October and Winter Poetry As we continue to use the adjectives that we began exploring with Rosemary Nixon, students developed poems about October and winter. October Scary Beautiful, colourful, Fall fun Halowe'en is spooky, fun and ghosty October ~ Dawson ~ October Trick or treaters getting ready for Halloween While pumpkin pie sits in a flaming hot oven October ~ Eddie ~ October Flickering lights Glow on Halloween As the candy tumbled into bags. Leaves flew To the hard ground As you step You can hear the crunch Of the helpless leaves. ~ Lauren ~ Crystal chandeliers Of icy snow Gliding down A stream with Kids tobogganing. ~ Carter ~ What is Art?We asked our classes this question and received a variety of responses - from different art techniques, styles, and mediums to where we see art and also descriptive words about what art is. Here are some of their responses.
Wassily Kandisky (1866 – 1944), a Russian painter, was credited with painting one of the first truly abstract art works. To begin the conversation about how definitions of art change based upon your perspective, and your identity, we looked at his development as a painter, as well as other art styles that were being created during that time. Students explored the colors, lines, and shapes in one of Kandinsky's paintings, Composition VIII. Using the Colours, Lines, Shapes Thinking Routine (similar to the See, Think, Wonder routine we used in science), students described the colours, lines, and shapes that they noticed. - overlapping - colours of the rainbow - he did not put his work in order - his work is messy - there are lots of colors - lines are pointing in all different ways ~ Lachlan ~ I see that in the top left corner, there is what looks like a target to me except not only using red and white, but a shadowy purple, pitch black, and a light pink. If you follow it out it fades away. ~ Ava ~ I see a white that looks fresh, a black as black as charcoal, a scarlet red, a triangle that is filled with sea green and sky blue. I also see a purple that reminds me of Mrs. Austman’s glasses. There is a mustard yellow and a light grey about 2 shades lighter than an elephant…I see a big triangle in the middle that is filled with a misty white. I see a tic tac toe board and a music bar. ~ Eva ~ Check back next week to see some of the student paintings and reflections based upon this investigation..
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In math, we have begun working on the continued development of our understanding of number. Through this study we will explore different ways to represent numbers and look at the recurring pattern in our place value chart that helps us to create and record larger numbers. Students have created numbers with Base Ten materials, represented them with symbols in a chart, and are learning about writing numbers in expanded form. As we continue to explore the world of larger numbers, students will continue to focus on reading and writing larger numbers (to 1 000 for grade 3 and 10 000 for grade 4) as well as to developing mental math strategies for adding and subtracting 2 and 3-digit numbers. Students have been developing an understanding of our science inquiry question in our continued science study of animal classification and life cycles. We gave our students a list of words (our inquiry question, in a scrambled order) and asked them to rearrange them to make a question that made sense using all of the words. does, how, change, an, interaction, identity, with, an, human, animals' Students focused on many characteristics of language to support them with this task, including:
After seeing the possibilities the students created, we actually changed our question to: "How does human interaction with animals change an identity?" allowing us to focus more broadly on both animal and human identity. A follow-up activity to support students with understanding the question, was to work to develop definitions of "interaction" and "identity". Using ideas of other students and the dictionary definition we developed a class definition of interaction and began to explore what makes an identity. Students began by brainstorming ideas of what makes them who they are. We continued the conversation around what makes your identity, thinking about significant features that allow us to recognize a person. Some of the students' ideas included:
Students then thought about a particular experience that changed or influenced their identity and drew a related picture. In science, as we explore ideas of animal classification and life cycles, we have been asking students to develop questions to guide their further investigations. As they perused a number of animal books, students developed several questions about life cycles, adaptations and habitats. Using the students' interest around interactions with humans, that arose from their questions, we have begun an exploration around, "How does an animal's identity change with human interaction?" Employing a See, Think, Wonder strategy for developing critical thinking, we asked students to observe and record ideas about this image. Responses from Saviero, AJ, Chloe, Jamie, and Brooke.
Firefly Hollow - a novel by Alison McGheeAs we have been reading the novel, Firefly Hollow, students have made predictions about what the story might be about. They have begun an investigation of who each of the characters are and what juicy words might be used to describe them. Some of the words that Room 2 developed to describe Firefly Hollow are: daring, adventurous, brave, rule breaker, creative, bold, dangerous, silky, and heroic. Describing Firefly - Journal EntriesVisual and Written Predictions - Firefly HollowDescriptive words continue to be a focus of our literary explorations this week. Students have been listening for them in our read-aloud novel study, Firefly Hollow, and have been brainstorming them as they work with our author, Rosemary Nixon. At the end of the last week, students created riddles with four descriptive words describing a secret word. Using their five senses their goal was to describe their secret word so well that others would easily be able to guess what it was. Here are some samples (answers will be at the end of this post!)
This week Rosemary Nixon has continued to share her experiences of what authors actually do when they write. We have learned that authors often get ideas from other writers. From the autumn themed literature passages that Rosemary shared, students developed a word bank of "juicy words". They visualized a particular element of the season and wrote two line poems to describe their personal image. The process of improving writing through editing, as a writer does, has resulted in the creation of many outstanding two line poems, a few of which have been included below. As the cool crisp wind weaves between trees the smooth hushing lulls the bears into winter’s slumber. ~ Fleur ~ Flaming leaves dance among the tall trees twirling to the ground with the Autumn wind. ~ Brooke ~ A sugary moist steaming slice of cinnamon pumpkin pie slipped off the pate splatting on the cold hard ground. ~Jamie ~ A black bear limps into his winter cave and rests his head on a pile of leaves. ~ Dylan ~ Playing in the fiery leaves, a bunny digs herself in and pops out to see her furry friends. ~ Minay ~ A leaf danced in the crisp autumn air swirling down to the rocky river bank. ~ Sara ~ The crying leaf flew away from his tree swirling sadly in the cold autumn night. ~ AJ ~ The swirling wind takes fiery leaves to flight while they giggle nervously. ~ Clive ~ Connected to our explorations of descriptive words, students have been developing a self portrait using the proportions of a human face. A list of 4 descriptive clues will be posted with these portraits for you to see if you can identify your child's portrait at Parent Teacher Conferences later this week. In science, students have chosen an animal and are utilizing library books and computers to research and create a representation of their life cycle. Moving forward, we will be categorizing animals and exploring the questions that students have generated from their earlier book explorations. Riddle Answers:
Riddle 1: marshmallow Riddle 2: bubble gum Riddle 3: ocean waves Riddle 4: fog Riddle 5: mud puddle Riddle 6: snow Riddle 7: bubble Riddle 8: popcorn Riddle 9: cotton candy We've had an exciting first week, getting to know our new students and teachers. Our science activities have focused on the processes of working as a scientist would. In teams, we have solved two problems, exploring the properties of different materials; an ongoing focus for our year. With "Saving Sam," students were asked to save a gummy worm who had capsized his boat with his life preserver inside. Students demonstrated creativity and excellent communication skills as they used limited resources to get Sam into his life preserver and back into his boat. Will a different surface allow us to blow larger bubbles? This science question provoked the idea that different scientists might find different results with the same materials. We will continue to explore these ideas, of fair testing, and different uses of materials throughout our year. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring animal life cycles, and classification of animals. Students have begun to develop some deep questions, those that make connections between ideas and aren't able to be answered by a Google search, about animals that they would like to explore. Numeracy skills we have been reviewing and developing include:
We have begun to learn about how pattern rules can help us to describe increasing and decreasing patterns. Being able to use charts and tables to record our data and to identify patterns from within a table and using Carroll Diagrams are areas of upcoming focus. Students have written a letter to their teachers about themselves and selected library books for quiet reading during our literacy time. Rosemary Nixon, an author, will be working with us over the next three weeks to support the development of our students' narrative writing. We have been creating riddles using juicy words based upon our four senses.
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AuthorsMrs. Montanaro, Mr. Messer and Mrs. Austman teach grades 3/4 at Elbow Park School in Calgary AB. Archives
April 2017
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