News for February 11

News for February 11

This four-day week was filled with special days: Chinese New Year, Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday), Author Day, Valentine's Day and the 100th day of school. Whew!

On Thursday, the class celebrated the 100th day of school! (Only 88 more days left in the school year.) The children counted out and strung 100 fruit loop cereal pieces, stamped 100 stamps, counted and organized collections of 100 (from straws to blocks to football cards) and excersiced for 100 seconds and recorded the number of exercises they managed to do. I also read aloud a book I wrote many years ago, The 100 Shirts of Mr. Lee. This story is based on a 100 project I did with a fellow teacher, Mr. Lee. 

The class learned the lowercase cursive letters: f, v, m, n, x and z. The students now know how to write all the letters of the alphabet in cursive. 

Each day the students recite the poem, "Salutation to the Dawn" as part of our morning routine. The challenge is for the children to say the poem without looking at the words.

In math, the class learned how to calculate elapsed time, or how to figure out the amount of time that has passed from one time to another. The students began the unit on Canadian money by reviewing the features of each the Canadian coins. We started to practice how to calculate the value of groups of coins by using what they know about skip counting.

As part of our poetry unit, the students have listened to poems read aloud and written different kinds of poems, so now they are working on reading and interpreting poems. Poems have fewer words than stories and so the reader must do a lot of "reading between the lines" in order to understand and make connections to the text.

The students wrote a detailed reflection on their artistic process. They each reflected on their artwork based on the painting we studied last week, The Persistence of Memory (1931) by the Spanish surrealist artist, Salvador Dali. 

As part of our celebration of year of the monkey for Chinese New Year, the children began to sew a monkey using socks! Everyone managed to sew the body this week and we'll work on finishing the monkeys next week.

The class learned and wrote about the history and traditions of "Pancake Tuesday". We also cooked and ate pancakes with real maple syrup as part of this celebration. Did you know that this day is also known as Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras (French for Fat Tuesday)? It's a Christian tradition that marks the time of Lent, 40 days before Easter. It's a time of restraint and so, traditionally on this day, families would feast on butter and eggs, for example, to use up these foods before Lent begins.

On Wednesday, the class participated in a student "Author Day" in the school library. The children voted for the best chapter books written by their fellow students, and these children read aloud their books to three other primary classes. Congratulations to Salma, Jordan, Jack, Emma and Robina.

The students decorated Valentine's Day bags to collect their Valentine's Day cards. They also created Valentines for their families. We celebrated by eating treats and watching Pink Panther cartoons.

We officially started "The Room 204 Interview Show" this week by interviewing both the principal, Mrs. Farrelly and the vice-principal, Ms. Schneider. The videos can be seen in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes (chapter book - finished)

Monkey World by Matthew Porter (poems)

The 100 Shirts of Mr. Lee by Nancy Rawlinson