News for September 13

News for September 13

This week the children began to learn about place value in math, made a class book about squirrel facts and created some abstract art!

In math, the students concentrated on practising how to skip count by 2's, 5's, 10's and 25's to 100. We timed our daily practice and it takes just 1 minute and 38 seconds to practice the different ways counting forwards. They created their own 100 chart, by writing the numbers 1 to 100 and using the patterns we saw to help them fill in the chart correctly. Then the children used these charts to play the game "Race to 100" using a die. Some children played variations of this game by going backwards or "Race to Zero" and using two dice instead of one die. Later in the week, the class was introduced to place value, or the value of the digit depends on the place that you put it. So 23 means two groups of ten and 3 ones, but 32 means three groups of ten and 2 ones. We also discussed how the place value system can create every number in world, using only the ten digits, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

The class practised their word wall words for the week in a variety of ways, walking and clapping, writing on chalkboards and completing fill-in-the-blanks questions. We also played a spelling game called "Word Ladders" where clues inform players how to change letters in one word in order to create a new word. As a group, the children learned how to change a hen into a fox by simply changing one letter at a time: hen, pen, pin, fin, fix, fox.

In writing, most students finished their stories based on the paintings they made this week and edited their stories with me for clarity and for sentences having capital letters at the beginning of the sentence and a . ! or ? at the end of each sentence. At the end of the week the children gave titles to and wrote a short reflection on their abstract art. These written reflections are displayed in the hall with their artwork.

In science, the children chorally read a short non-fiction text about squirrels. They learned how to use a highlighter to mark words and phrases that contain important information. Each child was responsible for creating a page containing a fact about squirrels and illustrating the fact. These pages will be assembled into a class book for students to read during independent reading time.

In art, the class created some abstract art. First they used a continuous line to create spaces of varying size and shape. Then they put colour into the spaces using wax crayons. Finally, they mounted their art on black construction paper using staplers. These artworks are now on display in the hall outside of our classroom.

The class went to the pool on Tuesday to review the rules and routines of the pool area and the pool safety rules. Next Tuesday, the children will go in the pool to swim.

Books read aloud this week:

Those Darn Squirrels by Adam Rubin
Please Open This Book! by Adam Lehrhaupt
The World That Loved Books by Stephen Parlato
My Best Friend Bob by Georgie Ripper
I Wish That I Had Duck Feet by Dr. Suess