News for March 3

News for March 3

This week the class started learning about multiplication, they made and ate pancakes, finished learning all the cursive letters of the alphabet, wrote funny stories with a partner and much more!

In math, the children began discussing multiplication. Multiplication is a very complex set of understandings, but we began with the idea that multiplication speeds up repeated addition. For example, 2+2+2+2+2=10 becomes 5 groups of two equals 10 or 5x2=10. The class learned about "arrays" or arrangements of things into rows and columns, which help to figure out multiplication number sentences. For example, in a package there are 2 rows of muffins with 3 muffins in each row, or 2x3=6, so 6 muffins in the package.

The students played our classroom's popular cooperative writing game using a die with a partner. We discussed what makes a story that others want to read. Things like an catchy first sentence, lots of adjectives and humour all work together to help the reader enjoy a story. All the stories were shared orally with the rest of the class. These "dice" stories will be typed and put in a binder as a class book for the children to read during independent reading time.

The children also continued to work on their retellings of fairy tales in their writing journals.

On Tuesday, the class learned about the history and traditions of the Christian holiday, Pancake Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras. The children learned about how Christians, in the time before refrigerators, would use up perishable food like eggs and butter on Pancake Day before fasting in the days leading up to Easter. The students helped to make pancakes in class and ate them with maple syrup (that they learned about last week). Did you know that it takes 40 litres of maple tree sap to boil (and evaporate off the water to concentrate the sugars) to make 1 litre of maple syrup?

The students read about different "tooth traditions" around the world. Did you know that in Mexico and Spain, a child who has lost a tooth gets a present from a mouse? The students also had a chance to write about what happens in their families when a child loses a tooth.

In science, children shared a read aloud book about saving water and energy and discussed the importance of being kind to the Earth by keeping water and air clean. Then, after reviewing the parts of a good poster, each child created a poster to communicate the importance of clean water and saving energy.

The class learned the final four cursive letters, "m, n, x, z". The students expressed interest in learning the cursive capital letters as well, so a worksheet was included in the homework. The children are now allowed to using printing or cursive writing for all their work.

The students practised writing their first names in cursive. Then they wrote their cursive names really big plus the reflection of their names on paper and coloured in the spaces. Finally, they considered what the lines looked like (many look like aliens or insects) and wrote about the process of making their art.

We filmed the last Reader's Theatre play this week. This video can now be seen in the Reader's Theatre posting from last week.

Our guest this week on the Room 204 Interview Show was Ms. Harnick. She is a teacher at our school. This video can be seen in a separate posting.

The children also made a "get well" card and video for our school's principal, Mrs. Farrelly.

Books read aloud this week:

Rapunzel (from the book, The Fairy Tale Princesses) retold by Su Blackwell

The Bremen Town Musicians retold by Ilse Plume

The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson

Jack and the Beanstalk retold by Susan Pearson

Saving Water and Energy by Philip Steele