News for January 24

Well, it was another four-day week, but the children were still busy learning more about polygons and geometric relationships, performing Reader's Theatre plays and creating decorations for Chinese (Lunar) New Year.

Math:  The class reviewed polygons and applied their knowledge to the shapes in the ancient Chinese puzzles called "tangrams". Each set of tangrams has 7 pieces, or tans, and the challenge is to place all 7 pieces in their correct places on a tangram design. The children practised solving tangram puzzles by moving around the desks in our classroom and solving 22 different puzzles. At first, it took up to 45 seconds to solve a puzzle, but after a lot of practice and sharing strategies, most children were solving the puzzles in 25 seconds or less. Later in the week, the students designed their own original puzzles and then they solved each other's puzzles. The children's original tangrams are now a part of a class book in our class library.

Reading/Writing:   A popular weekly activity is our "WWWWWW" or Weekly Wednesday Word Wall Word Worksheet, where children read and complete about a dozen fill-in-the-bank sentences using the word wall (spelling) words for the week. Of course, the students use this activity to practice reading, using and spelling the words, but it also serves as a general shared reading practice for the students because when the work is taken up with the whole class, the sentences are repeatedly read aloud chorally by all the students.

Writing/Science:   We began the next science unit on animals by doing a class research project on octopuses to demonstrate how to do research. The children wrote down their questions about octopuses and the students watched a video and heard a read aloud book about octopuses. By the end of the week, we were answering the questions using the information we learned. These facts will become part of a class book with children writing down the facts they learned. Did you know that octopuses have 3 hearts and blue blood?

Social Studies:   The class learned about the traditions and celebrations around Chinese (Lunar) New Year, that began early this year on January 25th. They learned about the Chinese zodiac tradition of a 12 year cycle with 12 animals representing each of the years. The year 2020 is the year of the rat. The students learned about the tradition of giving money in red lai see or lucky envelopes to children and unmarried adults on special occasions.  Did you know that one of the traditional foods are oranges with the green leaves still attached?

Art:  The children used their geometry knowledge to fold red lai see lucky envelopes and assemble them into lanterns to make decorations for Chinese New Year celebrations. These are now on display in the hall outside of our classroom.

Oral Communication and Media Literacy:  The children have worked hard on rehearsing the plays and their performances were recorded at the end of the week. These videos can be seen in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

My Favourite Animal - The Octopus by Victoria Marcos
The Bremen Town Musicians retold by Ilse Plume
Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
Eight Ate - A Feast of Homophone Riddles by Marvin Terban