News for March 23, 2018

News for March 23, 2018

This week the children finished their chapter books, learned about animal adaptations and created art inspired by the famous artist Andy Warhol!

Writing

The children proofread their typed stories and assembled their books, (front cover, story, illustrations, author biography, back cover) and bound all the pages together using coloured twist ties. 

Next the class wrote book reviews! Each child read another child’s chapter book and wrote a letter to the author. In the letter, the book reviewer wrote about his/her favourite part of the story, gave a suggestion to improve next time and asked a question about the story. These chapter books are now in class book binders for the students to read during independent reading times.

Finally, each student wrote a reflection on the glovetopus chapter project. It took almost a month to complete this project! The books the children made are wonderful! (Remember to come by on April 6th for our 100 Books Party to read your child's book and see his/her glovetopus that inspired the story!)

The students got to play Mad Libs again to create silly stories to read and share with a friend. It's a great way to review and use parts of speech words (nouns, adjectives, verbs).

Reading

 The children worked with a partner, in our guided reading groups, to read the first half of the non-fiction text “Animal Tails”. They began to complete graphic organizers to record their research information.

Math 

The class began the unit on fractions by learning the math vocabulary necessary to use when  understanding the concepts. Whole (hole), half/halves, third, fourth and quarter are the fractional words for this grade. Fractions are fair shares of a group or equal parts of a whole. We worked on looking at different ways to show fractions. Also, the children learned how English uses some of these words for ordinal numbers or words that tell the order of things, like first, second, third and so on.

At the end of the week, the children learned more about Roman Numerals. The students use Roman Numerals to write the date (for example, 23 III 18) and sometimes for the numbers on chapters when writing longer stories. Did you know that people don’t use Roman Numerals anymore because that number system does not have a zero?

Science

The class continued our unit on animals by looking at adaptations that animals have to become better suited to their environments. Animals can use camouflage to help blend in with their surroundings. We also discussed the roles of predators and prey. Did you know that robins use their tail feathers as an “umbrella” to keep their babies dry when it rains?

The children talked about how plants and animals have adapted to desert (dry) environments. The class watched an episode of The Magic School Bus (All Dried Up) to help them learn more about things that live in the desert. Did you know that most desert animals are nocturnal (active at night)? That’s because it is cooler at night after the sun has set.

Social Studies

The class talked about the first day of spring (March 20) and how the tilt of the earth is the reason for the seasons. It takes 365 days for the earth to make one trip around the sun and the trip is divided into four parts spring, summer, fall, winter and each season lasts for 3 months.

The children learned about the Iranian new year Nowruz and its traditions. We visited a beautiful Nowruz holiday table (called a Haft-Seen table), near the office, and learned about some of the symbols of this holiday.

Art

The students began the week by learning about how the egg is a symbol of spring and is an important part of many spring holidays and traditions. Each child created a large paper egg-shape and decorated them with oil pastels. These are now on display in the hall outside of our classroom.

The class learned about the American artist Andy Warhol. He was inspired to make art using images of common things and famous people. One of his most famous paintings is of cans of Campbell’s soup. Did you know that one of these paintings is worth over 11 million dollars? The students then used their treasure jars (old Dole peach jars) to create art like Andy Warhol. After sketching the jar, they made drawings using pencil, sharpies and watercolour pencils.

Oral Communication and Media Literacy

Our guest on the Room 204 Interview Shows this week was Ms. Tiralongo. She is a grade 2 teacher at our school. Please see this video in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

Animal Tails by Donna Swan

Winter’s Coming - A Story of Seasonal Change by Jan Thornhill

How Pizza Came to our Town by Dayal Kaur Khalsa

The Book with a Hole by Herve Tullet

A Nest Full of Eggs - The life cycle of a robin by Priscilla Belz Jenkins

Andy Warhol - Pop Art Painter by Susan Goldman Rubin

All Dried Up - The Magic School Bus (DVD)