News for October 18

News for October 18

This four-day week the children published their first books of the year, learned more addition and word problem solving strategies and finished sewing their pillows!

In writing, every child has now completed his/her first published book of the school year. This week the students learned how to write an "author biography" about her/himself. A finished book consists of a front cover, back cover, title page, story, illustration(s) and author biography. The children were very keen to read other student's books and to see other children reading the book that she/he wrote! These books are now a part of our classroom library.

When the pillows were finished, we reviewed all the steps to make a pillow and created a "mind map" with vocabulary and concepts that we discussed. At the end of the week, the children began to write the rough copy of their next writing project, a non-fiction book on how to make a pillow.

In reading, the class began to listen to the chapter book, My Father's Dragon to help them learn and practise story comprehension and prediction strategies. This book was written in 1948 and we calculated that's 71 years ago...even older than Ms. R!

In math, the class learned the "doubles + 1" addition strategy. (If you know that 5+5=10, then 5+6 is like 5+(5+1)= 11.) They also reviewed the "make 10" addition strategy, or all the ways to make ten from 0+10=10 to 9+1=10. Also, they learned the addition part of the Commutative Law of mathematics, which states that, when adding, the order of the numbers does not matter. So, if you know that 7+8=15, then you also know that 8+7=15. The class continued to learn how to answer math word problems correctly. After reading each sentence of the problem, one should circle or underline the important information. Then choose if the question is an addition or subtraction problem. A complete answer has a number sentence (equation), correct operation (+ or -), correct number answer and a word sentence to answer the word problem.

The children also began math projects this week. Each student has started to design a board game. Using what they know about board games in general, from playing and teaching games like "Snakes and Ladders", "Race to 100" and "Race to 0", they began to plan their games that will use dice to move game pieces forward.

In science, the class continued the Water and Air in the Environment unit by reading about why living things need water, the three states of water (water = liquid, ice = solid, water vapour = gas) and answering questions about the information that they read. We read the text chorally and they used highlighters to help them remember the information that they read. The children also recorded their questions about water to help guide our research next week.

In art, the students finished their pillows! The class showed a lot of patience as this was a multi-step project. This week the students stuffed their pillows with polyester stuffing and learned how to hand sew the hole closed with a needle and thread, so the stuffing would not fall out. These pillows will be kept in the classroom all year for the children to use at their desks and during read aloud times. Did you know that "polyester" means "many chains" of plastic molecules and that plastic is made from oil that come from fossils?

Book read aloud this week:

My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett (chapter book - to be continued)