LITERACY
Monday's read alouds revolved around Orange Shirt Day when we read Stolen Words by Melanie Florence. We finished up the Skippyjon Jones series this week. Not only did we focus on checking for understanding and backing up to reread during our book study, but we also focused on the writing strategies used by the author. We discussed how Julia Schachner planned out her books, followed the same "recipe", paid attention to word choice and intentionally made text to text and text to world connections for her readers. The students were amazed by all of the thinking that is involved when you write a book! It was like I taught them the secret behind a magic trick!
Our writing lessons this week focused on planning a paragraph and including a topic sentence and supporting sentences. The final project for the week was planning and writing a Thanksgiving themed paragraph. The students did a great job on this paragraph! A mark for this assignment has been posted on PowerSchool.
We also finished up our Kite String letters in handwriting this week! Two review sheets came home to introduce you to the methods that we are using to form our letters properly. The handwriting program that I use is from an Occupational Therapist and I have found that it really gets the students started on the write foot with proper cursive letter formation. The little phrases that go with each letter assist the students in remembering the steps in order.
NUMERACY
This week we continued to build confidence and improve our accuracy when extending increasing and decreasing patterns. We started identifying the pattern rule using the "start with ___, add/subtract ___" notation. We also looked at ordinal numbers in preparation for upcoming work with patterns using tables. The motive behind introducing ordinal numbers at this time is to ensure a common vocabulary when discussing positions on the tables (ie; what would the number be on the third line? on the fifth line?). This was quite a simple lesson and the students all grasped the concepts with ease.
SCIENCE
This week in science we investigated the difference between a rock and a mineral. The students enjoyed touching a chunk of a real mineral, amethyst, that my family "mined" east of Thunder Bay, Ontario. The class was filled with oohs and ahhs when I took a flashlight and placed it behind the amethyst! Like magic, different colours appeared! There was light and dark purple, some white and even some yellow! The students were amazed!
This gentleman does an amazing job explaining what a mineral is!
We also discussed Moh's Hardness Scale this week! The students are really excited to test out their new geologist skills next week on their own rocks!
ART
We had an afternoon full of amazing art today as I introduce Team 3C to my favourite artist, Romero Britto! We completed a guided drawing of a cat, practiced colouring patterns/designs and then started colouring in our masterpieces! We had such a great time! Stay tuned for pictures of our finished pieces!
ORANGE SHIRT DAY!
We quickly snapped this selfie of all of us in our orange shirts before dismissal time!
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