This week the students saw their bean seeds begin to germinate! The class wrote and drew in their science journals their observations about what was happening to the seeds. Some seeds got bigger, grew a white root and started to get green leaves. Other seeds though started to turn black. Each child picked one seed that had sprouted and put it in soil to grow. We discussed the things that a plant needs to grow and designed experiments to test these requirements. (For example, to test if plants need light, we planted a sprouted seed and put it in the dark in a sealed box.)
In math, the students finished up the unit on probability and wrote a test on Wednesday. The highlight was an activity figuring out the probability of getting a particular animal-shaped sponge when picking a "growing capsule" from a bag filled with 24 capsules. Now the class has started to review all the math learned so far this year as they prepare for the EQAO test at the end of May (the week of May 25th). The children started to review patterning this week reviewing the types of patterns (growing, shrinking, repeating) and the strategies used to figure out the pattern rule and "what comes next".
The students went to two assemblies this week. The first was the annual Jump Rope For Heart assembly to talk about the jump rope event happening on May 11th. This is our annual fundraiser for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. (Materials for fundraising were sent home with the children on Monday of last week.) The second one was an assembly talking about the character trait of cooperation.
In writing the students made a lot of progress on their box stories. Recall each child chose an empty box and used that to inspire a fiction story. Part of this project is for the student to design the book in such a way as to use the box somehow in the final book. Of course, the students wrote, edited, revised and did the good copy of their stories as well. Students also reviewed the parts of speech knowledge for grade 3 (nouns/adjectives, verbs/adverbs) by playing a MadLibs writing game.
This week on the Room 5 Interview Show, Chris and Abdi interviewed Mr. Grundy. He is a kindergarten teacher in our Learning Buddies classroom. The video can be seen in a separate posting.
The class started a read aloud chapter book, Owls in the Family, by famous Canadian author, Farley Mowat. Mr. Mowat passed away about a year ago.The books he wrote sold over 17 million copies and have been translated into 52 different languages. The book we're reading is based on Mr. Mowat's childhood in Saskatchewan about 80 years ago. We are practicing the comprehension strategy of "making a picture in your mind" with this story as there are very few illustrations.
Books read aloud this week:
The Game of Sculpture by Herve Tullet
Books! by Murray McCain and John Alcorn
Panorama - A Foldout Book by Fani Marceau and Joelle Jolivet
Beautiful Oops! by Barney Saltzberg
Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat (chapter book)
No comments:
Post a Comment