News for January 10

The first week back was a very busy one! We welcomed two new students to our class. The children continued to learn about Canadian money, they created artworks with pattern blocks and then wrote stories about their art and at the end of the week, the class started to rehearse a play!

Math: The students reviewed the features and values of the five Canadian coins in circulation and the old penny. They learned how to use skip counting, place value and hundreds charts to help them to count mixed groups of coins. Later in the week the students were adding two-digit money amounts. The children also reviewed some two-dimensional shape names as they used pattern blocks to create a repeating border pattern and to design a picture by tracing the blocks.

Reading:  The class is beginning to study fairy tales and nursery rhymes. We are collecting the features that make a fairy tale different from other fiction stories, for example, many fairy tales have animals that talk and act like people. Nursery rhymes have a long history and no one really knows who wrote them. Some nursery rhymes have been put into songs and some have clapping games that go with them.

Writing:  The students reviewed how to plan a story by doing some pre-thinking about the characters, setting, problem and solution in the story. Each child planned, wrote and edited her/his story based on the pattern block art that they created. After editing with me (and my trusty pen, Old Red), these stories will now be typed by me and put on display with the artwork in the hall next week.

Also our word wall is FULL. The children counted the words and there were 101 words! So each child created a personal dictionary with the Term 1 word wall (spelling) words in it, organized in alphabetical order.

Art:  The children used pattern blocks to create new art on paper. First, they traced the blocks with pencil to make a border pattern around the edge of the paper. Then they traced blocks to create a picture inside the border. To make the pictures clearer, the children outlined the shapes with black sharpie markers and finally, they coloured in the shapes with pencil crayons. Many students also used black markers to add extra details to their art. These will be put on display, with the typed stories, in the hall outside of our classroom next week.

Oral Communication and Media Literacy:   On Friday, the class chorally read the scripts to the fairy tale play, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Each child then wrote me a short letter to let me know which character they would like to play. Next week, the children will be divided into four groups to rehearse the play and videotape the plays to create movies.

Finally, the class learned how to play the word game "Snowman" (formally known as "Hangman"). The children worked in pairs to guess word wall words by suggesting letters and if the letter was in the word that was written in the proper place and if the letter was not in the word, a part of an snowman was drawn. (This is a great game to play with your child at home too!)

Books read aloud this week:

The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson
My Very First Mother Goose edited by Rosemary Wells
The Gingerbread Man retold by Jim Aylesworth
Once Upon a Time: Three Barnyard Fairy Tales retold by Marilyn Helmer
Goldilocks and Just One Bear by Leigh Hodgkinson