Nov. 25 Curriculum Update

Student led conferences were a success.  Students were proud to bring you into the classroom and to share some work they were proud of.  They also enjoyed setting some goals for improvement.

In math, this past couple of weeks we have been introduced to polygons.  We read the book The Greedy Triangle which was a funny little fiction story about a triangle who enjoyed his life as a triangle being roofs on houses, instruments in a band and fitting into place when people put their hands on their hips.  As he bored of being a triangle, he wanted another side and another angle to become a quadrilateral.  Although enjoying new life doing new things as a quadrilateral he continued to become more and more dissatisfied asking for more sides and more angles.  He turned into a pentagon, a hexagon, a heptagon, an octagon. a nonagon and a decagon.   We had a lot of fun creating these shapes on our geoboards and with pattern blocks.

From brainstorming ways to describe polygons we realized that we were missing some vocabulary and ways to describe them.  We then explored parallel lines and made an analogy to train tracks that will NEVER cross.  We made parallel lines on our geoboards, on our whiteboards and then built shapes and identified parallel lines within various shapes.

In Science, our grade two students built a mealworm hotel as we chose our own mealworms to take care of.  They are studying the life cycles of their mealworms.  They read a procedural text about how to set up a habitat for a mealworm so that all of their basic needs would be met.  We used the word metamorphosis to describe a BIG change in a life cycle, similar to a butterfly.  Our worms will go from larvae to pupa to beetle.  Luckily in our batch of mealworms we had some in each form to observe.

In science, we also went on a virtual field trip to Indonesian to a Borneo Rainforest.  We got to digitally link up with scientists who are using innovative new technology to check the health of a rainforest and to protect the animals and plants there.  We linked with 430 other classrooms around North America too!  Can you believe that out of all of those students and all of those questions that students have, one of our student questions was chosen to be read and answered by the scientist.  Our question was about the roots of the trees in the rainforest and whether they grow shallow or deep given that the island was made of volcanic soil.  Great question!!!!!

Many student partners have also been presenting their projects on the adaptations of plants and animals in various biomes.  Students learned to use Google Slides as a presentation tool.  We have a couple more presentations next week to listen to! We also had a presentation in the gym by the Earth Rangers whose mission it is to protect the habitats and animals that are in danger due to the impact of human activity on the environment.  They had powerful messages, brought interesting animals and taught us a lot about some animals that they are currently working to protect in Canada.

In language, we have been working on retell as a comprehension strategy.  We graphed the data from our CASI assessment (assessing retell, main idea, inference and application/connection skills).  We graphed our retell data and students quickly interpreted the graph and determined that we had some work to do to do more effective retells.  As a class, we made a plan for how to improve those skills.  We then tried out a new graphic organizer and new format for generating ideas to determine what is important to retell and what is not important to include in a retell.  Using the book, The Lorax, students wrote a retell of the story followed by an art piece of a scene from the story inspired by the artwork of author and illustrator Barbara Reid.
We finished our read aloud of The Blizzard of the Blue Moon in the Magic Treehouse series.  Many students have been interested in the series and missions of the main characters, Jack and Annie and are now reading some of them independently both at home and at school.  Our next read aloud was going to be one I have been excited to read aloud to them, however, as usual, they had other plans!  Many students have asked if we could read some Geronimo Stilton together aloud so that they could see what those books are about.  I know how much many children love both Geronimo and Thea Stilton books and there are many who have not read any of them yet!  I will read one or two aloud in class in hopes that students will then choose those independently to read both at school and home.

We are working on developing our writing skills as usual.  This week we talked about a number of aspects that make up good writing: Ideas and Content, Organization, Voice and Conventions.  We defined each of those and gave examples of them in things that we have written together.  This week, we worked specifically on the organization of our ideas in writing.  We used some questions from our Earth Rangers presentation and a fiction book we read together as a basis to organize our ideas in our answers.  We did some more shared writing together to model great work and then independently wrote a few samples to try it out!

To end the week, we had some GREAT math thinking that we did around The Handshake problem.  We generated many, many problem solving strategies and had students show their strategies to others in our math debrief.  There were such great representations of strategies on posters that students created, they asked if we could leave up for display.  Our boards were all full!  The whiteboards were full, the bulletin boards were full, the walls were full--we have so much great work up to use daily that we had no space!  Students got excited and asked if we could be like Leonardo DaVinci and display our work on the ceiling!  We did!  I am sure we will not be able to leave it up for long but for now, when you walk in our portable door, you will be amazed and inspired by the mathematical thinking of this class displayed on the ceiling--just like Leonardo DaVinci!

What a great, inspired and engaged group of children you have!  It is a pleasure to come to school each day and see where our learning journey takes us.  Thank you!