News for January 18

News for January 18, 2018

This short week, marks the ending of Term One at school. The students learned about adjectives, how to make an air-powered pinwheel toy and how two Toronto teenagers launched a Lego Man into space!

In math, the class repeated the math “bell-ringer” activity, where students went from desk to desk solving tangram puzzles, but this time the children solved the tangrams designed by the students. After all this practice, some students were solving tangram puzzles in 13 seconds! The children then used what they know about the properties of polygons to help them understand and identify lines of symmetry and shapes that are congruent (same size, same shape). The class learned how to use a math tool called a “mirra” (a piece of plastic that can reflect and image but is also see-through), to help them both find the line of symmetry in a shape and draw the congruent side of a design.

In writing, the children finished their poetry books. The poems were so creative! The students also made “personal dictionaries” containing all the word wall (spelling) words from Term One. The class was challenged to count how many words we learned how to spell correctly and the answer is…125 word wall words! The children also practised using and spelling some of the homophone words we have learned so far this year.

The class learned about adjectives, or words that describe or give more information about something. After reading a “boring” story, the students had a chance to rewrite the story to make the writing more interesting to read by adding adjectives. For example, “I saw a cat in the park.” By adding adjective words, the sentence has more information, “I saw a big, grey cat in the water park.”

In science, the class reviewed the parts of the water cycle and we talked about real world examples of evaporation (puddles disappear after a rainstorm), condensation (bathroom mirror fogs up after a shower) and precipitation (rain/snow depending on the outside temperature). The class talked about what air is, why it is important to living things and where it is found. There was also some discussion about air pollution and how to keep the air around us clean. Did you know that the biggest air polluter comes from car and truck engines? So choosing to walk, bike or take the TTC when possible, is always a good choice to keep the air clean! 

The children also did an experiment to prove that air exists by putting paper towel at the bottom of a plastic cup and putting the cup upside down into water. The paper stays dry because the air in the cup stopped the water from getting in! Finally, each child made a toy that uses air to work. After folding and cutting a square of paper, a pin (that’s why it’s called a pinwheel) is put into the corners of the paper and pushed through the eraser of a pencil. Moving the pinwheel or blowing into the “pockets” of the pinwheel, the pinwheel will spin powered by air!

In art, the students finished both sides of their art journal covers so they are dry and ready to put the paper inside next week.

The class started an author study of the Canadian author Dayal Kaur Khalsa. This week we read aloud her book, The Snow Cat and then watched the National Film Board movie based on the book. The children compared and talked about how the book and movies were the same and how they were different. Here is the video:

https://www.nfb.ca/film/snow_cat/

The class had its last class with our mindfulness meditation coach Miss Judy. Miss Judy led the children through a full meditation time of focus and belling breathing, working cooperatively and moving and holding dowel sticks in the air without dropping them. 

At the end of the week, the class learned the true story of two Toronto high school students, Matthew and Asad, who put a Lego man into space in 2012. The Lego man went 24 kilometres up into the air before gravity brought it back to Earth. After reading aloud a book about how these young men completed this challenge, they watched a TV news report about them and then…a video of these two young men on our class interview show 6 years ago! (My class at the time, in Room 5, asked them to be on our show and they agreed.) The class then talked about how having dreams and goals is important and how the story of Matthew and Asad, proves that with hard work, dreams can come true! Here are the links:

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lum1DMTdccE (TV news video)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WexPcZ_9qfU (Interview show)

The Room 204 Interview Show will return next week!

Books read aloud this week:

The Moccasin Goalie by William Roy Brownridge

The Snow Cat by Dayal Kaur Khalsa

The Snow Cat (National Film Board film) by Sheldon Cohen

Growing Patterns - Fibonacci Patterns in Nature by Sarah Campbell

Lego Man in Space - A True Story by Mara Shaughnessy