News for March 9, 2018
This week the children made a video of animal facts using their research posters, learned how movies tell a story and how to use a deck of playing cards to play games and do magic tricks!
Writing
Our glovetopus chapter book project is basically finished. Each child has finished editing and revising the rough copy of his/her book and each child made a front and back book covers. This week, each child wrote an “author biography” about him/herself including a photo of each child this his/her glovetopus, to include in the book. I will be typing the good copy of these chapter books. The students will bind their books when they return after the break.
The class learned about some parts of speech. This week we focussed on nouns and adjectives. Later, the students used what they learned about nouns and adjectives to play the game “Mad Libs” to write a very silly story!
The children learned how to write the cursive letters m, n, v, x and z. The student now know how to form all the lowercase cursive letters. The children even had a chance to practise their “signatures”.
Reading
This week, during our read aloud and guided reading times, the class watched the movie, Dolphin Tale, based on a true story of a rescued dolphin who lost her tail fin and the dedicated people who helped her swim properly again by giving her a prosthetic tail. We talked about how a movie story has the same elements as a story in a book, but has additional features such as music.
The children kept track of the story by filling in a graphic organizer as they watched the movie.
At the end of the week the students wrote a reflection on the film’s story by answering comprehension and opinion questions.
The real Winter the dolphin lives at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida. Here is a link to the website:
Math
In math, the children did a variety of activities using playing cards. First, the class learned the history of playing cards and worked with a partner to discover the features of a standard deck of cards (e.g., There are 52 cards with 26 red cards and 26 black cards…so it’s equally likely to pick a red or a black card). Did you know that 200 years ago playing cards were sometimes used as money?
We discussed magic tricks and how they are truly tricks and there is no “magic”. The students learned a card trick and practised the trick with a partner. Next, the children learned a game to practise addition and subtraction, using only the number cards of the deck. Then, the class learned the rules for the game “Go Fish” and played this game in groups of four. Finally, the children watched a video of the Guinness World Record holder for stacking playing cards and then tried stacking playing cards themselves. It’s harder than it looks! Here is the video link:
Science
The children finally finished their animal research posters. They used these posters to create a science video by picking out cool facts about his/her research animal and presenting them aloud to the class. The posters will be displayed in the hallway outside our classroom after the break.
Social Studies
The class learned the traditions and history of St. Patrick’s Day. This is a special day in Ireland but it is also celebrated all over the world. It is named after a priest, St. Patrick, who lived in Ireland 400 years ago and taught the 3 lessons of hope, love and faith using 3-leaf clovers. Occasionally, a four-leaf clover was found (called a shamrock) and these were considered good luck.
Oral Communication and Media Literacy
Our guest on the Room 204 Interview Shows this week was Ms. Waung. She is a grade 1/2 teacher at our school. Please see this video in a separate posting.
Books read aloud this week:
Dolphin Tale (DVD)
St. Patrick’s Day by Carmen Bredeson
Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya
More Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya
Life-Size Farm by Teruyuki Komiya
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