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During the month of June we will continue working on the "Holes" novel study.
The themes in the story by Louis Sachar include courage, true friendship,
perseverance and how the lives of others affect our lives. The students
have been reading the book and completing tasks such as character studies,
character motivation charts, illustrating interesting scenes, character vokis,
vocabulary development, incident reports and many other activities which
extend the understanding of the novel. We will enjoy the movie and some
"Kissin’ Kate Barlow’s Spiced Peaches" as a culminating activity on
Friday, June 21. It will be interesting to compare the two and see the
similarities and differences.
Math
Our class will be learning about and practising our Algebra skills during the month of June. The expectation is to be able to determine the missing number in equations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. An example of a question is "What is the missing number in ____ x 4 = 24?" We will also try some probability experiments and try to predict the outcomes. One trial will be to toss a coin 50 times and see how many time heads comes up and tails comes up. We will then toss it 100 times and predict the outcome.
April 4, 2013
Important Dates
Character Assembly
Tuesday, April 30 - 8:30 a.m.
Language Arts
Our class has been working with the Expanding Expression Tool . The EET can help students in their writing or can be used as a study tool when learning new information. During the writing process, students' ideas are beefed up to include more information on the topic. For example, if writing about a ruler, the students will include information on the group it belongs to (green group - school supplies, tools), what it can do (blue do - measure things, helps to draw a straight line), what it looks like (eye - 30 cm. long, beige colour), what it is made of (wood), it's parts (pink parts - two sets of straight edges of different lengths), where you can find it (white where - found in a classroom, an office supply store, a fabric shop) and whatever else they know about rulers (used in geometry to measure the length of the sides of a polygon). Each student will be bringing in something from home to describe to the class using the bead bracelet we made to remind us of the eet.
Guided reading continues to be a focus in April. The students will also be working on creating Garfield comics with the help of the Professor Garfield website.
Math
Measuring lengths, mass and volumes will be explored in the next few weeks using hands on materials. We have a bird's eye view of the construction site so hope to use this as an inspiration in our learning. Perhaps we will try to build a small scale model of the addition!
March 3, 2013
Important Dates
March Break - no school
Monday, March 11 - Friday March 15
Character Assembly
Thursday, March 28 - 2:10 p.m.
Good Friday - no school
Friday, March 29
Easter Monday - no school
Monday, April 1
Language Arts
During March, our class is focusing on guided reading and oral reading. Both of these activities help to develop fluency and understanding in the students' reading ability.
Mathematics
Our class will be exploring problem solving during the next few weeks. We are starting with easy word problems which we solve in a school template. The Problem Solving Model template teaches the steps necessary to help the students develop a plan to solve word problems.The problems will get more difficult as the students master the steps in the model.
Example:
Carla cleans houses for $13.00 per hour. How much money would she earn if she worked from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.?
Following the four steps, the students write the important info, decide on a plan, carry out the plan and solve and explain their answer.
February is fraction month in our classroom. We are learning to create fractions, write the correct words and numerical form for the fractions. We are comparing the fractions to see what fractions are greater than and less than other fractions. We are looking at situations like the following. What piece of pizza would you rather have? An eighth of the pizza or 2/4 of the pizza? Tell us why.
Language
Quadblogging, which gives us practice writing, editing and communicating, continues in February. The students are writing about events in their lives, giving opinions on such things as their favourite band and trying to make their work attractive and interesting to read. This allows them to attract readers and get lots of comments on their blogs. I love the weeks where our class receives comments from our quad boggers! Check out the blogs in the side bar under KidBlogs!
We also are practising making connections to the world around us as we read or view different media. We have followed Commander Chris Hadfield's twitter feed periodically to see what is happening on the International Space Station. We could all connect to the video where he showed us how you clip your nails in zero gravity which was intersting but weird! The kids will never forget!
January 4, 2013
Happy New Year!
January Important Dates
Friday January 18 - PA Day
Friday, February 1
Responsibility Character Assembly - 10:25 a.m.
Mathematics
Money will be the next topic of conversation in our classroom. We will start with a review of Canadian coins and bills, practise making change for larger purchases and solve word problems involving money.
During the next few months, our class will once again take part in Quadblogging. We have been matched up with two schools from the United Kingdom and a school from Burford, Ontario. Click on the photo below to find out more information!
Last year, the students gained a better understanding of the importance of communication, experienced writing for an authentic audience and enjoyed exploring the wonderful world we live in! I am looking forward to this year's experience as well! Feel free to follow along on our blogs to see what we are learning about! We will also continue our word study, guided reading and the other components of language arts.
Parents are invited to attend your child's homeroom
class in the morning to create a craft with your child.
Character Assembly Celebrating Trustworthiness
12:15
Winter Break
Saturday, December 22 - January 6, 2013
Language Arts
During the next few weeks, we will be completing and presenting our endangered animals projects. We will also be concentrating on understanding how words work by exploring word families and when to use apostrophes. Reading comprehension is a school wide focus this year and we will continue learning strategies to help with our comprehension of various texts. Be sure to check out our Kidblogs (link in side bar)! We are working on using capitals and periods consistently and properly in our writing.
Math
We completed our study of angles last week. Some students will be looking at types of triangles while others learn about the properties of quadrilaterals.
Character Counts
Hussien received the certificate for Caring and Fairness during the November assembly! Congratulations Hussien!
Trustworthiness will be celebrated during the December 21st assembly.
Wishing you all a safe and enjoyable winter break!
The One and Only Ivan
The students had the opportunity to choose 3 language activities which they would like to complete from a TicTacToe game. Creating your own book cover, making predictions as to what would happen to Ruby and Ivan, drawing a picture of Ivan's domain at the mall zoo were some of the choices. Please enjoy a few of the students' illustrations!
November 3, 2012
November News - Important Dates
Friday, November 9, 2012
Remembrance Day Assembly
10:25 a.m.
Random Acts of Kindness Day
Monday, November 12, 2012
Progress Reports Home
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Cookie Dough Arrives
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Interviews
4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, November 15 - Tuesday, November 20
Scholastic Book Fair
Friday, November 16, 2012
P. A. Day
Language Arts - The Global Read Aloud Project, where we were reading The One and Only Ivan with schools all over the world, has come to an end. We loved the book and were all choked up (happy and sad tears from Mrs. Sanger - a student had to continue reading for me..) when Ivan finally got to leave his "domain" and his canine friend Bob after 27 years to go and live at Zoo Atlanta.
Ivan enjoyed 18 years at Zoo Atlanta and the students were shocked to find out he passed away in August of this year. The project brought many opportunities for discussion of topics from friendship to gorilla and elephant poaching in Africa. We worked with a class from West Virginia on Edmodo, are planning a skype visit with a class in North Carolina to discuss the conclusion of the book this week, watched videos from a class in Argentina talking about the book, submitted a few creations to the Global Read Aloud Wiki and much much more! We are excitedly awaiting a video message from the author to all of the participants. It has been an exciting month! I will be posting a few more pics shortly!
We will be continuing learning about endangered animals during the month of November.
Math - In November, we will be starting geometry.
Character Counts - In November, kindness and being fair are the traits being emphasized. We will be celebrating Random Acts of Kindness Day on November 9. The assembly date has not been announced yet.
October 10, 2012
An important character passed away today in our Global Read Aloud book "The One and Only Ivan". My students came up with the idea of making a voki to express their feelings. They chose either to make a voki of themselves or to create of voki of a character and tell their point of view. They did an excellent job!
October 9, 2012
Here are some pictures we drew representing the setting of The One and Only Ivan! Enjoy!
As you are aware, October is Global Read Aloud Month and we are very excited to be taking part in this exciting world wide project! "The One and Only Ivan" by Katherine Applegate is about a gorilla who has spent 27 years living in the Big Top Mall. Please click on the link to Katherine Applegate's website to read more about Ivan's life and his story.
Last week, we were busy activating any prior knowledge we might have about gorillas. We researched some facts about gorillas and their natural habitats. We learned about the Dian Fossey Project and followed along with Dean Jacob's as he traveled to Rwanda and the Congo to visit mountain gorillas.
The trailer for the Ivan book gave us some hints as to what the book might be about. After watching the trailer, we each made our own predictions about the story events. We shared these on Edmodo with our Global Read Aloud Partners from Virginia in the United States. It was interesting to see that the students in Virginia made similar predictions to the students in our class. Here are a few for you to see.
I think that Ivan is going to help the little elephant with everything in the circus. I think that Ivan is going to treat the elephant like his son. I think they will live in the circus happily ever after.
I think the elephant and the gorilla got captured by the poachers. They got Ivan and put him in a box and sent him to the circus.
Watch the trailer below to see what you think might happen!
We began reading the book yesterday and could hardly put it down. Katherine Applegate's style of writing makes us all feel like we know Ivan personally. Today we read over the parts describing Ivan's domain and will transfer this knowledge to a picture of some type. Some students are choosing to draw it by hand. Ms. Gill's class suggested a website for learning how to draw gorillas which was very useful! Other students are using the Pixie 3 software to portray Ivan's home in the mall. We will be sharing these on the Global Read Aloud wiki. Be sure to check out the wiki! There is some cool stuff that other classes uploaded for us all to learn from! We even listened to a class from Argentina talk about what they thought might happen in the book.
During Math, we will be learning about the place value of large numbers, answering open ended "Big" questions (which the kids are loving!!!) and problem solving. I am really impressed with the answers the students are coming up with in our open ended questions! I love when they say my mom or dad sat down with me and we came up with more and different ways to answer the questions!
Keep checking in this month to see more about the "The One and Only Ivan"!
September 14, 2012
In the spring, our class completed a graphic novel study on the book The Stonekeeper from the Amulet series. Yesterday, we began reading the second book in the series, The Stonekeeper's Curse. Click on the link below to read a short summary of the book.
September 10, 2012
This week I will be introducing to the new students the math website which offers lots of practice both at school and at home!
Click on the icon below to go to Mangahigh! Your student should have brought home a user name and password for this site that they can use from home.
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