A Busy Afternoon

This afternoon was quite a busy time for Room 20.  We began our afternoon with a special presentation from StarDome.  The StarDome is a program which is basically a portable planetarium.  They set up a large, dome tent in the Gym and inside you look up and see the sky.  It was pretty interesting to hear all the stories and see the constellations.

During the next part of our afternoon, we began building The Great Wall of China in our small groups.  Earlier this week, groups of students went through the design process to plan out how they wanted their wall to look and what materials they would require based upon three criteria:

1)The wall had to be 1 meter long.

2)Only recycled materials could be used for the building materials.

3)It had to look like the Great Wall.

This afternoon, each group received their plan and could come and choose 8 pieces to begin working with.  Once each group had chosen their materials, material choice was opened up.  So far they are looking pretty good.

Chinese Dragon Scrolls

For our latest Art project, we tied it in with our unit on China and made Dragon Scrolls.  

Before we began we learned a little bit about the dragon and the dragon scrolls.  We learned that in Chinese culture, dragons are considered kind and helpful.  They also control bodies of water and ward off evil spirits. 

We also learned that Chinese dragons are often painted with a flaming pearl.  This pearl is what gives them their magical powers.

For our scrolls, we didn't paint, but instead designed them using several examples as our guide, then did our colouring using pencil crayons.

Here are a few examples of some of our finished products.

Chinese Games

Yesterday in Theme Studies we added the last section to our lap book, a game called "Fishing".  Today we went through how to play and got together with a partner to try it out.  It's a game similar to "Go Fish", however it is used with dominoes instead of cards, and players are working from a shared set of dominoes in the middle as opposed to taking them from their opponent.  It took a bit of practice, but we all got the hang of how to play.

Using Chopsticks

In Theme Studies we've been learning all about China.  Yesterday students put together a mini book for their lapbooks on how to use chopsticks.  Today we all got a chance to try them out.  

We used our mini books as a guide to help us understand how to hold the chopsticks, then once we got the hang of it (which was pretty tricky), we practiced using them.  At each table were two cups filled with a variety of objects.  Students moved around the room to see how easy or difficult it was to pick the different objects up.  

By the end, most of us were pretty successful!

Making our China Lapbooks

In Theme Studies we are learning all about China.  As a tool to help us organize our knowledge, we are making lapbooks.  In these lapbooks we will keep all the information we learn.

Today we began making our actual book using 1.5 file folders.  Each student received a regular sized file folder and opened it like a book.

Next they had to fold one side into meet the middle line.

Then they did the same with the other side.

The last step was to add an additional piece more the middle section.  Each student received another half of a file folder and needed to line it up with the top of the middle.  They then received packing tape to use to tape their sheet on so that it would fold up and down.  

This is what the finished lapbook looks like.

Next students began working on their cover pages.

We will be continuing to learn all about China over the next couple of weeks, and by the end of our study, our lapbooks will be full.  Next on the agenda is the geography of China.

Our First Week of 2015!

It may be our first week back after the winter break, but it has been a busy one!

We began our week with some New Year's focused activities.  We worked on a mystery math picture, where we had to solve a variety of math questions.  We then were told what colour to colour in the answers on a blank hundred's chart.  If we were correct the picture would read: 2015.  We also played two math games that were 2015 focused.  The first was a game where we had to cover either two numbers that added to 15 or three numbers that added to 20 on a game board.  The player who made the last possible number sentence won the game.  The second game was similar, but this time students chose whether to add two or three numbers to equal 15 or 20.  They had to colour their choices in on a piece of paper.  Even though both were similar, students had a lot of fun.

We also worked on writing some New Year's goals.  Students wrote a personal goal, a reading goal, a learning goal, and a goal about trying a new food.  We then made our goals into a class book for our classroom.

Mid week our focus shifted from a new year, to beginning to learn about new concepts.  Wednesday brought us an interesting presentation from Siloam Mission.  Students learned about what services they provide and the different support systems available.

On Wednesday we also began reviewing double digit addition and subtraction.  We began by looking at how we add and subtract groups of ten from a two-digit number.  Using an interactive hundred chart on the Smartboard, we discussed how we can drop down rows on the chart when adding and move up rows when subtracting.  We practiced together, then individual students had a chance to come up and practice on the Smartboard.  We ended with seeing how quickly each of us could answer these types of questions.

We have continued to work on our double digit addition and subtraction.  Today we began our Math periods with playing a game that had us practice math equations that either added or subtracted groups of then.

We then began reviewing adding two random two-digit numbers.  We used ten frames as a tool to help us as we began our review.  Students were given a number sentence.  For example, 42 + 33 =

They were then asked to make each number using their set of ten frames.  So for the number 42, students would use four full ten frames and a ten frame containing only two dots.  They would do the same thing for the second number.  The next step was to reorder the ten frames so that all the full groups of ten were together.  This represented the step of adding our tens.  For the above example, 40 + 30.  Students then did the same thing with the remaining ten frames, the ones.  2 + 3.

The final step was to add those two answers together, 70 + 5 = 75.  This gave us the answer to our original question 42 + 33.  We continued practicing together as a class and we ended with beginning to look at a question that required regrouping.  Our goal with double digit addition and subtraction is to become comfortable enough to add and subtract these numbers in our heads.  We will also use the skills we practice with these numbers to assist us when learning how to add and subtract three digit numbers up to 1000.

Double digit math was not the only new thing we began learning about this week.  We began discussing our new Theme Studies topic, China!  We started our investigations by watching a video about China.  We then worked on a KWL together as a class.  

(A KWL is a chart that helps students organize their thinking in three ways:

K-What I Know

W-What I Want to Know

L-What I Learned)

The final thing that we have begun this week is our new writing project, Ouch Stories.  This will be our writing focus for the next week or two as together as a class we look at examples, practice writing, write our own Ouch Stories, and then publish them for a class book.