News for January 11

Look at our amaryllis plant!

News for January 11

This first week back saw the children doing a wide variety of activities...

In math, the students reviewed multiplication and subtraction and wrote the unit test on Wednesday. The class started the unit on Data Management and graphing. The students learned about bar graphs and pictographs, both the parts of a graph and how to "read" a graph.

The children created "personal dictionary" books and wrote the current 94 word wall words in it. Now the class word wall is empty and ready to get the next wave of word wall words. As well, the students learned how to properly use a dictionary by learning how to use the features of a dictionary page. Also students were reminded that they are to use dictionaries only during the editing and revising part of the writing process.

The class began to learn about flags and all the different countries of the world. After reading the story behind the song Wavin' Flag by K'naan, the students looked at globes and maps to help them each chose a country to research. The video of Wavin' Flag can be found here:

http://vimeo.com/10085362

The class was inspired by the book "The Perfect Machine" and the collage illustrations to create their own collages, which are now part of a book. They also learned the history behind this art technique and wrote a non-fiction paragraph to include in their collage books.

The students also made "get well cards" for Ms. Mantello, who had a successful operation on Monday this week. I mailed the cards to Ms. Mantello and she should get them by Friday.

In computers, the students visited a "guess the flag" site at:
http://www.guesstheflag.com/

We had an unexpected day on Friday, but we made silly putty, movable paper elephant sculptures, geometric colouring patterns and a field trip to the fruit market and hot chocolate from Starbucks!

Books read aloud this week:

Wavin' Flag by K'naan
Monkey World (poems) by Matthew Porter
Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak
The Perfect Machine by Lance Letscher
What Pete Ate from A-Z by Maira Kalman
Raj the Bookstore Tiger by Kathleen Pelley

Favourite videos

Frosty the Snowman


Dewey Readmore Books
Magic Crystals

Cookie Monster - So Share It Maybe

News for December 14

I apologize. I'm finding it very difficult to post to the blog during school hours. I will try my best to post content when I have time.

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is for students to teach the multiplication game they learned this week to an adult. They are also to write a reflection on teaching the lesson. The students are also to complete the attached multiplication table. This homework is due on Friday, December 14th.

Note to Parents:

Due to the job action between the teacher's union and the school board, postings on this blog are only allowed during school hours. I will try my best to post photos and news during school hours but the postings may, by necessity, be much less detailed than usual.

December 6

News for December 6

This four-day week had the students do everything from appearing on our TV news to making snowballs out of paper plates!

This week we started each day with the star student giving the daily quiz, for which he/she wrote the questions. We will continue to do this until all children have had the chance to be in charge of the daily quiz.

The class practiced what they know about homophones and synonyms and played a class-wide game to review the concepts.

The students continued to collect socks for charity. Each day a group would count the number of socks collected and plan and rehearse their "ad" to remind the school about our sock-raiser on our TV news. At the end of the week the class had collected 111 pairs of socks!

In math, the class continued the unit on multiplication. They learned the strategies for multiplying by x 0 (the product is always zero),  x 1, x 2 (just like addition double facts) and x 5 (like skip-counting by 5's) and by  x 10 (the digits shift one place value to the left and the ones digit is always zero). Then they learned that if they eliminate the "easy" facts from the multiplication table, there are only 21 tricky facts to learn. The students then tried on their own to fill in his/her own multiplication table (up to the ten times table). To practice learning their multiplication facts, the students learned a multiplication game.

The students finished their Lego City and talked about how people in the city get out to the country. Then they drew these roads on their maps and created a legend on the map to show what the symbols mean.

The children finished their comics and created good copies. These were then cut and put into plastic sheet holders. The comics are now on display on the bulletin board in our hallway.

In math, the students used their circle folding skills to create approximate spheres using paper plates and bobby pins. This model creates a 14-faced geometric figure called a cubeoctohedron (14 faces, 24 edges and 12 vertices). These are now decorating the hallway outside of our classroom. They also used their knowledge of snowflakes being based on the shape of a hexagon, to create paper snowflakes.

At the end of the week, the students started an experiment to grow borax crystals (since it's too warm in the classroom to grow ice crystals!)

In computers, the children created virtual snowflakes at the site:

http://funny-games.biz/external/create-a-snowflake.html

Books read aloud this week:

The Art of the Snowflake by Kenneth Libbrecht
Tales of a Gambling Grandma by Dalyal Kaur Khalsa
Dear Deer - A Book of Homophones by Gene Barretta

Learning American Sign Language With Room 5 - Episode 13

Update from Ms. R

The homework for this week is to complete two worksheets. The first is a worksheet on comparing urban and rural communities using a Venn diagram. The second is a math worksheet on the basic understanding of multiplication.

Our class is having a "Sock-Raiser" to collect socks for people in Toronto who need them. Shelters are in need of clean, dry socks of all types and sizes. Our goal is to collect one pair of socks from each student in the school, which would be 440 pairs of socks!

Important Dates:

December 7 - P. A. Day - no classes on this day
December 14 - Last day of the "Sock-Raiser"
December 21 - Last day of classes for 2012
January 7 - First day of classes for 2013

News for November 30

You Are Stardust - dioramas



News for November 30

The students worked hard to complete their Lego stories. These stories, based on the Lego buildings they created for our Lego City, will be typed and compiled into a class book for our classroom library. They also began to plan and write their personal comic strips.

In guided reading, the students examined the features of different kinds of poems by reading a few different ones. This is in preparation for our poetry unit.

The class finished their dioramas based on the book You Are Stardust. They drew and coloured the paper pieces based on their designs and glued them into place. Then they each wrote and art reflection on the project. The children reviewed the steps in creating the dioramas and made a video explaining the process. The video was sent to the author and illustrator to share the amazing work of the class. This video can be seen above.

In math, the students began the unit on multiplication. They thought about things that come in equal groups (for example, eggs come in groups of 12). They learned about arrays and how these are arrangements of objects in rows and columns. They played the game of Circles and Stars which is an introduction to the multiplicative concept of groups of same numbers of objects.

The students set up Lego City complete with roads and intersections. They began making maps of the city paying close attention to the N (always at the top of the map), S, E, W directions and the names of the streets.

Through read alouds and class discussions, the students have begun to look at the nature of snow and snowflakes both the art and science of these natural wonders.

Books read aloud this week:

365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental (plus our advent calendar based on this book as we count down the days to our Winter Holidays.)
Cowboy Dreams by Dayal Kaur Khalsa
Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
Snowflakes in Photographs by W. A. Bentley
The Story of Snow by Mark Cassino

Learning American Sign Language With Room 5 - Episode 12