Class Curriculum Update October 4

We have been very busy on many, many skills this week. In math, we continue to work on constructing and deconstructing numbers in various contexts.  We find it useful to deconstruct numbers when we want to make numbers more 'friendly' to mentally add or subtract them, it is also helpful as we want to make balanced equations.  We are working on balancing equations in various contexts as well.  In math, we also continue to work with the idea that a number is merely a digit without value until we assign it value.  For example, in the number 43, the 4 is not a '4' at all but really a 40.  We practice this idea with 2 digit, 3 digit and 4 digit numbers as we play a variety of class games and use the appropriate value when we share our strategies to communicate our thinking in math.  Our Terry Fox Fundraiser has also given us great opportunities to add money amounts in real contexts.  We were also adding and looking at our totals and posing interesting interesting questions about the total such as, "How much more money would we need to get to the next 10?"

In language, we are working on organizing our ideas into main ideas and supporting details using brainstorm webs with multiple levels.  We use a web daily as we organize the details about the items the Golden Eagle of the day brings in, we use them to organize details about science topics we are learning about (plants/soils in grade 3 and animal group characteristics in grade 2). We are using Shared Writing daily to generate and model how to use the topics, main ideas and details into organized, interesting and cohesive paragraphs through the Golden Eagle of the Day project.  WE use the hamburger model to remind us of what is included in an organized, effective paragraph.  Each day, we generate paragraphs together as a class and pick out a few grammar, writing skills to focus on daily.  During Himmat's paragraph, we grapled with the overuse of words (both repeated in sentence after sentence and beginning too many sentences in the same way).  We also began to look at introduction and conclusion sentences.  Trying to gently tell the reader that we are changing topics without being so obvious (i.e. Now we are going to talk about his third item....)  In Aroosha's paragraph, we looked at 's' at the ends of words. Why did some words require an apostrophe s ('s) and others required only a plain 's'.  We figured out that the apostrophe meant belonging to and the plain s was plural or more than one.   We continued work on the same skills as in Himmat's and apply those ideas to Aroosha's paragraph today too!  After doing this together for each student, many of those writing skills will/should become habit for your little writer in his/her daily independent writing!  

We continue to work on independent and partner reading as well as listening to reading.  Each of those areas require and work on very different skill sets.  We are practising being purposeful learners.  When we are aware of what we should be practising or doing or learning while we work, we often are much better at putting effort into the right areas.  Your child's reading log and response journal also came home today.  If you have any questions about that please contact me through email or agenda and we can chat about that program. 

Exciting events in our portable this week included the addition of some baby fish to our aquarium.  On Sunday night or Monday morning, our guppies had babies and I came in Monday morning to teeny, tiny baby fish trying desperately to hide from the adults.  Sadly, they are so small and so transparent that they get mistaken by adult fish as food flakes and often get eaten.  I quickly rescued 5 or 6 of them and seperated them into a baby nursery net for safety.  We are enjoying watching those!  We also added 2 new bright orange baby platy fish to our tank today thanks to a former student who has a home aquarium and too many new babies in it!  Thanks to Mysha!

Science topics this week are all about living things. The grade 3 students are working on major parts of plants and their functions and all about soil.  The grade 2 students are working on classification of animal groups and beginning to look at life cycles (obviously we started with fish since the class aquarium so nicely presented that in context opportunity).  These topics will continue through October as we use a variety of picture book literature such as the Lorax and The Great Kapok Tree to look at the impact of human actions on animal and plant species and the interaction between those two.  Stay tuned! 

Hope you find the updates useful and informative.  Like I said, we are ALWAYS very busy learners in Portable 1 and I hope to share even a glimmer of what that looks like for your student through this blog.