News for September 6

News for September 6

It was a busy four-day week in Room 222! The students started writing their first fiction stories, practised skip counting by 2's using odd and even numbers, began a science research unit on squirrels and learned how to play the game Snakes and Ladders.

In writing, the students reviewed how to print the 26 letters of the English alphabet in both UPPERCASE and lowercase. Uppercase letters are easiest as they are all the same height. Lowercase letters are trickier. The children sorted the lowercase letters into tall (7 letters - bdfhklt), middle (14 letters - aceimnorsuvwxz) and  below-the-line (5 letters - gjpqy).

After reviewing basic sentence punctuation, the children started to write fiction stories based on the paintings they made. The students are expected to have a capital letter at the beginning of all sentences and a period (.), question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!) at the end of every sentences.

In math, the class reviewed the use of a number line and a hundred chart. We focused on how to identify if a number is odd or even, and then how to use odd and even numbers to skip count by 2's. The class learned the hand gesture game "Odds and Evens" to help them practise identifying if a number is odd or even. At the end of the week, the class learned how to play the board game, "Snakes and Ladders". Did you know that this game originated in India, 2,000 years ago?

In science, the class started our first research project. After hearing a couple of read aloud books featuring squirrels, the class had lots of questions about real squirrels. Using the standard questions words (who, what, when, where, why, how) the children generated some great questions to help guide our research: Why is a squirrel called a squirrel? Where on Earth do squirrels live? What are baby squirrels called? Stay tuned for the answers...

In art, the children learned how to use watercolour paints and painted pictures to help them plan a story. They planned their art using pencil, then painted in the colours and outlined the colours with black Sharpie marker. (Putting a thin black line around areas of colour is an artist's trick to make the painting really POP!)

Students in our classroom each have an art journal to draw in. The children designed front and back covers of their journals and even had a quick drawing lesson on how to draw a cat.

Books read aloud this week:

The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
The Secret Life of Squirrels - Back to School by Nancy Rose
Squirrelly Gray by James Kochalka
Do Not Open This Book by Michaela Muntean