May 12th

We have concluded our learning about rural, urban and suburban communities.  We watched a number of videos, read some cool books including City Dog, Country Frog and City Mouse, Country Mouse. We brainstormed ideas for each community and put our information into a neat tab-it book. We tested our knowledge by sorting various pictures.  

Our final community project was creating a rural and urban scene, using warm and cool colours.

The kiddos turned out to be some pretty awesome poets!  The last type of poetry that we studied was SIMILES.  We practiced by writing similes about rainbows.  Then we created some cool popsicle similes on paint chip samples.  They came up with some very descriptive words for a popsicle and it made a really neat bulletin board to look at.

We were working on a very special project that goes with the book "The Best Part of Me".  In this book, students wrote about the best part of them (body part) and a picture was taken.  We did the same thing in our class.  First, students wrote a rough copy and then, for the first time this year, they typed it out on a Google Doc.  They learned how to do some formatting and to insert a photo.  I was very impressed at how quickly they caught onto this task and I was equally pleased with how the final project turned out. Their writing is amazing.  Well done, Grade One - the Grade Two teachers will be excited that you have this skill.

Since the students have a good handle on addition, it is now time to move onto subtraction. We created an anchor chart with "Susie Subtraction" to help us remember some key points about subtraction. For the last two weeks, we have been using objects, our fingers, pictures and number lines to help us subtract. Students can demonstrate that subtraction is like counting backwards and using a number line is helpful to show this. We have also been playing some fun subtraction games, including Subtraction Snap and Subtraction Track. 

It is all things plants in our classroom!  Our plants from the greenhouse have been growing so much (I forgot to take a picture).  Many pansies have bloomed and the tomato plants all have flowers on them. How cool would it be if an actual tomato appeared?!  

We began by sorting all kinds of plant pictures into different groups.  Students had to examine them and come up with a sorting rule that they had to explain to the rest of the class. One group sorted them into the four types of plants - trees, flowers, fruit and vegetables - amazing! That led to a discussion about the four types of plants and the creation of an anchor chart.

We explored the parts of a plant.  The students drew their own version of a plant and we discussed what the parts would be and what their purpose might be.  We created an anchor chart to go with it. I thought their drawings were just incredible - such detail!

We got together with our Grade 4 buddies in Mrs. Tewitz's class and planted a variety of things, from flowers, to herbs, to vegetables.  We will keep them in our classroom because we have better light, but the Grade 4s will come to visit us a couple times a week to check on them and we will write in our plant observation booklets to record what we see.  Lots of fun for the littles to work with the big kids!

We made some delicate flower canvases.

CONGRATULATIONS TO CRUZ AND ELLIE FOR BEING STUDENT OF THE WEEK!