A homework folder is being sent every Friday now. Please look at the yellow folder sent in a plastic bag found in your child's backpack.
As part of our math activities, we are going to graph our eye colours. I like doing this because it is an authentic activity that the kids know and understand since they are looking at each other's eyes to determine their colour. We will find out next week.
Another authentic activity for math is the birthday chart. We will find out which month is the most popular and the least popular. But I emphasized if some kids are in the least popular month, it does not mean that they are least popular as well. It just happens that way. This is a great segue into a simple explanation of probability.
We had the Terry Fox Assembly. The guest speaker talked about who he is and what he stood for.
But the more authentic discussion happened when we did our 5 W's about the assembly.
After we have done the news of the 5 W's, I let kids ask their questions. I thought it was going to be about the semantics of the lesson but the kids wanted to know about cancer. 'What is cancer?', 'Why was Terry Fox's leg amputated?' 'Why did he die?', 'Why didn't he stay alive even if his leg was cut off?' I told them about my parents who both passed away from cancer. I connected this to my personal experience. Then, they were connecting my experience with theirs because some of them had loved ones who died of cancer. One student asked if it was hard for Terry Fox running around with that 'fake' leg. I told the class to 'stand up and let's try to walk around the classroom with one leg not bending at the knee'. They did and found out it was hard. And they said that the money being raised is to help cure cancer patients, buy them food and clothing (I couldn't refute this because I didn't know exactly how the money is being allocated). But I also told them that the money is being used to pay for the scientists who are trying to find ways to cure cancer and the equipments in the research labs. The funds are for 'cancer research'. It was a great talk on the carpet that lasted more than half an hour... time well spent to understand about the frailty of our human side.
After tallying and graphing the graph about curly hair versus straight hair, I asked the question "How many more kids who have straight hair are there than kids who have curly hair?" The kids explained how they got it. With this mindset, we are starting to answer questions in this trend of how much greater than.
After doing our graphic organizer for Little Miss Muffet last week, we did part 2 of the exercise which is to summarize the poem using keywords we have in the graphic organizer. I modelled the writing and made them pair up to help each other in doing their writing exercises.
List of 'Bb' words
List of 'Cc' words
With our weather chart, we started exploring by how much a certain weather condition is greater than the other (e.g., How many more sunny days do we have than cloudy days?). We did this for all and will continue to do so as we gather data. But here is a trick question I asked and clued them to listen very well to my question which is "How many more windy days do we have than sunny days?" Kids were answering 7 or 8. Finally, one child said it is not possible because we have only one windy day while there are 9 sunny days. Critical thinking is being seen in this classroom.
List of spelling words for the children to write in their journals
We also had a lockdown drill. To make it fun, I decided to use the same term that me and Ms K used in kindergarten, the "Ninja Turtle Tuck". The children will proceed to go under their tables and like the ninja turtles, they will tuck themselves imagining they are powerful magical turtles. And this removed the anxiety that some of the kids were feeling about the drill. And I have assigned some students to remind me because I definitely need to make sure the classroom is safe during a lockdown and they are: (1) lock the door (2) lock the windows (3) put down the curtains (4) Ninja Turtle Tuck.
Your thoughts are welcomed. See you!
