News for November 3

News for November 3

This week the class learned about Halloween, Remembrance Day and measuring perimeter. We also made caramel apples, pom pom spiders and paper peace cranes!

In math, the students practised measuring things (straight lines and curved) using standard measurements. Did you know that you can measure a wavy line or a curved water bottle using a piece of string and then measuring the string? We talked about centimetres, metres and kilometres and how to determine the best unit to measure something. The class also learned about the concept of perimeter, or the distance around something, and how to calculate it by measuring the sides of something (like a book) and then adding up the measurements. 

We are going to have a school-wide math contest! After measuring the length of the school using the bodies of the students (it’s 90 children long), we talked about how long that is in metres. Then we discussed asking all the students in the school to estimate how long the school is and have a contest! We talked about how we could let the school know about our contest…posters, emails, morning announcements. So the children planned and started to create posters to put up around the school. How long do YOU think our school is?

We had a wonderful Halloween day together! In the morning, the children learned how to make caramel apples dipped in mini chocolate chips. In the afternoon, the class went on two Halloween parades, lighted their Halloween lanterns on their desks, (that they made last week), and enjoyed their apple treats while listening to a traditional Halloween story.

Each student learned how to make a small Halloween spider using pipe cleaners, beads and pom poms. Later in the week, the children solved some applied math problems using these spiders. Working with a math partner, the teams figured out how many caramels we used to make the caramel apples. Then the teams were challenged to count how many spider bodies, eyes, legs and beads were used to make the 21 spiders in our classroom. Did you know that to create our 21 Halloween spiders we needed to make 21 bodies, 42 eyes, 168 legs and 672 beads?

The children discussed different ways to tell a story. One way is to tell a story orally. The class listened to a Halloween story told aloud while folding and cutting paper. Then they tried telling the story themselves to reveal a surprise paper cut-out at the end of the story. 

In writing, the students used their spiders as inspiration to write short stories. After planning, writing the rough copy and editing their writing, the children had a chance to read their stories aloud to several children and hear some positive comments about their work.

In social studies, all the country research posters are now complete! At the end of the week, students picked their favourite fact that they learned and all the children were filmed showing their posters and sharing their facts. The posters will be displayed in our hallway next week.

In our small guided reading groups this week, the focus was on talking about how to remember information in a story when reading fiction books. One of the best ways is to “make a picture in your mind” while reading the details in the story.

The class began to learn about the symbols and history of Remembrance Day. So far we discussed the peace symbol (for nuclear disarmament), red poppies and paper peace cranes. The class learned the true story of a Japanese girl named Sadako, who was the inspiration for the traditional paper crane origami model becoming a worldwide symbol of peace. The students each learned how to fold origami paper cranes. The class also learned a Remembrance Day song, along with ASL signs to communicate the meaning of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, or 11:00 am November 11th as Remembrance Day in Canada. The principal, Mrs. Farrelly, even asked our class to perform this song at the school’s Remembrance Day ceremony next week!

Books read aloud this week:

Pig Pig Gets a Job by David McPhail

Halloween Is… by Gail Gibbons

Pattan’s Pumpkin - A Traditional Flood Story From Southern India by Chitra Soundar

The Tailypo - A Ghost Story by Joanna Galdone

Nate the Great and the Halloween Hunt by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

Sadako’s Cranes by Judith Loske