News for November 25

News for November 25

This week, the children finished off the geometry unit by sorting figures with similar attributes and building a giant icosahedron! The class learned about the English mathematician, John Venn who, over 100 years ago, developed the Venn Diagram, or logic diagram, of two over-lapping circles. This diagram is used to compare things and sort them into one or the other attribute with the ones with both attributes placed in the overlapping section and those that have none of the criteria are placed on the outside of the diagram.

The students are now learning about Canadian money and how to identify coins, count coins and write down money amounts.

The class read about how compasses work and each child learned how to use a real compass. A compass shows where "north" is and once you know where north is, the other directions are also known. A compass aligns to the north magnetic pole. Did you know that the north magnetic pole moves about 60 kilometres a year? It used to be in Canada for many years, but now it is slowly moving northwest towards Russia. We also compared using a compass to the GPS (Global Positioning System) many phones use now for directions. A GPS system uses information from satellites orbiting the earth to help give directions.

The children worked in their production groups to create movies using their sock puppets. We watched a short cartoon to see the other kinds of information in a movie called the "credits". The groups had to create pages with the title, "starring" information, who made the movie and a "the end" page. The students also picked opening and closing music. Most of the movies were filmed this week, but because of absences, we haven't quite finished. Look for a separate "sock puppet movies" posting next week. After each performance the children in the audience shared what they thought the performing group did well and what they could do next time to improve their performance.

After reading the book, "The Sandwich Swap" where two girls who question the contents of each other's lunches, we decided to recreate the girls sandwiches to learn about different foods. I read this book aloud as part of our school's Anit-bullying Week, to help illustrate how to react to things that might be different or strange from what we know, so that we don't hurt each other's feelings. So, we made homemade hummus with pita bread and noted that the ingredients are from all over the world! We cannot have peanut butter at school so we used "Wow Butter" (a soy-based spread) and strawberry jelly. The students were very gracious and most children tried everything. There are many recipes for hummus available on the internet, but if you would like to know the recipe that we used, please see a photograph in this posting.

The class finished their polygon art (using straight lines and polygons to make and colour designs) and mounted their art on black paper. Then the children experimented with curved lines to make spaces to colour. Next week the students will compare the process and results of creating these two pieces of art.

Our guided reading groups this week did something special. As a connection to our working with 3D geometric shapes, we talked about 3D photos and movies and how they are made. The students also had a chance to use 3D glasses to read non-fiction books about animals. It's really amazing how the way the photos are made (slightly over-lapping) and using glasses with one red and one blue lens, can fool the human brain and make the photo look three-dimensional (but when you touch the photo it feels flat).

Books read aloud this week

Martha Walks the Dog by Susan Meddaugh

Martha and Skits by Susan Meddaugh

The Sandwich Swap by Her Majesty Queen Raina of Jordan

G is For Googol - A Math Alphabet Book by David M. Schwartz