News for November 23

News for November 23

This week, the class made a science research facts video, learned about units of time from seconds to years and started to make large art collage paintings.

The children created "How to Make a Pillow" posters to showcase their procedural non-fiction writing. After writing and editing their rough copies, each child wrote a good copy of his/her work. Then I took an "instant" Polaroid-style photo of each student holding his/her pillow, which was put on the poster and decorated with a frame. These posters are now on display on the large bulletin board inside our classroom.

The students learned about units of time words. For grade two, the children are required to know seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. (Weeks and months will be covered next week.) We also talked about decades and centuries. The children are also required to know how the units are related through exploring time unit equivalents (for example, one minute = 60 seconds). Did you know that a day is the length of time it takes for the Earth to make one rotation on its axis? Did you know that a year is the length of time it takes the Earth to make one trip (orbit) around the sun?

The children learned how to tell time to quarter past the hour (0:15). They practised telling time from analog clocks and matching digital times to analog clocks by drawing the hour and minute hands in the correct places.

The class heard the read aloud book, The Book of Gold, a magical book about the power of learning through books. In this book are two lion statues named, Patience and Fortitude. The children learned the meaning of these important words (plus the ASL or American Sign Language signs for them) and how these words apply to life. The children were then challenged to create artwork to illustrate an adventure for the stone lion statues. Some ideas were: diving underwater in the sea or travelling to Paris. The students cut out and glued (collage) photocopies of the statues onto large paper. Then they drew and painted the details of the adventure around them. After adding details with black Sharpie marker, the children were asked to write about why he/she chose that particular adventure for the lions. When finished the artwork and writing reflections will be put up on display inside our classroom.

On Tuesday afternoon, almost half the class went to perform with the primary choir at the Toronto Choral Festival. We had five grade two students from Mme Galimberti's class join us for the afternoon (since Mme Galimberti went on the trip). The children heard the read aloud, The Bear Ate Your Sandwich, and then learned how to fold origami bear faces and created a larger artwork using these.

In guided reading, the students worked in small groups to read the book, The Best Pet. This book is divided into short chapters and the children discussed why and how the author decided to divide the story up this way. The groups also practised making story connections to other books read and activities done in our class.

The class went to the library to exchange their library books. Our library day is on Day 5, every other week, which is currently every other Thursday. Please help your child to keep his/her library book in the library book bag and return the book to school. Please know that your child cannot take a new library book out until the previously borrowed book is returned. Also remember that your child can take out any book in our classroom to read at home each day, as part of our classroom's BAB or borrow-a-book program.

Each child picked out two cool facts from his/her animal research posters to practise reading aloud. Then the students were videotaped holding their posters and sharing their cool facts with the class. Here is the video:

Books read aloud this week:

The Book of Gold by Bob Staake
A Lion in Paris by Beatrice Allemange
Ganesha's Sweet Tooth by Sanjay Patel
The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julia Sarcone-Roach