News for February 16

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News for February 16

This four-day week had the children celebrating 100 days of school, Valentine's Day, Flag Day and the results of our Estimate the Perimeter of the Gym contest!

On Monday, the class did several activities associated with 100 as we celebrated learning together for 100 school days. As of Monday, there are 88 more school days to go before the end of the school year. (See a separate posting for photos from that day.)

In math, the students reviewed multi-digit addition and subtraction with re-grouping and solving word problems. It's helpful to regularly review these skills to make sure that no one "forgets" how to answer these kinds of questions. At the end of the week the children worked with a partner to figure out how many days a child goes to school by the end of grade 2 (752 days) and grade 3 (940 days).

The class learned more about the history of Valentine's Day. Did you know that Valentine was a real person that lived in Italy over 1,800 years ago? The children created cards for Valentine's Day and small bags to collect the valentine cards from their friends. During the last period on Tuesday afternoon, the children exchanged their valentines and watched some old Looney Tunes cartoons.

Our "Estimate the Perimeter of the Gym" contest for the school was a great success! On Monday morning, the students actually measured the length and width of the gym and then went back to the classroom to figure out the perimeter. The perimeter is 54 metres and 42 centimetres. I worked with small groups to do the different steps required to figure out how many people entered our contest (151 people), who the winners were, and to create and deliver the trophies and prizes. 

The children finished making their daily announcements this week. Recall that groups of three students were on the school's morning announcements reading Flag Day facts and advertising our contest to estimate the perimeter of the gym. On Wednesday, they announced that it was Flag Day (it's 52 years old) and another group announced the winners of our math contest.

The class discussed the different ways that humans tell stories. One way a story can be told is through making a movie. The same story elements found in fiction books can be seen in movies too. The students watched the film "Wallace and Gromit - A Grand Day Out" and then wrote a movie review detailing the parts of the story and their opinion of the film.

The students began the slow process of memorizing the poem "Salutation to the Dawn" by creating a video of the children reciting the words using the posters that they painted. These posters will be displayed around our classroom so that the poem can be read chorally by the class during our morning message activities.Here is a video we made:

The children continued to rehearse the three Readers's Theatre plays they began reading last week. This week, they worked on reading their lines fluently and creating voices and actions for their performances. 

The grade 2 students attended a presentation from the Toronto Police Department. Officer Janet discussed ways for children to keep themselves safe. During this time, the grade 3 students began to practice for the EQAO standardized test they are required to write at the end of May.

The class learned the cursive letters, "h, b, k" and reviewed the letters they have learned so far.Our guest this week on the Room 204 Interview Show was our school's popular supply teacher, Mr. Pearce. This video can be seen in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (chapter book)

The 100 Shirts of Mr. Lee by Nancy Rawlinson and her students of 2008-2009

Wallace and Gromit - A Grand Day Out (DVD