Happy Halloween!

We had a spooktacular day celebrating Halloween together. The staff and students checked out everyone's costumes at the annual parade in the morning. Back in the classroom, the students completed a Spooky Town mapping activity and after brainstorming Halloween vocabulary words, they made a BINGO card to use during the afternoon festivities.

Thank you to the parents who sent in food for our class party!

The students enjoyed a few rounds of BINGO and some competitive, but fun, Minute to Win It games.

Rocket Towers

 Smartie Suck Up

Ghost Poop Pick Up

LANGUAGE ARTS

The students continued writing their "sloppy copy" monster paragraphs. After they completed their writing, they met with me to conference and edit their work. They also coloured the title page for their projects which they will finish next week by writing out a good copy of their descriptive story.

We read "Crankenstein" by Samantha Berger and the students had the opportunity to talk about what makes them feel cranky. After brainstorming, they were asked to write one sentence about what bothers them the most. They also completed a craft, making their own "Crankenstein", to remind them that even though little things make us cranky, we can choose to turn our day around!

We also reviewed how to put words in alphabetical order using a list of Halloween vocabulary.

MATH

The students continued working on place value and naming the value of digits. For example, in the number 356, the 3 has a value of 300, the 5 has a value of 50 and the 6 has the value of 6.

We also started a "Math Mystery" called "Jumpy Jack-O-Lanterns". The students were introduced to a case about pumpkins who were overtaking a town. They needed to be detectives to figure out who was responsible for the jumpy jack-o-lanterns. After solving each clue, they crossed off suspects until they finally solved the crime. The students completed patterning, place value, addition/subtraction and word problem questions.

SOCIAL

We started taking a quick look at each of the seven continents. After watching a short video, the students pulled out important facts to make a web and then they were asked to write three sentences about the continent. This week, we looked at North America and South America.

AMAZING RACE

Fundraiser!

The students worked hard this week, completing many steps to create their Christmas card for the school wide fundraiser. Please watch for the sample and order form that will be sent home within the next couple of weeks!

LANGUAGE ARTS

We started off the week by reading "I Need My Monster" by Amanda Noll. The students continued adding to our class list of adjectives (juicy words) to use for their writing. They also watched a short video of the book to inspire them before drawing their own monsters. 

Here is the link to the video if you would like to watch it at home with your child.

https://vimeo.com/94518791

After illustrating their monster, they used a graphic organizer to write down any words to describe their drawing. They were asked to think about the senses and use words about the feel, smell, sound and what it looks like. They also had the opportunity to sit with a friend and talk about their monster so they could get suggestions of what they might have missed. Next week, they will begin writing their paragraph using their graphic organizer to help them.

MATH

We started our new unit on Place Value. The students worked on identifying the place value of two and three digit numbers. 

They also learned a new card game to help them understand place value. 

SOCIAL

We reviewed cardinal directions and completed a few activities related to the compass rose. We also learned about the continents and the students labeled and coloured a map of the world. 

STEM CHALLENGE

The students completed their second STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) challenge! After persevering through the apple raft activity in September and seeing all of the creative ideas, problem solving and teamwork that took place, we decided it would be a great idea to try to fit in a STEM challenge each month. For October, the students were asked to create a monster using a list of materials. The only criteria was that they had to make the monster stand on its own. Some of the groups found this STEM activity much more challenging but nobody gave up and there was a lot of problem solving through trial and error. 

AMAZING RACE