I apologize for my lack of posting last week. The end of the quarter is always a busy time for reflection, reporting and planning. Here is a glance at some of the learning we did last week. In math, we have been working on balancing equations by deciding if they are true or false. We have learned that both sides of the equals sign need to add up to the same number. Fore example, we started with the equation 4 + 2 = 7. We decided that this is false, because one side of the equation was 6 and the other was 7. We know that 6 does not equal 7. Following this, we talked about ways that we can make this number sentence true. Now that we understand what = means, we will now be moving to using greater than and less than symbols, rather than the true or false model. Our Weather unit of inquiry (UOI) kicked off last week. Last week we focused on what weather is, and how the sun affects weather and our daily lives. After tuning in (stating what we think we know about weather) and finding out (listing what we want to learn in this unit), we broke into three groups and completed some activities based on the four seasons. This was interesting because not all students come from countries with four seasons, of have seen all of the seasons. One of our lines of inquiry for this unit is that "weather changes the way people live their lives." We talked about how the clothing we wear for different types of weather is one way that weather affects our lives. We practised dressing up for different seasons and types of weather, and had a little fashion show (pictures below). Coming up from break one day, one of the students noticed that our garden was "sick." We talked about how it hasn't rained and when plants do not get watered they often die. We talked about how we could water them ourselves from the tap. This then brought up discussions about another line of inquiry for this unit: "we have a responsibility to care for people affected by weather." Antananarivo is currently facing a drought. We talked about how if we used water for our garden, people who really need the water for their farms may run out. It is our job to conserve water. This may have been the best transition from one unit of inquiry to another that I have ever had. What that said, we had plenty of tomatoes to harvest. Since we had a large number of tomatoes, I thought that I could use this to teach a little math. We estimated how many tomatoes we thought we had and counted them by 10s. We had 124. After counting them, we took the ones that were too ripe, and put them back in the ground to grow more; the cycle continues. We talked about how too much sun and no water hurt the plants in our garden. We then wondered what would happen to us if that happened. We set up three experiments to test out the power of the sun. In experiment 1, we put a cup of water in the sun and a cup of water in the shade for the day. We found out that the suns energy could heat up a glass of water. In experiment 2, we put a piece of construction paper in the sun and a piece of construction paper in the shade. We found out that the energy from the sun faded the construction paper. As a result of experiment 2, we talked about how the energy from the sun affects our skin and bodies. Students put sunscreen on a paper and put it in the sun. We noticed that the paper around the sunscreen faded, but the area with the sunscreen was protected from the sun. This is why we need to put sunscreen on when we go outside. We also watched part of a video on this (see below). This week we are learning about wind. After reading a book about what creates wind, and what wind does, we made windsocks to test the speed and direction of the wind outside our classroom. Last week our phonics study was on silent letters. We studied letter pairs where only one sound is made. Students sorted words and played games to learn more about the following digraphs: gn, wh, kn, mb, wr We also added the last component to our Daily 5 programme: word work. Students use the Words Their Way program to study different word, sound, and letter combinations, sorting words into categories and spelling them. Here is a quick video of the class doing a speed sort. To learn more about the Daily 5 or Words Their Way, please see the bottom of our resources page. When we are finished with word sorts, they will be sent home for you to practice together with your child.
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March 2017
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