News for January 13

News for January 13

This week, the children settled back easily into their school routines. They reviewed past work and started new projects.

In math, the class reviewed telling time by creating their own analog clocks. The children reviewed the various features of the standard calendar and learned about different kinds of calendars. They also looked at several examples of perpetual (never-ending) calendars. These are calendars that tell the days and months but work independently from the current year. Finally, the students had a chance to create their own perpetual calendars that uses turning paper disks to show the date.

The class began a new math unit on data management. The children reviewed how to use and read tally marks and practiced reading bar graphs. Each day during this unit the students are asked to answer a survey question to learn more about our class. Did you know that most of the people in Room 204 like mango and most wear gloves instead of mittens outside? We can't learn this information from a book or the internet, so the only way to find out is to ask questions!

The students were challenged to count how many words are on our "Word Wall". There are 110 words! We are running out of room to post our spelling words, so each child created his/her own personal dictionary to record the words learned so far. The class reviewed these words all week and next week, the old Word Wall Words will be removed to make room for the new words we study.

In writing, the children imagined stories based on the penguin character in the Oliver Jeffers' picture book, "Lost and Found". In the book, the penguin doesn't talk. The challenge was to write a story from the point of view of the penguin.

As a connection to the new writing project, the children learned how to fold a paper origami penguin. These were used to help the students with their writing their stories as if they were the penguin telling the story. The paper penguins will also be used to decorate the good copies of the stories.

The class learned how to revise their writing and how revising is different from editing. (Editing is done with pencil and is done to correct mistakes. Revising is done with coloured pen and is used to add more words, like adjectives and adverbs, to make good writing even better.)

In social studies, the students began to research different countries around the world. Each child picked a country that he/she was interested in learning more about. That way, our class will learn more about 21 different countries! (As a class, we are researching Canada.) The children used research books and wikipedia to read and record various facts about the countries. The students also created flags to put on their country posters. As a class, the children learned how humans have grouped the countries of the world into seven different continents and then practised finding the different continents on maps and globes.

In science, the children followed up on the soil experiments they set up before the holidays. (Recall each student set up a layered cup of soil and buried a fresh green leaf from our potato plant to see what would happen to the leaf over time.) The students checked the soil in the cups with toothpicks and could not find the leaves. It was like they disappeared! Of course, the leaves were still there but the bacteria in the soil broke down the leaves and the leaves became part of the soil, making the soil richer in nutrients. This is the basic principal behind composting. 

Room 204 is starting our own TV show! The Room 204 Interview Show will have pairs of students interviewing adults in our school. The class generated questions to ask our guests and made a list of people they wanted to interview. Our first guest will be Mrs. Farrelly, the principal of our school. Look for the show in a blog posting next week!

Finally, the class began learning how to do cursive writing. After talking about why it's important to learn cursive (one needs to be able to read cursive, write a signature and cursive writing is a lot faster than printing). We began with the letter "a"...

Books read aloud this week:

Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers

Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner (chapter book)