research posters about structures around the world.



The class finished all 26 letters of the alphabet by learning the letters m, n, x and z.

In the computer lab, the children began to learn keyboarding skills by trying the typing games on the site:
learninggamesforkids/keyboarding_games.html

The class visited their kindergarten learning buddies in Room 103 this week. They had a lot of fun helping the children learn about and understand numbers from 1-20.

The students used the "power polygon" shapes to help them create designs to show the art elements of line, colour and 2D shapes.

Finally, the children created posters to advertise our school's TOY DRIVE asking for donations of new, unwrapped toys to give to families in need.

Books read aloud this week:

A Lion in Paris by Beatrice Alemagna
Christian the Lion by John Rendall and Anthony Bourke
The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns
Tadao's Search for Circles by Marion Brooker
The Boy With Square Eyes by Julliet and Charles Snape
Grandfather Tang's Story - A fable told with tangrams by Ann Tompert

Christian the Lion - video

The class heard the story of Christian the Lion this week. It's the story of a lion cub that was adopted by two men, John and Ace, in London, England in the 1960's. Eventually, they realized as he started to grow up that they could not keep him in their apartment any longer. So they arranged to have him go to live in Kenya. After one year, the two men went to Kenya to see how Christian was doing and if he remembered them. As you'll see near the end of the video, Christian did remember the two men who had loved him and taken care of him.

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is for each student to teach an adult learner about nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs and to use this knowledge to teach how to play the game "Mad Libs". After the lesson, the student teacher is to fill out a reflection sheet and write about how the lesson went. There is also a math worksheet with questions about our new geometry math unit. This homework is due on Friday, November 21st.

***Students have been asked to bring in a used piece of clothing or fabric for our next tie dye project. T-shirts, socks, pillowcases and more are all suitable. Because this is an experiment, please do not buy something new.

As always, if you have a question or comment, please email me or write me a note in your child's agenda.

News for November 13

News for November 13

The highlight of this 4-day week was when our class observed Remembrance Day by attending a school assembly and creating a video of the students' peace messages:

In math, the students continued to practice three-digit addition and subtraction with and without regrouping. They also practiced solving word problems. At the end of the week, the class started the geometry unit by reviewing two-dimensional (2D) shape features (sides, corners, angles) and names. They also discovered that for any 2D shape, the number of sides equals the numbers of vertices and equals the number of angles.

In science, we talked about the different structures that animals make (for example, bird nests, beaver dams). The students even had a chance to see and taste honey from a real honeycomb.

The class learned about the life and work of the Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudi. Despite many challenges, Gaudi designed and created unique buildings reflecting his love of nature (and distaste for straight lines). It's difficult to believe that these unusual, modern-looking buildings were made over 100 years ago.

The students worked in pairs to complete the newspaper challenge. The class was challenged to create strong and stable structures that are at least 20 cm tall and will hold a stack of books using only newspapers and masking tape.

The class continued to practice identifying and using nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. The children learned how to use these words to play the game "Mad Libs" to create some very silly stories.

The students worked really hard to finish their research posters this week. They took the facts from their research sheets and wrote the facts into sentences to write on the posters. They added photos and maps and reviewed their work to make sure everything was complete. That is, all information was included on the poster and sentences were written correctly.

Finally, the students graphed the heights of their research structures to compare them. The structures that we researched ranged from 8 m tall (The Great Wall of China) to 830 m (Burj Khalifa)! Did you know that the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world and is about the same height as two Empire State Buildings and three Eiffel Towers?

Books read aloud this week:

The Honeybee Man by Lela Nargi
Building on Nature - The Life of Antoni Gaudi by Rachel Victoria Rodriguez
The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns

How to fold a paper crane

Here is a video showing how to fold a paper crane:

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a story of your choice (fiction or non-fiction) in the homework writing journal. Also, there is a math review sheet reviewing numeracy concepts learned so far this year. This homework is due on Thursday, November 13th (since Friday is a P. A. Day).

This is the statue of Sadako in the Peace Park in Hiroshima, Japan. In January, our school sent 1,000 paper cranes for peace to Japan to be displayed in this park. On the statue it says:

This is our cry.
This is our prayer.
Peace in the world.

Here is the link to Japan's Peace Park website:

http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/kids/KPSH_E/top_e.html

Important Dates:

November 11 - Remembrance Day
November 12 - Progress Reports go home
November 13 (evening) and Nov. 14 (AM) - Parent/Teacher interviews
November 14 - P. A. Day - no classes
December 5 - P. A. Day - no classes
December 19 - Last day of classes for 2014
January 5 - First day of classes for 2015

News for November 7

News for November 7

This week the class did a lot of work around Remembrance Day. We watched a DVD, read books and discussed the history of this important day to the people of Canada. We talked about what peace means and the history of the symbols of peace.

The students designed activity sheets for their learning buddies in kindergarten and got the materials together to teach their buddies how to make a paper poppy and talk to them about Remembrance Day using the worksheets to help them understand why this particular day is important. When we were reflecting afterward on how the lessons went, the students appreciated how much work goes into preparing to teach a lesson and they were very proud of having taught their buddies something about Remembrance Day and peace.

The students wrote 33 words about what peace means to them. Since World War One ended on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month (November), we added 11+11+11=33.

In math, the students practised more word problems. The class also learned the tricks about how to add and subtract 3-digit numbers.

The children learned about the four main parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs and how to identify these words in sentences. Did you know that adjectives and adverbs are not necessary? Without them sentences still make sense, but, are not as interesting as they are with adjectives and adverbs!

The class practiced their understanding of non-fiction text by reading a story about the history of hamburgers and correctly and completely answering comprehension questions.

In science, the class is ending the unit by doing research projects on famous structures around the world. The children began by learning how to design a poster to effectively display information. Also, after reading the book about how Elisha Otis invented the elevator, they learned that until then, the tallest buildings were only 6 floors. By designing and making elevators, Elisha Otis created something to move people vertically up and down and paved the way for taller buildings.

In cursive writing, the children learned the letters "e" and "l" and reviewed the 20 letters learned so far. Only six more to go...

The students learned how to fold a paper crane. They also worked in groups to design large squares of paper with symbols of peace, which they will fold into huge paper cranes.

Books read aloud this week:

Androcles and the Lion by Aesop (via Phaedrus)
The Peace Book by Todd Parr
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coer
Going Up! Elisha Otis's Trip to the Top by Monica Kulling
Thing-Thing by Cary Fagan