December was a fun and festive month! The kids were also busy “wrapping up” projects and learning a lot.
Language Arts
The students finished their biography reading projects. We covered many strategies and the kids did a great job. We also continued our sentence of the day warmup. Almost everyday at 9:00 the students edit a sentence and try to fix all the mistakes. We also used some of the Canadian Reader articles to help boost our nonfiction reading strategies. The last article was about the amazing Joey Moss.
Samples below:
Math
We finished up our unit on measurement. Students learned about measuring length and mass. They should be familiar with milligrams, grams, kilograms, millimetres, metres, centimetres, kilometres, and decimetres.
We also spent some time introducing our multiplication tables by playing Multiplication Four in a Row. Students were given a table to use to help them. After a few rounds many students had already picked up many of their basic facts. We will be learning multiplication strategies and working towards memorizing the whole table after the break.
Science
We finished our unit titled “The Birth of Rocks” This explored four inquiry questions which the students answered after viewing videos and participating in hands on experiments.
1. Could a volcano 🌋 pop up where you live?
2. Why do some volcanoes explode?
3. Will a mountain last forever?
4. How could you survive a landslide?
In this lesson students used their engineering ideas to come up with a solution to protect a small city from a landslide.
Fine Arts
“Snowmen ⛄️ at Play” – Each student drew from the perspective they were lying on the ground and gazing up at four snowmen who had come to life during a snowfall. The students did a great job and had a lot of fun creating these images. They payed careful attention to detail and added their own creative features to each snow person.
Collaborative Festive Trees🌲 – The students were so engaged while making these! This was designed to have the kids work cooperatively and creative a decorative tree for the class to celebrate both Christmas 🎄 and Hanukkah 🕎 . They traced their hands to personalized each one. All the leaves are copies of their handprints. Once the tree was assembled they created decorations to add. They were displayed on the windows and in the hallway.
Applied Design, Skills and Technology
The students next building assignment was to create a bucket tower using only 15 straws, 1 m of tape and a 30cm piece of string. They were tested using weights so each tower could be measured in how many grams it held. They all did very well! The process was three sessions. Design, Test, Redesign. Each group was evaluated on their communication skills and creative thinking. I was impressed with the level of cooperation.
We began coding! The kids were very focused and seemed hooked on coding right away. We use the code.org site and the students are progressing individually through courses C or D. Our introduction involves the students working in partners to code a dance party!
Champs this month!
Typing
We have started to practice our keyboarding skills using the online resource typing.com. The students are very keen and have already started on the beginner program.