News for April 27

News for April 27, 2018

This week the children performed their plays, started writing their own fairy tale stories, finished weaving their bookmarks and even learned how to make a catapult (based on the simple machine called a lever).

Writing

Each student read another child’s treasure jar story and wrote a letter telling him/her what was great about the story plus a suggestion on how to improve and a question for the author. These stories are now part of our class library for children to read during independent reading times.

The children are now writing new fiction stories to put in our own class book of fairy tales. Each child has chosen his/her favourite fairy tale and is now retelling the story in his/her own way. Most children have finished writing the rough copy and are now working on editing and revising their work.

Math 

The children competed a summative activity using what they know about area and tiling. As preparation for an art activity, they used pattern blocks to create tessellations, or tiles that cover a surface with no gaps or overlaps. Did you know that ceiling tiles and floor tiles are both examples of tessellations? Later, each child created his/her own unique tile to use in an art activity next week.

The student also learned how to play the pencil and paper game called “Dots”. This game uses the concepts of area and tiling to play the game. Please see my update post for how to play this game with your child at home.

The class began to review math concepts studied so far this year. Whole year review is an important math activity to do near the end of the school year in order to cement concepts in all five math strands that are needed for grade 3 next year.

The children measured the perimeter of the trunk of the biggest tree in our playground. It is a silver maple tree and it’s perimeter is 311cm. Every year a tree adds about 2.5 cm to its trunk so that makes the tree about 125 years old and planted around 1893! Our class wrote a letter to Ms. Farrelly to ask her if the wood from this tree can be used somehow in the new school since this tree will have to be cut down to make room to build the new school.

Science

The class began to learn about simple machines, how they are powered and how they are grouped together. Machines are devices that make work easier to do. Mechanical machines can also be a combination of many different simple machines. There are six different kinds of simple machines that we will study this year. This week the children learned about levers. Levers are bars that rest and turn on a support (fulcrum). When force is applied on one end of the bar it lifts a load or weight at the other end. The seesaw at the playground is a lever and so is a wheel barrow. The children each had a chance to use what they learned about levers to make a catapult toy with popsicle sticks, elastic and a plastic spoon. They experimented with how to use the catapult to launch a pom pom the farthest. At the end of the day on Friday, we had a quick contest and the winning distance was 216 cm (2 m 16 cm)!              

Art

The students used “the power of the twist” to make friendship bracelets using the wool we dyed weeks ago. This is actually the basic technique to make rope and metal cables.

The children all finished their woven bookmarks on their cardboard looms. They learned how to cut the fabric off the loom and to knot the warp or vertical wool pieces so the fabric doesn't come apart.

Oral Communication

The children performed their Reader’s Theatre plays this week. The class did three different plays and everyone did a great job! These videos can be seen in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

Get to Know Levers by Karen Volpe

Goldilocks and the Three Bears - A Tale Moderne by Steven Guarnaccia

The Fairy Tale Princess - Seven Classic Stories From the Enchanted Forest retold by Su Blackwell

Rapunzel

Snow White

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

The Frog Prince

Princess and the Pea