News for February 26

News for February 26

The big news is that the grade 3 choir won first place at The Kiwanis Festival on Friday!

Well done everyone!

In writing, the students are working on writing long fiction stories using their sock monkeys as characters in their stories. They are now expected to edit their writing with pencil (find and correct mistakes) and to revise their writing with coloured pen (make good writing better by adding words like adjectives and adverbs).

The children learned more about how to use dictionaries. First they explored all the different information found in our classroom dictionaries. In the back there are pages of useful information like lists of different holidays and metric units. By using the "key words" at the top of each page, students can find the word they are looking for more easily. There are also special information boxes on some pages with cool facts. Did you know that "jeans" are called jeans because the strong cotton cloth that jeans are made of was first made in Genoa, Italy? So the word jeans comes from the city name Genoa.

In math, the class continued to practice working with money. They practiced writing value amounts as cents and as dollars, equivalent coin combinations and we began the tricky process of how to calculate change. (Grade 2's need to be able to make change from $1.00 and grade 3's are required to make change from $10.00.)

In art, the children created symmetrical art by writing their names in very large letters using cursive writing. Then they coloured in the spaces that were made by the lines and wrote reflections on what they thought the designs reminded them of, as well as, reflecting on the artistic process. These are now on display outside of our classroom.

The names of the students were randomly selected and put into small groups. These groups are now working on creating movies starring their sock monkeys. After planning the characters, setting, the problem and solution of these stories they started to rehearse. Each child recycled a Triscuit cracker box to make a house/vehicle/bed for his/her sock monkey. Next week they will be creating sets, credits and costumes for the movies.

The class learned about the civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and his amazing achievements. The class watched part of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, that he made to inspire everyone to help create a world where everyone is treated equally. Did you know that over 250,000 people came to Washington on to see and hear Dr. King on August 28, 1963?

On Thursday, the grade 2 students went to a personal safety presentation with Toronto Police Officer Jan. The grade 3 students joined Mr. Hinrichsen's class to listen to the grade four students in Ms. Sullada's class practice their speeches for the annual Speech Arts Contest. (Students in grades 4,5 and 6 participate in this contest each year.)

We discussed the various ways to tell a story and focussed on how movies tell a story. The students watched the movie Because of Winn Dixie and we discussed the various parts of the story as well as occasionally stopping and talking about predicting what will happen next and how sometimes the viewer knows information that the characters in the story don't know yet.

This week the students welcomed Ms. Reinelt as a guest on The Room 204 Interview Show. The video of this interview can be seen in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

Sock Monkey Goes to Hollywood: A Star is Bathed by Cece Bell

Everything's Coming Up Sock Monkeys: Art, History and Business of the American Sock Monkey by Bonnie Kraus Connelly

Because of Winn Dixie (DVD) - based on the book by Kate DiCamillo

Martin Luther King Jr. by Mir Tamin Ansary

The Moccasin Goalie by William Roy Brownridge