Our Golden Eagle of the Day presentations for this month are nearing an end. We have learned so much about each other and found that many of us have so much in common with so many others in our class. Hopefully this will help students to find common ground and develop new friendships! From a writer's perspective, it was an amazing time spent each day. I can't wait to continue to transfer of those skills into students independent writing. As for the next Golden Eagle of the Day topic, stay tuned. I will introduce it to students this week and have them sign up for a day they feel they will be prepared and confident to present!
We completed our read aloud of The Night of the New Magicians this week. It was an intense and exciting read and I loved hearing students sign and moan and groan when our read was done each day. They begged me to read on! Reading excitement is awesome! In this book, we met Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Dr. Louis Pasteur and Gustave Eiffel. Each of these men were great inventors, engineers and scientists. We enjoyed learning a bit of history through the eyes of our young characters Jack and Annie. The plan was to move along into a new read aloud expanding our horizons into new genre but students, of course, were sure that the author left us clues at the end of this book that we NEEDED to follow and find out for sure! As you can see, they are starting to examine text for the author's larger purpose and craft. They are becoming critical readers/listeners! These skills will transfer to their own independent reading over time! They all scoured the many places we keep great books in the classroom and found the next in the series and have them piled up and ready to read. I have set them off to read ahead on their own and see what they find out! Even our reluctant readers are seeking out the book and trying to read it with their friends. They have created their own 'book clubs'.
In math this week, we began to examine growing patterns-both number patterns and geometric. We started with a problem about our student teacher's fence painting experience to see how they would naturally make sense of and record a pattern in context. Then we looked at t-charts as effective ways to represent growing number patterns. We explored growing patterns in various contexts for the rest of the week.
Grade 2 students finished up their diyas this week and finished looking at Diwali as a celebration celebrated by many around the world. They made rangoli art too! Grade 2 students will go to Scientists in the Schools this week to learn about and experience simple machines. A great experience to bring context to the unit when we approach it in the classroom later on this year.
In science, we all began to research through images various biomes (desert, tropical rainforest, arctic, temperate forest and savannah). Using our new Apple TV we compared their similarities and differences through pic collage images students made together. We brainstormed animals that are found in each and used words such as hibernation and camouflage when we realized that through images, most animals and plants found in various biomes tended to be the colours of the environments in which they lived. We asked ourselves how that is helpful to their survival. We will use the word migration when we look at how plants and animals in each adapt to their surroundings in order to survive. Students are in cross grade partners and will each choose a biome to research and report back to us. We will use this opportunity to learn to use Google Slides through our new Google accounts as a presentation tool. Our week ended looking at data from weather graphs. We didn't know they were weather graphs however. We just saw a graph and to reason our way around what it might be showing. Students were quick to see mm and degrees C as scale labels and we realized the graph was about temperature and precipitation. Next week we will match weather graphs to their biomes in order to think critically about what the experiences in those environments must be for the plants and animals there.
I have begun to post things of interest to students on the Google Classroom. Most students seem able to access this from home already and those who can't, we are working on trouble shooting this as best as we can from school end. If you can help, or need help please don't hesitate to contact me.
In the innovation studio, we began our Hour of Code. This is a pre-requisite to being able to code the various types of robots we have in our Innovation Studio. Students can access Hour of Code to practice at home by going to www.code.org online. When students finish Hour of Code, they are to print out certificates and bring them to school for me to post, celebrate and track! Thanks.
Enjoy the day today! Halloween is tomorrow and we will have a parade for those interested in participating tomorrow just before nutrition break. Please send costumes to school. Make up may be applied at home as this will be difficult for students to do on their own in the limited changing time we will have prior to the parade. After the parade, we will be spend time enjoying some science art! Grade three students will make seed mosaics and grade 2 students will make sculptures for their life cycle project trioramas to partner with their life cycle projects. Will be like a party!
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