News for September 20

News for September 20

This week the students continued to learn about place value in math, they used their math knowledge to create kinetic origami models and on Friday, they participated in the school's annual Terry Fox Run.

Here are some highlights of the week:

In math, the children continued to investigate place value. The students tried drawing as many happy faces as they could in one minute. Then they drew circles around groups of ten to help them count how many they drew. (The number of groups of ten becomes the tens digit and the remainder becomes the ones digit.) The children also did activities using place value blocks. (These blocks that represent ones and groups of ten.) They also practiced identifying the digits in two-digit numbers.

In writing, the children played a writing game where they used different coloured markers and a die to write a funny story with a partner. The roll on the die determines the number of words the player can write when its his/her turn. The pairs of students then shared their stories with other groups and finally we heard the stories read aloud in a whole class sharing circle. The children also practised placing capital letters at the beginning of sentences and periods, question marks or exclamation marks at the end of sentences.

In preparation for the author visit on Monday, the children learned about the Canadian authors and creators of the CBC children's science series, "The Gumboot Kids". The class also watched one of the videos in the series. Here is the link:

https://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/watch/scout-the-gumboot-kids/the-crackling-sky

In an integrated art activity, the class learned how to create a kinetic origami model. This model is a common children's game, also known as a "fortune teller" or a "cootie catcher", but is actually an alternate use of a well-known "salt cellar" origami model. Origami is a great review of geometry and fraction words and concepts, as well as, an engaging fine motor exercise. Did you know that the word "origami" is a Japanese word for "fold" and "paper"?

On Friday, the class went outside to participate in our school's annual Terry Fox run. After lunch the class worked together to review how to count money (sort bills and coins, count the largest value coins first, add it all together) and we figured out we collected $52.40 for cancer research. Earlier in the week, I challenged the students to determine how much money our class (25 students) would collect if each child brought in a $2 toonie. Many children chose the strategy of skip counting by 2's to help them. The answer? $50.00. So we actually collect more than that!

Books read aloud this week:

Swimmy by Leo Lionni
A Fly Went By by Mike McClintock
The Bookshop Dog by Cynthia Rylant
What Pet Should I Get? by Dr. Suess
Terry Fox by Maxime Trottier