News for November 30

News for November 30

This four-day week the children practised using what they know about Canadian money to solve word problems, they learned about mindfulness from Miss Judy and started to rehearse our dance for the Winter Concert.

At the beginning of the week the students went outside to measure the length of the school using metre sticks. Did you know that our school is 135 metres and 17 centimetres long? The children also worked in groups to figure out who the winners of our contest were and how many people entered the contest. Congratulations to Bhavika and Valia from our class who tied for the closest answer to the real measurement. Afterwards, each child wrote a short reflection on all the work they did to make this contest a success.

After hearing a read aloud of the sixth, and last, Martha the talking dog book, the students learned about how to write a book report. Each child chose his/her favourite Martha book and then answered questions about the story.

Finally, all the stories inspired by the little plastic person toys, are finished after being edited and revised. These stories will be typed and will become part of our third set of published books next week.

The class started to talk about poems, poetry and poets. We discussed nursery rhymes and their history. Sometimes nursery rhymes became the lyrics to songs. Did you know that Mother Goose was a fictional character made up when they first wrote down the nursery rhymes that had been passed down through families for hundreds of years? The class learned about concrete poems, also known as shape poems, and the children had a chance to create some themselves. They also made poetry folders to collect the different poems that they write over the next few weeks.

In math, the children continued to practise counting Canadian coins. Using the strategy of starting with the largest value coin and using skip counting skills the children counted various combination of coins and reviewed the concepts of “< less than” and “> greater than” to help them figure out which group of coins had a larger value or if a group of coins was enough money to buy something. They used these integrated skills to practise solving word problems completely and correctly (using pictures, numbers, words).

The School Council has paid for our class to have 4 sessions with mindfulness workshop leader Miss Judy. She came to our class on Tuesday of this week and spent two periods talking about what mindfulness is, mindful breathing exercises and how to try to regulate feelings and emotions so that we can do our best work and make good decisions. Miss Judy will visit us again for the next two weeks and then one session in January.

In guided reading, the children continued to read books together and discuss why an author chooses to write a particular story. In the guided reading book sessions this week, we read “Too Many Books” by Gilles Tibo, the book also won an award and the students talked about the possible reasons why the book was chosen to win.

The class was invited to the Grade 8 Spectrum Student Art Show on Thursday. There were a lot of wonderful art ideas at the show. The children brought clipboards, paper and pencils to write down information about the art they thought was the best and practised asking the artists questions and saying kind things to them about the art that they made. (We will write the grade 8 students letters next week thanking them for inviting us and telling them what they like about their art show.)

Finally, the students started to learn the dance moves to the song “Everybody's Waitin’ For the Man With the Bag”. Each child wrote down the parts that they preferred to play and I did my best to give everyone his/her first or second choice. Then it was time for learning the dances, where to stand when not being featured and listening to the changes in the music so everyone can work together. We are almost there…

Books read aloud this week:

Perfectly Martha by Susan Meddaugh

My First Mother Goose - A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes retold by Ilona Opie

Lemonade and Other Poems by Bob Racska

A Fly Went by Mike McClintock