January 3oth

Janaury has been a month of a lot of learning, hard work, and assessments for report card time. But even with all that, we managed to sneak in some fun in all sorts of ways. With so much snow at the end of December, we couldn't wait to get outside to play! We spent a couple afternoons outside enjoying ourselves in winter....before the ice took over the school yard!

SCIENCE - We have been learning about materials of all kinds, their properties and how they can combine to to make an object for specific purpose. We have gone on a materials hunt around our classroom and the school, observing what different objects are made of. We had fun making playdough to see how combining materials together created a new thing. Soon, we will be designing our own objects for a specific purpose. 

LITERACY 

This month included learning about what a noun and a verb are. Although we have been writing sentences with a "who/what" (subject) and "doing/action" (predicate) for a couple months now, we didn't label the subject as a NOUN and the doing as a VERB until now. These students are rockstars at nouns and verbs now! We created a nouns mural one day and had a good time playing "verb charades" a few times.

In phonics, our spelling/reading pattern all month has been Silent E with long vowel words. Engaging in the Roll & Read activities is a favourite part of our week. Here, the students are playing two games. 1) You be the teacher, I'll be the student! The "student" rolls the dice and the "teacher" gives them a word to spell that comes under that number. The "student" writes the word on their whiteboard and the "teacher" checks it off the list if they get it correct. Students take turns playing each role. Simple but they love it! And, 2) Roll & Stamp is another fun one where they race against the clock to roll, read and stamp every word on the board before the time runs out. We also did some silent E boom cards for extra practice.

Using the story "Sneezy the Snowman" as our guide, which is about a snowman who keeps doing things to make himself melt, the students used a planning page to create an opening sentence, supporting details, and a closing sentence. They had to come up with three things you should NEVER do with a snowman, and one thing that you SHOULD do with your snowman. After they edited their planning page with me, they created this fun final copy of their snowman book. This was a time consuming but very engaging project that covered many aspects of the writing curriculum. Students shared their writing with three partners and then with the whole class.

ART - Skiers and the Aurora Borealis!

TWOS Field Trip - This, of course, was the highlight of our month! What a great place to go to make learning fun! We explored all the different science galleries, had some guided hands-on classroom time learning about light with a TWOS expert, participated in an interactive IMAX about soundscapes (what a cool experience that was!), and ended our day with a musical laser show. The kids said it was "the best day ever"! 

Please enjoy some photos of our field trip by clicking on the image below.