This Week in Room 204

  I was down near the bluffs Sunday afternoon when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a robin sitting on its nest which was built on a window ledge. Imagine the lucky family who gets to look out their back window and watch eggs hatch and the mother bird feed her babies. It doesn't get much better than this. 

Here are some of the things we will be working on this week: 

Language: Reading - Literature circles and CASI preparation. CASI is a reading comprehension assessment piece which junior and intermediate students are required to write twice a year. The marks were on the lower side when our class responded to reading passages in the fall. With all hard work that has been done through Reading Response Journals, literature circles, and other comprehension strategies we've worked on in class, I feel that students should do better this time around. The trick is to not cut corners when writing down answers. Take the time to think each question through and respond with attention to detail. 

Writing: We will continue modernizing fairy tales and working on our horror stories. Great progress was made in our writing last week, even for reluctant writers. Keep up the enthusiasm and the good writing. 

Math: We will be kicking off our unit on fractions, unit rates, and decimals this week. Special attention will be given to problem solving. * A few students struggled with volume and capacity on last Friday's quiz. We will take up the quiz in class and I will rejig the quiz to help those students be more successful. 

Science: Light and colour concepts and experiments. Bring in those flashlights please!

Social Studies: Grade 4s - Religion and village justice in Medieval Times: complete jot notes, asking fact questions and inquiry questions. Students will begin making a model of a village house. Grade 5s - Ancient Egypt: Pyramids, gods, and cats. This week or next, we will begin making mummies. Please bring in an old Barbie doll. You can buy fake Barbie dolls at most dollar stores. It can be female or male between 20-30 cm tall. 

Art: painting and constructing city skylines with our texture rubbings from last week. 

Homework: Light and sight at home, lit circles. Grade 5s will play and review Mummy Maker on the BBC website. Go to the link below.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/launch_gms_mummy_maker.shtml

This is a great educational resource that allows children to experience Egyptian embalming, without all the blood. 

Garbage Delight

What do you get when you cross a field full of trash, a bin filled with rejected worksheets, and junk from home? Garbage delight. Read on...

Cleaning up Clairlea: I don't want to know what this is, but it's not in the field anymore. 

The lonely bin in the Clairlea photocopy room.

A French grammar sheet. Unloved... not for long. 

We took a pile of paper slated for the recycling truck and made texture rubbings from the yard. Eventually they will be painted over, cut up, and turned into collages of city skylines. Stay  tuned.

Can pavement become beautiful?

Yes.

The Giving Tree still manages to be a table and gives us bark for rubbings. 

Son of Karate Kid. Coming soon to a theatre near you. 

Textures are found in all kinds of places...

Even fences.

A school yard Matisse. 

We've got "sole." Was that on the homophone quiz?

The gloves are on as the hockey boys help score a goal for the environment.

Later that day, the students of Room 204 rocked out with their musical instruments made from junk and found materials as part of our Sound unit in Science. 

Jamming with a Jammers box.

School of Rock.

Spring Concert Reminder

Just a reminder that the Spring Concert is this Thursday at SATEC. The concert begins at 6:30. Clairlea has been buzzing with song and dance. Come and see budding Tony Award winners in action. In the meanwhile, let's pretend we're in Paris with Amelie. 

This Week in Room 204

Hieroglyphs = Happiness (left)

Some of the things we will be working on include: 

Language (Reading): lit circles. We've almost completed The Breadwinner. Keep up the great work. If you are the Discussion Director, try to ask open-ended questions. Don't let the answers come too easily. 

Writing: We're getting back in the saddle with our horror narratives. 

Media Literacy: We will continue working on modernizing fairy tales/folk tales. As well, we will continue deconstructing real estate flyers. 

Math: Final review of 3-D solids, volume, and capacity. There will be a test on Friday. Make sure you know what a prism is and what a pyramid is. Also, remember the relationship between volume and water displacement. We will begin a short unit on transformational geometry. 

Social Studies: Grade 5s complete social structure pyramids of ancient Egypt and begin looking at Egyptian gods and the afterlife. Grade 4s take a close look at village life and religion in Medieval Times.

Science: Intro to Light.

Homework: (For Thursday) Lit circles. (For Friday) Complete next steps for modernizing a fairy tale.  

Friday: Math test (see above), and homophone quiz. Know your their, there, they're amongst others we have looked at. 

Calling All Coraline Freaks

As part of the Luminato Festival, Neil Gaiman will be reading from his latest novel, The Graveyard Book, Monday, June 8 (7 p.m.) at the Jane Mallett Theatre St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts. He will be signing copies of the book afterwards. Tickets are $15.

Visit www.luminato.com for more information.

Be there and be scared! 

Kitchen Cupboard Math - Try it

Recently we've been working on volume and capacity. Allow your child the chance to experiment with a measuring cup and water to better understand water displacement. Fill a measuring cup to a set level (e.g. 300 ml). Have you child experiment by dropping different objects into the cup. Discuss observations. The volume of the object that displaces the water is equivalent to the amount of water displaced. For example, if 50 ml of water is displaced, the volume of the object which displaces the water is 50 cubic cm. 

Measuring cup filled with 300 ml of water

Let's drop a Playmobile guy in the water to calculate his volume (amount of space he takes up)

The water level rises approximately 10 ml. That means the Playmobile guy is 10 cubic cm.

This Week in Room 204

Hope you had an eggcellent weekend. Caught on camera - Easter eggs in East York (left) and Canada Goose eggs (below) discovered at Bluffer's Park. It's a wonderful life.

Language - Media Literacy/Reading: We will be comparing the traditional version of Little Red Riding Hood, with an animated retelling. Students will begin planning his or her own modernization of a fairy tale or folk tale. We will also be learning about camera angles.

Writing: Writer's Workshop (horror narratives). Students will meet with me to discuss progress of story. 

Math: Not every student finished the math test last Thursday and some students had difficulty answering questions about 3-D solids. We will review terminology and students will be given a short, hands-on homework assignment to help better understand prisms and pyramids. Marked tests will go home next Monday. We will also review capacity (water displacement and volume), and mass. There will be another test next week and then we will be moving on to fractions!

Science: We will begin recording soundscapes on Friday. Musical instrument planning sheets will go home and students will have until Friday April 24th to construct them at home. If we have time, we will begin our unit on Light.

Social Studies: Grade 4: timeline of Medieval Europe and village life cont. Grade 5s social class structure in ancient Egypt.

Art: Painting hieroglyphs on papyrus and completion of our bas reliefs. What a relief!

Homework: Literature Circles Breadwinner chapters 7-9, Math: creating 3-D prisms and pyramids with toothpicks, Reading/Media Literacy: modernizing a fairy tale planning sheet.

* Lit circles must be ready for Thursday morning. All other homework due Friday. 

Links to Fairy Tales and Folk Tales

http://www.americanfolklore.net/

American Tall Tales and Fables (above)

http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/mff/myths.htm

Multicultural Folk Tales (above)

www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/

Brothers Grimm (above)

Hans Christian Andersen (below)

http://hca.gilead.org.il/

Thirty Cents For a Good Cause

Hello families,

A copy of The Breadwinner went missing off the desk of a student in our class. We searched high and low for it and it did not turn up. Unfortunately, I cannot buy a new copy at the bulk price from Scholastic. We put our heads together and did a little math. The Breadwinner retails at $9.99. Using long division, we discovered that if everyone brings in .30 we can replace this book, which I'll buy over the weekend.

We unanimously agreed that this is the right thing to do and that if we raise more than $10.00, the money will go to Free the Children. We can all feel good about this.

Thank you for being a kind, caring class. P.S. class - check your blog: the book recommendations are trickling in. You are bloggers!

Today, we kicked off our photography unit for Media Literacy. We learned about camera shots and we combed through old National Geographic magazines for examples of long, medium, close up and extreme close up shots. 

In the afternoon, it was all hands-on math as we took over the hallway to estimate and check the mass of objects from the class.

This Week in Room 204

JUMPING FOR JOY IN THE GYM!

Hello,

Here are some of the things we will be working on this week:

Language - Reading: The Breadwinner literature circles chapters 4-6. Last week's circles were fantastic. Keep up the quality work this Thursday. Throughout the week we will also be researching Afghan culture and history and we will compare and contrast Parvana's emotions with our own.

Writing: Horror narratives continued. We will take a close look at writing dialogue and the correct way to use quotation marks. In spelling and grammar, we will continue to nail down those homophones that have been giving us a hard time. Do not Meat Me in St. Louis or eat the hole pie!

Media Lit: Introduction to photography - shots and angles, and Blogging 101.

Math - Measurement: introduction to mass. We will be using scales and also estimating mass in everyday objects. 

Science - Soundscapes continued. This is our last week to work on soundscapes in class. All soundscapes should be ready by the end of the week. I plan on recording them next week. If they are not completed, students will be required to either meet with his or her group after school or phone each other to complete this project for next week. 

Social Studies - Grade 4s: The Feudal System revisited and life in a Medieval village. Grade 5s will be working on the foundations of Ancient Egypt. Students will construct a "social pyramid" to help understand the class structure. 

Homework: Literature circles (chapters 4-6) this Thursday. Math: estimating the mass of everyday objects around the home. 

* There will be a short quiz on 3-D shapes and volume this Thursday. I will review what students are expected to know in class. Parents reading this may wish to review volume using small objects at home e.g. this ring box is 4cm in width, 5 cm in length, and 3 cm in height: what is its volume? - length X width X height. 

Room 204 Student Blog

The Room 204  student blog is up and at 'em. Please add our blog to your Bookmarks 

http://room204studentblog.blogspot.com

Currently, you will find pictures from the brain workshop run by Grace's father on our blog. You will also find an audio podcast of a group from our first round of literature circles for The Breadwinner. I had a chance to circulate around the six groups and I was impressed by the mature, insightful comments I heard. Keep up the great work!

It is my hope that the student blog will be written and run by the students within the next few weeks. Clairlea has several digital cameras and our class will soon be given a photo assignment, which will be displayed on the class blog. Thanks for reading and for the positive feedback.

Three Moments That Made Me Smile This Week

More often than not, it's the little things that keep me going. Here are three things that made me happy within the last two days:

1. The model of the human brain Grace's mom made out of jelly. The children were thrilled to touch the blobby "pink matter." During the craft club, the brain got knocked off a stool and splattered on the carpet. The kids loved to hear me say, "Do you know how hard it is to scrub brain out of a carpet?" Pictures and stories from Bill's fabulous brain lecture will be posted on a future post.

2. Hearing George blurt out, "That was a really sick lift!" when a ballet dancer was hoisted in the air during the dance concert at Earl Haig. Thanks to Ms. Park for making it possible for six classes to go on a field trip and to all of the parents who joined us on the trip. Great to see the arts valued by students, parents, and teachers at Clairlea. Let's keep this dream alive.

3. Having a full house at my first tutoring session after school when most other kids were out playing in the sun. You have to admire such drive.