2-Shape sorting

The students did an amazing job sorting 2-dimensional shapes today!

They used attributes like the number of sides, number of angles, right angles,and

parallel lines.  

Dirt, dirt, and more dirt...

As an introduction to our new science units on soil (grade 3), air and water (grade 2), we investigated some soil samples. 

'I see leaves.'

'This one is sandy and wet.'

'Ahhhhhh...there is a caterpillar or some kind of bug!!'

'It feels cold and soft.'

'There's a worm!'

'Ewwwww...it's slimy.'

'This has clay parts in it.'

'The worm made tunnels.'

'What's in the tunnels?'

'I guess there is air.'

They made all sorts of discoveries:

Soil is different depending on where you get it.

There are living things in soil and things that are not living.

Some things in soil are dead now but they used to be alive, like leaves, sticks, and bugs.

Bugs must eat something in soil to survive.

Air is invisible but it's there...even underground in a worm tunnel.

Soil can be wet even though you don't see the water.

This is just the beginning...

Shapes, shapes, shapes...

Before using the pattern blocks and three-dimensional solids for specific tasks, we always play first...

It's always amazing to hear the meaningful conversations students have with each other when they are playing.

'Hey...can you pass me that sphere?'

'Look, all these cans are cylinders.'

'We built with the hexagons and they used mostly trapezoids.'

'This is all made with cubes.'

When given a bit of direction and a list of important vocabulary the conversations

 became more sophisticated.

'The triangular prism is on top of the cube.'

'There is a rectangular prism on the right and another one on the left.'

'This is the stable where Jesus was born.  I used two mini cubes

to build Mary and Joseph and just one mini cube for baby Jesus.'

'This is a skateboard park.  The ramp is a triangular prism.'

Please see the title page in your child's math duotang for the list of expectations for each grade for our new Geometry unit.  We will be continuing to practice addition and subtraction facts on a regular basis during this unit as well.

Literacy Centers

Our literacy centres continue to give the students practice at 

the skills we are working on in class.  This week they practised

their spelling words and word wall words (of course!!!).

We continued to develop our knowledge of point of view in stories.

Each group of students set up characters in the story of the birth of Christ.

Once their characters were set up, they chose one and wrote about that

character's point of view of what was going on in the scene they created.

I was sooooooo impressed at their ideas!!!

They used the i pads to photograph their scenes.

Another centre this week was to simply read...read by yourself....read 

with a friend...read to someone...just read!!!!

The highlight of this week was contraction surgery.  Students 

put on their masks, got their scalpels (scissors), cut apart

words and stitched them back together (with a band-aid) with 

an apostrophe to make a contraction.

Another successful surgery!!!!