Day 7, 8 & 9

Happy Sunday to everyone.  Well we made it through our second week! All the students are working hard to finish up the many "all about me" activites they have started.  Their poems and art work and "mini me's" are coming along nicely and I can't wait for the students to show you all their hard work on Open House.  On Thursday we began our math unit on Place Value.  Our math program is designed around open ended problem solving.  The students are placed with a Math Partner that has a like ability level in Math.  Together they work through many problems surrounding Math topics.  They were given their first problem on Thursday.  The problem was "How many numbers can you represent using only 16 base ten blocks. If you are unsure what base ten blocks are please have your child explain them to you.  Students then worked together to come up with answers.

On Friday we continued our work on this question and students started to see patterns developing in their answers.  Monday we will be doing a "gallery walk" where we look at our peers answers and then we will have a class discussion about these patterns and start to develop conclusions about how we can know if we have found all possible answers to the question. We will continue to build on our knowledge of numbers up to 100 000 over the next few weeks and use it to help us add and subtract large numbers.

In our Language program students learned about P.S.A (Public Service Announcements).  They watched videos and had discussions around what they are and why we have them.  Students built groups of 3 and are now creating their own P.S.A's about our classroom expectations.  Each group has a different expectation they are working on.  Students had to create a storyboard and script for their P.S.A's over the week and some begin filming on Friday.  

The boys are drawing their storyboard pictures to lay out their scenes

This group began filming using their ipod on their P.S.A about keeping the room tidy.

I hope to have the P.S.A's running for you all to see on Open House.  Students are loving using the technology to enhance their P.S.As.  Ask you child what class expectation their group has chosen.

I like ot end Friday's with Friday Art.  This may be visual art or drama or dance depending on the term. Students need somewhere to store this beautiful art throughout the year so we created Art Folders on Friday.  Students used letter cut outs to create overlapping letters of their name.  They had to create various line designs within each letter of their name. They are turning out quite well!

As you can see we had a great week.  Some students had homework this weekend to finish up their poems or "I am" art.  Please take a moment to ask them if they have completed everything for the week.  Also students are working to post their 100 word challenge on Kidblog as well.  If your child has not shown you Kidblog take a moment to go on with them and check it out.  At this point the students are able to post what they wish as well as the 100 word challenge.  However we will be discussing next week what we think is appropriate content to post on the site (for example it should be school related and not a place to "chat" with a friend)  

That's all for now.  Take Care and I hope you all had a great weekend. Looks like "sock weather" is here to stay :(