News for February 2

News for February 2, 2018

On Friday, our class calculated that we are now officially half-way through the school year with 94 days of school so far and 94 days of school left to go, for a total of 188 school days.

In math, the children began the Data Management unit. We talked about how to collect data, or information using a survey. A survey asks a question to get more information about a group (usually people). The children reviewed how to keep track of data by using tally marks. This method is useful as it keeps track of numbers in groups of five, which is easy to skip count. The class is learning how to read and create graphs, or pictures of information. This week the class looked at pictographs or graphs that use pictures to record information. Also, the children now answer a daily survey question and discuss the results. Did you know that most children in our class prefer chocolate ice cream? We also took some time this week to review addition and subtraction facts, to keep these skills strong.

In science, the children continued the unit on animals by starting research projects and choosing an animal to learn more about. Before learning about the animals they chose, they were asked to draw a picture of the animals. (The children will be asked to do this again at the end of the project so they can see how much they learned.) We also read a book about the different kind of eyes that animals have. Did you know that the eyeballs of the colossal squid are as big as a basketball? Did you know that the scallop has up to 100 eyes that are blue?

In writing, the children finished their stories about the penguin in the Oliver Jeffers’ book, “Lost and Found”. Each student designed a poster to display his/her story and used the origami penguins to decorate the poster. These are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom.

The students worked in partners to play the Dice Story cooperative writing game. Using two dice, players take turns rolling the dice and writing the number of words corresponding to the total on the dice. For example, a roll of 5+3 means the player writes 8 words of the story. By using different coloured pens, the players can keep track of the words each player writes. When the stories were finished, the partners read aloud their stories to share with the rest of the class.

The children began to learn how to do cursive writing. It is useful to know how to do cursive writing because all personal signatures are in cursive, cursive is a faster way to write and it helps to be able to read cursive writing. This week the children learned the letters a, d, g, c and q.

The class began a poetry + art group activity. As a class we are going to learn about and memorize the poem “Salutation to the Dawn” by the ancient Indian Sanskrit poet Kalidasa. It's a poem that reminds us how to live a happy life. To help us learn the poem, each child is making a large poster of part of the poem, and these will be displayed in our classroom for us to read during the morning message each day.

February is a month of special days and occasions. We began the month learning about Groundhog Day. This year the groundhog saw its shadow which means 6 more weeks of winter. However, this is not science, just a fun story as winter ends in 6 weeks anyways on March 20, 2018. Did you know that the groundhog is mammal and is also known as a woodchuck?

The children also learned a bit about Chinese New Year and began to create paper lantern decorations using “lai see” or lucky red envelopes. The secret to this activity is, the lantern is actually a 3D skeleton of an octahedron, with the folded envelopes as the edges of the figure!

The class recorded two Room 204 Interview Shows this week. These videos can be seen in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

Mud Puddle by Robert Munsch

My Family Vacation by Dayal Kaur Khalsa

Eye to Eye - How Animals See the World by Steve Jenkins

Groundhog Day by Michelle Aki Becker