News for March 29, 2018

News for March 29, 2018

This four day week the children wrote book reviews, planned a party, created little books and even dyed wool 5 different colours! 

Writing

Each child picked his/her favourite book from the 100 books we read aloud together. Then they wrote a book review by answering questions about the book. These book reviews will be on display during our party next week.

Reading

The class started a new approach to listening and understanding a read aloud book. When listening to the read aloud book, The Iron Man, the children had the opportunity to draw their understanding of what was happening in the book, to show the picture the words were making in their minds. The book has only five chapters, but it is very exciting!

Math 

The class continued the unit on fractions by reviewing naming fractions and using words and numbers to show fractions as fair shares or equal parts. The children learned how to fold a rectangular piece of paper into eight eighths and how to cut and fold the paper into a little book. Each child made a folded book and created a “fraction book” to show what they know about fractions by cutting up paper squares and writing the fraction words. Did you know that there are 3 different ways to cut up a paper square into four equal pieces (fourths or quarters)?

Science

The students learned about the science of “shrink wrap” and used shrink wrap plastic to decorate plastic eggs. Did you know that shrink wrap plastic has the plastic chains or polymers unnaturally lined up horizontally, so when the temperature increases (we put the eggs in boiling water) the polymers go back to their natural, more random organization and take the shape of whatever the plastic is covering.

Social Studies

The class read about the traditions of Easter and Passover this week. We also reviewed the symbols of spring (eggs, baby chicks) among a lot of different cultures, traditions and religions. The class chorally read about the Christian religious holiday of Easter and also the secular traditions (for example, the Easter Bunny). 

The children also learned about the Jewish holiday of Passover. One of the traditions for this holiday is to eat matzoh, an unleavened bread-like cracker.  The children had a chance to try eating matzoh, as well.

Art

The students finished their Andy Warhol inspired art by creating backgrounds for their paintings and choosing fancy frames to put their art in. These will go on display in the hallway outside of our classroom next week.

The children dyed wool to prepare for some future projects. We used dye normally used for dying Easter eggs. Did you know that most fabrics start out being white and coloured dyes are used to colour them and put patterns on the fabric?

The children also made party invitations for their families and for the staff of school. They also started making bookmarks to give out as loot bag surprises to our guests after their party next week.

The students made small spring “nests” for spring decorations. They reused tuna cans and decorated them, put in baby chick figures, cut up and put in tissue paper “grass” and put in their shrink wrapped eggs and some chocolate eggs. So cute!

Oral Communication and Media Literacy

Our guest on the Room 204 Interview Shows this week was Ms. Janetos. She is an ESL teacher at our school. Please see this video in a separate posting. This is the last episode of our show for this year.

Books read aloud this week:

The Iron Man by Ted Hughes (chapter book)

The Matzoh Man - A Passover Story by Naomi Howland