Update from Ms. R

(Click or tap on the photo to get the full image.)

The homework for this week is to complete the worksheet with a review of the cursive letters the class has learned so far. There are also questions for the students to practise their skills telling analog and digital time. There is a reading comprehension activity where the students are asked to read a non-fiction story and answer some questions to show their understanding of the text. This homework is due on Friday, February 5th.

NOTE: I will be sending home a request for a parent/teacher interview form next week. These interviews will take place on the evening of Thursday, February 11th and the morning of Friday, February 12th. Since I met with every family in December, you may choose to have an interview or not. I am happy to meet with every family who wishes to come by to chat. As you know, I love to talk about the work the children do in Room 204!

Important Dates:

Week of February 8th - Term 1 Report Cards go home.

February 11 (evening) and February 12 (morning) - parent/teacher interviews

February 12 - P. A. Day (no classes)

February 15 - Family Day (no classes)

March 14 to 18 - March Break

News for January 29

News for January 29

This week the students did a variety of activities from writing a research book about a centipede we found in our class, to mastering the use of the homophones "there, their, they're" to memorizing the poem "Saluation to the Dawn".

In math, the children reviewed how to read and write time using analog and digit clocks. After reviewing the parts of an analog clock, the children practised telling and showing time on the hour (:00) half-hour (:30), quarter after the hour (:15) and quarter to the hour (:45). The children realized that the minute hand position is easy to read and show but the hour hand is very tricky.

The class learned the cursive letters j, o, r, s and t. We've learned 15 out of 26 lowercase cursive letters so far. 

In science, the class did a choral reading activity to learn about the six types of simple machines (levers, inclined planes, wheel and axle, pullies, screws and wedges). The students also chose an everyday object to learn more about and figure out which type of simple machine(s) that object uses to work. For example, our class will be learning more about the history of the clothespin, the can opener and unicycle. Everything in our world has a story!

In writing, the children found a centipede on the floor in the classroom, so we dedided to learn a bit more about "Lucky the centipede" before we let him go in the basement of the school. Each student wrote a fact about centipedes and we made a class book compiling these facts. It turns out that Lucky is a common house centipede but there are 2,800 different kinds of centipedes on earth.  Did you know that centipedes live for 3 to 7 years and are insectivores that hunt and eat insects? Did you know that the Amazonian centipede is 30 centimetres long and can eat small lizards and catch a bat in mid-flight?

Students wrote first person narrative poems about the foil sculptures they made last week. These are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom. We also discussed nursery rhymes and how many poems the children already knew.

In reading, the class practised their reading comprehension skills by reading the non-fiction text about animal survival and answering questions to prove their understanding of the information. In our guided reading book club groups, the students completed what they could of a story outline graphic organizer and were then responsible for finishing their books, so that they are ready for the final book activity next week. 

On Wednesday, our school had a common classroom clean up time. We had Scott, a helper from Starbucks come to help our class. The children scrubbed, wiped, swept and picked up to make out class nice and clean. Even the principal, Mrs. Farrelly came to visit our class!

In spelling, the students worked very hard to learn the spelling and proper usage of the homophones, here/hear and the most difficult set of homophones in English, there/their/they're.

We finished the wonderful chapter book, "Stone Fox" this week. Most of the children had accurately predicted the ending of the story, BUT there was an unexpected twist at the end, that had the students feeling the amazing power of words, and left everyone feeling happy for the main character and incredibly sad at the same time. Many students, (and their teacher) were in tears. Oh, the power of a good story well told!

All this month, the children have been practising each day, how to read 7-digit numbers (up to a million). I've been trying to help the students understand just how large an amount one million is...so I made a challenge to the class to figure out how to show a million of something. We read aloud the book, "One Million Dots" and learned that if you made a dot every second of every day (no breaks) it would take a million seconds to do that. However, one million seconds is actually equal to 11 and a half days! Wow! How could we possibly show that? The class had lots of ideas...but we settled on each student making a sheet of 1,000 dots. So, 1,000 dots made by 20 people, makes 20,000 dots...only 980,000 dots to go...(we decided to use the photocopier next week to help us with this problem).

The class began to plan for "The Room 204 Interview Show" this week. We started with listing who in the school they wanted to know more about, then we listed questions to ask the interview guests. The children randomly chose interviewer partners and created large posters to be used at the beginning of the episode of the show for which they are responsible.

The students used the posters that they created using the lines from the ancient Sanskrit poem, "Saluation to the Dawn", to help them learn the words to memorize the poem. We even made a video of the students reciting the poem. (This video may be seen in the February 7th posting.)

Books read aloud this week:

Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner (chapter book - now finished)

A Million Dots by Andrew Clements

My FIrst Mother Goose retold by Rosemary Wells

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a story (fiction or non-fiction) about the robot stamped into the homework writing journal. There is also a worksheet with cursive writing practice and math review questions (temperature measurement and understanding). This homework is due on Friday, January 29th.

Notes for Parents:

1. Our weekly library period is now on TUESDAY mornings.

2. We will be visiting the school BOOK FAIR on TUESDAY morning next week. Students may purchase items at that time with our class. They may also visit at morning recess times through the week. 

News for January 21

News for January 21

There was a lot going during this four-day week in Room 204!

First, our amaryllis plant is now 64 cm tall! The bud started to split open and we could see inside at least three flower blooms!

The class started to talk about poetry this week. Poetry is fun to write because the regular rules of writing can be broken. We looked at two poetry forms concrete or shape poems and list poems. The students practiced writing concrete poems by using and placing words into the shape of the topic of the poem. For example, a concrete poem about the CN Tower has the words placed in the shape of the tower. The children also wrote a list poem and a special kind of list poem called an acrostic poem.

The class read aloud, together, the ancient Sanskrit poem called "Salutation to the Dawn". It's a poem that reminds us to live every day in a happy, productive way. The students are learning to say this poem from memory. To help them do this, each student took responsibility to create a colourful poster of one line of the poem. These will be posted around our classroom to help the children learn this poem.

Each child wrote a letter to an author this week. Every student read a different glovetopus chapter book, then wrote a letter to the student author stating what they liked about the story, what they could do to improve next time and a question for the author about the story. The finished books and letters are all now part of a class book.

The cursive letters learned this week were: u, w, y and t.

In math, the children learned about capacity (how much a container can hold), and the metric units used to measure capacity, litre and millilitre. Later in the week we talked about thermometers and temperature measured in degrees Celsius.

In science, the class continued to talk about solids and liquids. This week we focused on water. The students reviewed the simplified scientific method and used this approach to set up an experiment to use thermometers to measure hot and cold water (and temperatures in-between). This year, we've often discussed the key temperatures of water, 0 degrees Celsius (liquid water turns into solid ice) and 100 degrees Celsius (liquid water turns into gaseous water vapour). This experiment actually proved to the students that when you add ice to water the temperature on the thermometer goes down and adding hot water makes the temperature go up. Also, these temperature changes, as the children saw on the thermometers, happen very fast!

Finally, on Thursday Room 204 had some visitors from the parent council, reminding our class on the proper technique of hand washing, to help prevent the spread of germs.

Books read aloud this week:

Stone Fox by James Reynolds Gardiner (chapter book, continued)

Book group chapter books: Dog Star, Duck Down, Authur's Poetry Contest, The Elevator Duck

Videos seen in class recently...

An octopus is a master of camouflage! This video is a great connection to our research about octopuses.




  This video is of James Bowen and Bob, the cat that saved his life. We read aloud a book about how Bob and James became friends.

 

Christian the lion was adopted by two men in London, England, in the seventies and then resettled in Africa. Will Christian remember his friends a year later? We read aloud a book about this amazing story.

 

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is a reading comprehension activity, plus some math and cursive writing review. Students are to read the story comparing dog and human skeletons and complete the Venn diagram. There is also a worksheet with math review questions and cursive letter practice. This homework is due on THURSDAY, January 21st (since Friday is a P. A. Day).

News for January 15

News for January 15

In math this week, the students used their knowledge of linear measurement to learn how to calculate the distance around things or perimeter of objects. By starting and ending at the same place, students measured around object and recorded the length of the sides and then added the measurements together, using standard and non-standard units. The grade 2 students had a chance to measure the width of the school using metres. Since we measured the length of the school last week, we could estimate the shape of the school as a long rectangle and then calculate the perimeter of the school. 

We even had time to write a letter to Ms. Farrelly and Ms. Schneider to tell them how we figured out the perimeter of our school! (By the way, the students calculated the perimeter of the school to be width + length + width + length = 265 metres and 88 cm.)

In science, the class began to discuss the states of matter, solids, liquids and gases. The children did an experiment to find out how solids and liquids interact. They mixed room temperature water with powdered borax crystals (borax is sold as a laundry "booster" for laundry detergent). Some of the crystals dissolved or disappeared. Where did it go? Well, the class learned that solids have only a small amount of space between molecules, liquids have more space between the molecules. So, some of the borax went in between the molecules of water. Next, the students stirred lots of borax powder into boiling water and it all disappeared! That's because the space between molecules in boiling water are a lot bigger so there is more space for the borax to go! Overnight, the water cooled and the borax came out of solution and created clear cube-like crystals (on a pipe cleaner left in the cup overnight). The students wrote up the experiment following the general steps of the classic experimental method in their writing journals.

The class practiced reading comprehension strategies by reading a non-fiction story about using Pygmy horses as guide dogs for people who are blind. Then they answered multiple choice questions and completed a Venn diagram to show their understanding of the text.

The class continued to learn one cursive letter a day. This week they practised writing the cursive lowercase letters d, c, g, q and i.

The children began the poetry unit this week. Poems are a break from typical school writing since its one of the few times that the rules of writing can be broken. Did you know that poems don't have to rhyme? Actually that's the most difficult type of poem to write. The students first read and wrote concrete poems (shape poems) where the words make the shape of what the poem is about, combining words as art. We also read together the Shel Silverstein poem, Twistable Turnable Man and while reading it the students felt the "beat" of the words and started to clap the rhythm of the words as they said them.

In our four guided reading groups, each group began a novel study by reading the first chapter in different chapter books and discussing the stories to improve reading comprehension strategies.

Finally, the students used aluminum foil to experiment with making 3D art. After experimenting and learning some strategies to work with foil (since foil cannot be glued or taped together well since it is a metal). The children learned how to make the figure of a human ("foil guy") and experimented with ways to make spiders, dogs and other figures. The children will use these for a writing activity next week.

Books read aloud this week:

Stone Fox by James Reynolds Gardiner (chapter book)

Life Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya

More Life Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya

Life Size Farm by Teruyuki Komiya

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to write a story in the homework writing journal (fiction or non-fiction) about any kind of cat in the cat family (for example: pet cats, lions, tigers, panthers ...). There is also a math worksheet reviewing length and mass (equal to weight on earth) concepts in our measurement unit. This homework is due on Friday, January 15th.

Notes:

1. Please ensure your child has indoor shoes to wear inside the school that are suitable for gym. These shoes can be kept at school.

2. Please make sure your child is dressed for the changes in weather. The temperature went from -14C to +2C over the the five days of school last week!

News for January 8

News for January 8

This first week at school for 2016 was a busy one!

In math we began the unit on measurement. Starting with how to measure length, the students measured how long things were with non-standard units (e.g., crayons) and standard units (e.g., centimetres, metres, kilometres) the students measured different things in the classroom. The big project was to measure the length of the school by measuring the length of the second floor hallway! The grade two students used their bodies (non-standard units) and the grade 3 students used metre sticks (standard units). The results? The hallway is 114 metres and 71 centimetres long OR 96 and 1/2 students. (We estimated the half a student. We didn't actually cut a student in half.) We also looked at measuring mass/weight using grams (about the mass of one paperclip) and kilograms (about the mass of a box of salt).

In writing, the children learned about the "author biography" section of a book that talks about the life of the author of a book. Since the students recently wrote chapter books, they each wrote an author biography of him/herself and these will be included in their final published books.

Word Wall news! The class figured out that we learned 100 word wall words so far this year. So many, that there wasn't any room left on the word wall. So each child created a "personal dictionary" and as a review, they each wrote the words alphabetically into their personal dictionaries.

In science, the students worked in pairs for the final paper structure challenge! Using a maximum of 30 pieces of paper and masking tape, the challenge was to create a strong and stable paper structure at least 21 cm tall that would hold the most dictionaries. The winning structure was made by Emma and Braeden using only 15 pieces of paper. Their structure held 23 dictionaries and two full book bins!

In science/writing the children used the their research on various man-made structures around the world and created fact books. These are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom.

The students also learned about some structures that animals make. We focused on the honeycomb made by honeybees. Did you know that honeybees make the hive by creating hexagonal prisms made of wax? Did you know that honeybees use their wings to fan the nectar so the water evaporates and concentrates the sugar into honey?

The class used a few new reading comprehension strategies by reading a non-fiction text about spider silk. The students learned that reading the questions before reading a story helps the reader learn and remember the important information in the story. The children also learned how to use yellow highlighters to highlight important information. Did you know that spiders don't just use their silk to make spider webs? For example, they also use the silk to wrap around egg sacks to protect the eggs inside from predators before the spiderlings hatch from the eggs.

Finally, on Friday, the students began to learn how to do cursive writing. The reasons for learning cursive writing is so that the students learn how to read cursive writing, how to write their signature and how to write faster (since when writing cursive the pencil isn't constantly being taken of the page and repositioned).

Books read aloud this week:

The Sheepover: Sweet Pea and Friends by John and Jennifer Churchman

The Honeybee Man by Lela Nargi

Animal Homes (ebook) by Saranne Taylor

My Name is Bob the Cat by James Bowen

Christian the Lion by Anthony Bourke and John Randall