Wow, what a week! And now we're almost half way through the year. I can't believe it. We had a fun week.


In math we took a little break from adding/subtracting and we worked on writing songs that could help us remember how to skip count every number from 1-10.  Everyone felt comfortable with 1, 2, 5, and 10, so we broke into groups and focused on the remainder: 4, 6, 7, 8, 9. For the number 3, I shared an old song from my childhood: 3 is a Magic Number from Schoolhouse Rocks! The kids loved it, easily memorized it, and were excited to try and write their own songs. Here's the one I shared:

We came up with a grading rubric to decide how to assess this project, so everyone is on board and knows what they're doing and why.

In social, Mrs. Wilson gave the students a test on their knowledge of Peru. The tests were returned. Ask your student how they did.

In science we had a great time. We created a dichotomous key (a fancy word for a way of sorting objects) on our tables. We used these to sort a collection of rocks. The students had to decide what properties they wanted to use to break the rocks into different groups.

We also somehow managed to squeeze in a crystal-making session. We then examined them under microscopes and got some really cool views of their formations up close. 

We ended the week watching The Secret of NIMH, based on the book we read this term as a class. Next, we'll be doing a project on this, comparing and contrasting different scenes from the movie with the book and discussing why these differences might exist. 

Well, that's it for now. Have a fantastic holiday with your families and friends. Rest, enjoy, and have some fun. See you soon!

Hello everyone.

This week I revisited a topic we had discussed on several occasions. We looked at the = sign. We discussed how it is not simply a symbol that tells us where the answer goes, but rather is more like a balance. I used a teeter-totter analogy.

Revisiting concepts is important in math. Too often a topic is covered, and then we simply move on. I wrote on the board:

I took a poll for the answer, and it was overwhelmingly 12. I asked what happened to the 3? That was the lead-in to our conversation. We looked at several more simpler examples, talked. Did more challenges. Talked. Eventually we worked up to more challenging questions.

The children really enjoyed the challenges. We'll step back a bit, combine these ideas into word problems and make sure we're really understanding the questions. These algebraic/equation-balancing questions were a lot of fun, and some of the kids saw that we had already been doing them in our word problems. They were excited to see the links and relationships.

In science we continued with our examination of rocks and minerals by exploring the difference between the two. We did an activity where I gave them a variety of descriptions (contains fossils, has a crystalline form) and they had to make an educated guess about whether it was a feature of a rock or a mineral. They did this in small groups, sharing their background knowledge and making inferences and guesses. We then came back together and figured it out together. Once we had our information correctly assembled, we created a chart that we can use as we go forward in our work.

This coming week we will take a large group of rock samples and begin looking at how we could categorize them. We'll build a dichotomous tree, like the following image.

This taxonomic activity will let the kids handle and closely examine a large number of rocks and get them thinking about how scientists do this type of work, what characteristics they could be looking for, and how they can do it with their own background knowledge and observation skills.

I also asked for them to start bringing in glass jars. I hope to make crystals. It is unlikely to happen this coming week, but if you have any extra jam, pickle, etc. jars, please send them in.

In literacy we worked together with Mrs. Wilson's class on a writing prompt of a Norman Rockwell painting.

We discussed what we thought was going on in the picture. We then had to write a short story, using descriptive language, similes, metaphors. Our goal was to create an interesting story that hooked our reader.

In social studies, your children should have brought home a study guide this week for a test on Peru on Monday with Mrs. Wilson. Please help them to study for this test.

Hello again.
In math we held off on starting the pet budget project as our addition and subtraction skills needed a bit more of a focus. We should start it next week. We also continued to work on word problems, adding complexity in the wording if not the actual required operations. We really dug in and broke down the questions to find out what they were truly asking. This is an important skill, but it also speaks to number sense. As students develop their number sense, many word problems will resolve themselves as the students begin to see the relationship between numbers and so can more easily discover what is being asked.

We also practiced our estimating skills, examining the number of beans in a jar as well as the heights of various objects and people. This is also a great exercise to build comprehension not only of numbers and amounts, but to develop the students' abilities to visualize numbers in their heads, to do mental math, and to work with different units. They learned that once they reached a certain height, for example, that centimeters were no longer the best unit, and switching to meters was perhaps a better option.

They used a variety of strategies to estimate height. Our multiplication skills will be developed more in the new year, so it was not a big surprise that many students opted to count by grouping numbers together instead of multiplying them. After estimating one element to be 4 feet tall, students estimated how many 4-foot objects you could fit in the object to be measured. Some students simply wrote out the number 4 over and over and then added them up.

The site I like to use is estimate180. It has many pictures and examples you can use with your child to practice their estimating skills. And it's fun! The students really enjoyed trying to figure out how tall a lamp post was, or how many jellybeans were in a jar.

In science we began our unit on rocks and minerals. I brought in some rocks we have at the school, along with a few of my own, and the students took some time to examine them. They quite enjoyed this hands-on activity. We then moved on to the composition of the earth, examining the different layers from the inner core to the mantle and crust. We'll continue with this unit for at least the rest of this term before the winter break.

Our eco-columns are still up and running, and we're still taking a look at them each day. One is now growing mushrooms, and another pupa has formed. We hope this will make it to beetle! The children are still fascinated with these, and it has truly been a great project that has inspired their curiosity.

In literacy, we are now using laptops to write stories and work on our Field Guide to the Animals and Plants of Peru. We're learning how to type, a useful skill that also helps build muscle memory and strength, as well as endurance. We'll be designing a website and placing our research on it to share with the world. We'll add new animals and plants as we expand into Tunisia, India, and Ukraine. We'll choose colours, backgrounds, photos, and videos to share. Development of these multi-modal literacies is very important in the 21st century classroom.

We also continue to read our novels in our groups. Our class read-aloud, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is coming to a close, and in the new year we still plan to begin our project.