Thanks so much to all the students and their families for a wonderful year in Room 5! Thanks also for all the generous and thoughtful cards and gifts. They are not necessary, but they are appreciated.
Remember to read for 20 minutes (or more) each day. Play games, write and tell stories, build and make stuff. Limit the time you spend on electronic devices. You don't want to get "square eyes"!
I wish everyone a safe and happy summer holiday! Please note that I am moving from "my" classroom and in the fall, I will be teaching in Room 204.
See you in September,
Ms. R
The students contemplate what's in our time capsule box....
It's a happy/sad time of year. It's fun to think about the summer holidays and grade 4 in the fall but also sad to say good bye to friends and their time in grade 3.
The class this week learned about acronyms. Acronyms are invented words made up by using the first letter of each word in a group of words. For example, the word "laser" is an acronym formed by the first letter in each of the words, "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". Laser is so much easier to write and say! We also talked about initialisms (which are sometimes called acronyms) and what they mean. For example, FYI (for your information), AM/PM (ante meridiem or "before noon"/post meridiem or "after noon") and BTW (by the way).
The students learned about collective nouns (ex. family, assembly) and about the weird names that we have in English for different groups of animals. Did you know that a group of snails is called a "walk or rout of snails" or that a group of frogs is called "an army of frogs"?
The class calculated the number of days of summer vacation by adding the vacation days in June, July, August and September. Altogether there are 5+31+31+7= 74 days of summer holidays this year.
The children collected samples of their work all year in large folders called portfolios. The students reviewed their work, selected some of what they felt was their best work and shared their choices with the class before taking their portfolios home.
In math, the students used playing cards to play the game "The Greatest Number" to practice what they know about place value. They also used their cards to try to build the tallest tower of cards. They watched a video about Bryan Berg who is in the Guinness Book of World Records for building the tallest tower of cards without glue. Here is a video of his work:
Each day the students watched a part of the movie, "Because of Winn-Dixie" and discussed the movie and the parts of the story (characters, problems, solutions).
Finally, after ten months, the students opened up the Room 5 time capsule box! Inside were the little books the students made in September. It was fun to see what they wrote and to talk about what changed, what didn't change and which of their wishes and predictions came true.
Francesca asked our class to to a Speed Stacking demonstration at the beginning of the year-end athletic assembly. It was fun to stack fast in front of an audience!
Henry and Audrey at the Imaging Facility at the University of Toronto loved their thank you cards! They asked me to remind the children to remember to "think like a scientist". By that, they mean to remember to be curious about the things around them, ask questions, create theories and never stop learning about the world!
I'm in a different classroom (Room 204) next year teaching grades 2 and 3 and Room 5 will be a grade 5 French immersion classroom. Ms. Farrelly gave our class permission to take some books home to keep and to read over the summer. Each student was instructed to choose 10 books (basically to read one book a week over the ten weeks of summer) or more to take home. The children were reminded that reading is a skill that must be practiced and that reading helps to make anyone a better writer too!
The children helped to clean up the class by cleaning the top of their desks with....shaving cream! They spread and smooshed the foam around and then used an old football trading card to "shave" the desks clean.
FINALLY, the students finished off the last day of school with a party. They had treats and watched the DVD of our primary concert.
What a great year we had together!
Books read aloud this week:
Because of Winn-Dixie (DVD) - based on the book of the same name by Kate DiCamillo A Crackle of Crickets - A Compilation of Insect Collective Nouns by Patrick George A Drove of Bullocks - A Compilation of Animal Collective Nouns by Patrick George A Shiver of Sharks - A Compilation of Aquatic Collective Nouns by Patrick George A Filth of Starlings - A Compilation of Bird Collective Nouns by Patrick George Wild Ideas - Let Nature Inspire Your Thinking by Elin Kelsey
This week the students finished the choral reading of the classic novel Black Beauty. We had some wonderful discussions based on this 138-year-old story. Everyone was grateful for a happy ending after some of the hardships that the horse, Black Beauty had to endure. This book is a reminder to treat all animals with kindness and respect.
The students learned about palindromes. Palindromes are words, groups of words or sentences that read the same forwards and backwards. Mom and Dad are the most familiar examples but did you know these? Racecar, level, madam and the sentence "Eva, can I stab bats in a cave?"
In math this week the students continued to use playing cards. They learned how to do a magic trick, which of course wasn't really magic but was based on math. They reviewed the rules of the card game "Go Fish" and played this game with their friends.
On Wednesday, our class and Mr. Hinrichsen's class went on a field trip. In the morning we went to the Bata Shoe Museum. The students had a great time learning about the history of humans through shoes! The students also learned a lot about First Nations life too. Did you know the aboriginal people of Canada used moose hair, porcupine quills and beads to decorate their shoes? After eating lunch at the museum, we walked to the University of Toronto, where we met my partner Henry and his assistant Audrey. They showed us plant seeds using light microscopes, electron microscopes and confocal microscopes. Henry also did an exciting science demonstration using liquid nitrogen! Thanks so much to Hudson's mom and Barira's mom for volunteering on our trip.
The students sorted and peeled the paper off a lot of old wax crayons. We then used these crayons and melted them in aluminum pans in hot water to create large "rainbow" crayons.
To prepare for the Pan Am Games Play Day next week, the students researched the countries they were assigned and made flags to wave with their teammates next week.
The students counted the number of mature trees in our playground. There are 32 trees! We found a tree that was actually older than the old silver maple tree. It's the large beech tree near the east parking lot. The students figured out that it was about 130 years old. That means it was planted around 1885.
The children also used artist charcoal made out of willow tree branches to draw pictures of the trees on the playground.
We finished the Room 5 Interview Show this week. The students interviewed Ms. Konjhodzic and Mr. Pearce. These videos can be seen in separate postings.
The students created colourful hearts and cards for Father's Day! I took photos of each student and the children made little wooden chairs to hold the photos.Then they wrapped everything up to be ready for the holiday on Sunday.
The class said goodbye to their kindergarten Learning Buddies. We had a great year teaching and learning with each other this year. The children went outside and played in the NEW kindergarten playground, decorated (and ate) cupcakes and made recycled art. Earlier in the day the class made thank you cards for their buddies and for Mr. Grundy and Ms. Standing for being such great friends.
Finally, we ended the week with a friendly Speed Stacking competition. All the students had really improved since they first started stacking. Congratulations to Keira (who won 3 out of 6 prizes), Mila and Lucas who were the big winners. But everyone tried their best and they all did a great job!
Books read aloud this week:
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (chapter book - finished) Mom and Dad are Palindromes - A dilemma forwards and backwards by Mark Shulman
The homework for this week is for students to practice Speed Stacking to prepare for our friendly competition on Friday, June 19th. There is also a math worksheet reviewing concepts related to the Speed Stacking activity and money concepts. This homework is due on Friday, June 19th.
It was wonderful seeing all the Room 5 families at the Primary Concert this week. The children did an excellent job reciting the poem, "Salutation to the Dawn" and dancing to the song "Rather Be" by Clean Bandit. Fantastic job everyone!
This week the students learned about anagrams. An anagram is a word, group of words or a sentence that is formed by rearranging all the letters in another word, group of words or sentence.
In math, the class learned some math tricks with paper. First the students learned about and created "flexagons". These are paper models trick the eye to show more than two sides of a piece of paper. The children also learned about the Moebius Strip paper trick. This trick takes a long, thin piece of paper and after putting a twist in it, tape it into a circle. This creates a circle of paper that has only one side.
The students started to learn about playing cards. They worked with partners to describe what makes a deck of cards. For example, a complete deck of cards has 52 cards with 26 red cards and 26 black cards and these are divided further into 4 "suits", 13 each of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades.
The class reviewed money concepts by working together to count the field trip money for our class and Mr. Hinrichsen's class. First we calculated that there should be 29 x $13.00 = $377.00, then the children sorted, counted and added to figure out that there was $377.75. We are not sure why there was an extra $0.75....
The children reviewed the pioneer unit by comparing modern times to pioneer times using a Venn diagram to help sort out what is unique to modern times and unique to pioneer times and what is the same for both.
The students spent a lot of time practicing for the concert performance. They all worked really hard to put together a polished performance and it really paid off. Their time on stage was both inspiring and joyful!
The students finished the science unit on plants by watching a DVD about trees and plants. They also started a project where we will be researching the trees on our playground. So far we identified the basswood tree outside our classroom window and the big silver maple tree on the south side of the field. The children measured around the tree trunks to figure out how old the trees are and approximately when they were planted. The basswood tree is about 48 years old (planted around 1967) and the silver maple tree is about 118 years old (planted around 1897).
After completing their research posters, the students made a video of cool facts. Here is the video:
The class learned about the sport of Speed Stacking this week. Speed Stacking is stacking cups up and down as fast as possible. After watching a DVD, the students got to work stacking cups. The children record their times to see how they are improving their times the more that they practice.
Books read aloud this week:
The Bizarre and Incredible World of Plants edited by Alexandra Papadakis ANN and NAN are ANAGRAMS - A Mixed Up Word Dilemma by Mark Shulman Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (chapter book - continued)
The homework for this week is to write a letter to me, Ms. R, to let me know which activities the children liked this year (and why), which activities they didn't like (and why) and suggestions for classroom activities in the future (and why). Ms. R can always improve too! Check the blog back to September to get ideas. These letters are to be written in the homework writing journals. Watch for my response to these letters (also in the journal) where I will write about each student, their strengths, areas for improvement and suggestions for activities in the summer that can help them before they enter grade four next year. There is also a math worksheet reviewing more geometry concepts (e. g., symmetry). This homework is due on Friday, June 12th.
A copy of the lyrics to the song in the class concert presentation was sent home for those students wishing to learn the words. (This is optional and is not assigned homework.)
The children proudly show off their thank you letters to the officers of the Metropolitan Toronto Police.
June is all about reviewing concepts in Room 5! From math to spelling to using and sharing strategies to solve problems, we are now highlighting and reviewing for the last days until the end of the school year.
In spelling, we are highlighting the tricky homophones (for example, there/their/they're) and playing with words like synonyms (words with similar meanings) and antonyms (words with opposite meanings).
In math, we had a big challenge using raisins to do math! The students were given small boxes of raisins and estimated how many were inside, counted them, compared the results with their friends, found the mode (the number most often found) and how to combine and share the raisins fairly in their table groups. THEN, the next day I gave them a larger box of raisins and they used what they learned the day before to help them estimate and share the raisins efficiently and fairly. Afterwards, of course, they could eat the raisins. Math (and learning) can be sweet!
The class finished their geometric tessellation (tiling) art, inspired by the mathematician/artist, M. C. Escher. They had a chance to look at some books of Escher's art, solve some tessellation puzzles and of course, work on completing their tessellation art. When done, they mounted the art, along with the tessellation puzzle piece on black construction paper and wrote a reflection on their artistic process. These are now on display in the hall outside of our classroom.
The science research posters are almost finished. The students took their research and wrote complete sentences to copy onto their posters. We are learning a lot about different trees and plants. Watch for a video of cool facts about trees and plants next week!
Ms. Bardi asked our class if we would like to write thank you letters to Toronto police officers. Of course we said "yes"! After reviewing the types of work the police do in our city to keep our city safe, the students each wrote a letter to a police officer thanking them for all the good work they do. These letters were given to the police officers at the end of the week.
The children have been practicing very hard for our presentation at the concert next Wednesday, June 10th at Hodgson Senior Public School. A copy of the lyrics was sent home on Friday for those students wishing to learn the words to the song. (This is optional and is not assigned homework.)
Books read aloud this week:
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (chapter book - continued)
