January/February 2016
Mmes Anita Van Kats and Andrea Kavanagh
Welcome to 2016! What is Happening in Room 18?
We are kind and strive for peaceful interactions!
We used French prompts to code!
code.org
Students can code using their mother tongue too.
English Language Arts
Hello!
We are very excited to start off the new year creating our very own Fairy Tales! We began our unit by talking about the components of a fairy tale and then started brainstorming ideas to write about.
The students have been incredibly creative and hardworking with this writing activity and we cannot wait to share them when they are finally published!
One day, in order to give some assistance with inspiration, I did a free write activity with them on the board, where I supplied the sentence, "Once upon a time..." and then each student was required to add on their own sentence to create the story together.
It was extremely hilarious and unfortunately we ran out of time to complete it on the board, so I encouraged the students to create an ending of their own in their writing books and the results were absolutely wonderful to read.
Every day in addition to our Daily Five activities, we do read aloud from a new book called, Timothy and the Dragon's Gate by Adrienne Kress.
The book began slowly at first but we are now discovering that it is full of lots of fascinating twists and turns which has kept us all guessing throughout the twelve chapters that we have read so far. The students love to predict what will happen next and to whom! :)
Français
-present tense verbs Être and Avoir
-Story writing including some adjectives
-Students colour edit highlighting capitals in yellow, punctuation in orange and underline possible spelling errors
-On-line stories Bookaboo, a rock star dog who will not play the drums until we all hear a book
-students are hearing 10 books from Forest of Reading and will vote on their favourite selection in April
-emphasis on oral skills, conversation and describing objects
-February will include mini speeches, Festival du Voyageur, kindness, and good copy of animal writing
We wrote about our holiday.
We chose home, school and friendship resolutions!
We are going to help eachother. On s'entraide!
Students chose an animal.
They describe their animal.
They "listen" and create a story .
What will the moose do next?
I will write about his adventures.
What does my animal say?
Social Studies
-we have used cardinal points and French vocabulary N, E, S, W to lead a partner to find a hidden object
-we have watched a video about a young student in Shanghai
-compare a globe to a map and discussed if they are still important
-next we will choose a country and use our research skills discover more about it
-looked at short clips about an ice festival in Harbin, China
Some students were surprised that other countries also get snow!
Mathematics
-they organize students around tables to see if their math is correct
-tangram problem solving
-geometry (regular and irregular including polygons, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, octagons...)
-fraction math 1/2, 1/4, 1/8
Problem: If a person gets paid 5 cents for 10 berries, how much do they get for 20, 40, 50....200? How many berries would they have to have for 50 cents?
Upcoming math will include problems related to the calendar. How many days in three weeks. If you go to the dentist on Feb. 4th and have to return in four weeks, what is the date?
A quadrilateral has four sides!
Is this also a quadrilateral?
A large pentagon
Health
Science
Students have been busy experimenting with magnets and learning about pulls and pushes. Students are more aware of gravity and can name examples of gravity in our everyday lives.
Art
We integrate art throughout the subjects. This month we saw a video about Canadian artist Maud Lewis. She persevered through debilitating arthritis and created art all around her. https://www.onf.ca/film/moi_je_fais_de_lart_comme_maud_lewis
Perseverance and resilience are two words that describe Maud. Keep Trying! Do not give up. I can do it. Three important phrases to hear and to say to one's self, especially while facing challenging tasks. Students made their own bookmarks and experimented with pastels.
Class names for Valentine's Day!
Students are welcome to bring Valentines for all classmates on Friday.
Eli, Luke, Darren ,Lana, Thatcher, Emily, Dax, Erin, Phares, Zack, Alexa, Danikah, Gabriel, Jayden, Leah, Morgan, Dinuli, Cameron, Abdullah, Toby, Noah, Blessie, Owen, Maddy, Roya, Mikayla, Fatisha
Please do not send candy, cookies or treats. We are not allowed to accept them. The teachers will provide a little something for the students on that day.
We challenge the students to practice Gratitude.