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 Ouch Stories

We are all finished with our latest writing project, our Ouch Stories.  

Over the last week and a half, we have been working on these during our writing time.  We began by reading several Ouch Stories written by previous student authors at our school.  Mrs. Deyoe then wrote her own Ouch Story for another example.  Our next step was to discuss what we needed to have in our Ouch Stories.  We decided that our stories needed to contain lots of details, a good hook, an interesting title, juicy words, and an ending to wrap our story up.  After that it was time for students to write their own.

Student worked on them for several days and they turned out great!  Here are a few examples of our published copies.  If you click on the picture they will enlarge for easier readability.

New Word Work Routines

Now that we are into Term 2, we have switched up our weekly word work routines.  We still spend a week on each set of words, and we still receive them on Monday and glue our sorts into our books on Friday. However, our practice activities have changed.  

Our week goes like this.

On Monday students receive their words that they cut up and practice sorting.  These words are based on their current spelling pattern they are learning (short vowels, long vowels, endings, etc.).  They get a chance to meet with Mrs. Deyoe with their group to go over their sort together.

On Tuesday students spend approximately 8-10 minutes practicing their word sort independently.  Students then get together with their group to play Slap It.  Each group selects a caller and every other student spreads out their words in front of them.  The caller chooses a word and reads it.  Each student needs to "slap" their hand over the word that was read.  The first student to do so spells the word.  If they are correct they get to put the word back into their bag.  The game keeps going until someone has all their words put away, that student is the winner.

Wednesday begins the same way with an independent sort.  Students then choose a partner from their group to play Spelling Battleship.  This game is very similar to the classic game, but instead of hiding ships, each student chooses 5 of their words to hide on the board.  They then take turns trying to find the words and figure out what the words are.

Once again, Thursday begins the same way with independent practice.  Students then work with a partner to spell their words.  They exchange bags and take turns choosing a word and asking their partner to spell it.  If they get the word correct they keep it, if not it goes back into the bag.  The first partner to get all their words back wins.

On Friday students do a final sort with their words and glue them into their word sort book.

This has been our first week of working with our new activities.  So far we have all had fun and it seems to be going fairly smoothly.

Lego Self Portraits

Have you ever wondered what you would look like as a lego person?  Well Room 20 found that exact thing out while working on our latest Art project, lego self portraits.

We began by discussing the different shapes that made up the body parts of a lego person.  The head is a rounded square, the body a trapezoid, the arms are each half a pentagon, and the legs are rectangles.  After that we took some time practicing drawing out the shapes and making them into people.

Once students were comfortable making their lego person, they moved on to their actual Art piece.  We enlarged our lego boys and girls so that they filled most of our page.  We also discussed adding details such as hair, clothes, etc. to make them into us.  We also discussed how each picture needed a background.  Students had two options that they could use for their backgrounds.  They could either make a scene that their person was in, or they could choose to do a patterned background.  The other criteria was that all colouring needed to be completed in pencil crayon.

 It took us about two days of Art periods working, but we are basically all finished.  Here are some of our completed lego self portraits.

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.