News for October 4

News for October 4

This week the children designed two different fabric pieces, learned more about repeating patterns, filmed sock puppet movies and finally, the class introduced Jonesy, Ms. R's sock puppet, to a real life human named Jonesy!

In writing, the children began a new writing project, in connection to the read aloud book, The Little Red Pen. I mark the children's work with a red pen that I call "Old Red". So the challenge this week was to write a story about "Old Red". We reviewed the success criteria for good writing. This includes rereading the writing to catch and correct mistakes before Ms. R's Old Red pen finds them. These include: capital letters in the correct places (on proper nouns and at the start of all sentences), a ., ? or ! at the end of all sentences, word wall words spelled correctly and adding any missing words.

In reading, the class finished the chapter book, Frog and Toad are Friends, which the students read aloud as a group (chorally) to practise their attention to punctuation and intonation. We also practised "reading between the lines" where good readers are constantly thinking about what they are reading to make sense of the text. Afterwards, the children did a reading response activity by answering questions about the book in their journals.

In oral communication and media studies, the class finished the sock puppet movies project by filming the final movies. Each group performed its play with the rest of the class as an audience. After, the children discussed what each group did well and what they could do next time to do an even better job. The children took home their sock puppets at the end of the week. The movies can be seen in a separate posting.

In math, the children focused on the strategies on how to identify and extend repeating patterns. Repeating patterns also have a "pattern core" which repeats. Later in the week, the students were practising how to identify and extend a mix of patterns, growing, shrinking and repeating. Later in the week, the "new" students to our class were taught by the "old" students, how to play the board games, Snakes and Ladders, Race to 100 and Race to 0 (all these games use a version of the standard 100 chart to play the game). Finally, on Friday, the students made their own dice (in preparation for their homework activity). There is a "secret" about how the numbers are placed on each die. Ask your child to explain the "secret" to you...

In art, the class began the annual Room 222 pillow project! This is a tradition in my class, where children make their own pillows to use in the classroom, on their desk chairs and during reading times. There are a lot of steps to make a pillow. This week the children learned two different art techniques to create designs on the two pieces of fabric that will be used to make each child's pillow. First, each student used squeeze bottles of fabric dye in the primary colours red, blue and yellow, to squirt dye on white cotton fabric. Of course, they discovered, that the secondary colours green, orange and purple were also on the fabric due to colour mixing! The second technique was tie-dye. After twisting the fabric piece and holding the twisting in place with elastics and clothespins, the bundles were immersed into blue dye. When unfolded, the fabric pieces displayed beautiful blue and white abstract patterns. Finally, the students were taught how to iron their fabric pieces flat, in preparation for sewing next week.

For three days this week, teachers from X-Movement (Australia) were at our school to teach the children some games and about Australia too. Our class had three lessons with the group. One teacher was surprised when he introduced himself as Jonesy because our class began to laugh with surprise! They were were surprised because my sock puppet is also named Jonesy! He was a good sport and posed for a photo with Jonesy the sock puppet. There are also some X-Movement activities online. Here is the link:

https://www.xmovement.online

Our class name is "Room 222" and the password is "room222".

Books read aloud this week:

Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Loebel (chapter book - now finished)
The Boy With Square Eyes by Juliet and Charles Snape
The Girl Who Drew Dogs by Deborah Kerbel (She will visit our school on October 10th.)
Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer
The Little Red Pen by Janet Stevens