Animal Research Project

Dear Parents,

I sent home a project package for an animal diorama project this evening. The project as a whole is due March 27th.

The dioramas are best made using shoe boxes, so if you have extra boxes lying around, we'd appreciate any extras being sent in. Please let me know if you need a shoe box.

Students have some access to computers at school, but using home time to help build research skills will be useful. We'll continue to fill in our K-W-L charts about the animals we've chosen at school and I have some templates to help format the reports at school in the week after March Break. Getting the research done early will be helpful to let us use class time to write.

In the photo below, you can see that we've begun to talk about the characteristics of different types of animals (vertebrates, mostly) and that the students who were here have chosen an animal to focus their research on.

Unfortunately, several students were away today, so I'll do my best to get the remaining packages out as soon as possible. I'm trying to get each student to pick a different animal and focus on a variety of habitats so we can learn more as a class. 

I promised to post some good websites for learning about animals. Here are some of my favourites, but which animals are included may vary:

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/ --Use the sidebar to help search

https://www.pebblego.com/ (free login for tdsb students is on the library sites card that went home in September) --This site will read aloud the text to students

https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/kids --links to pages about specific Canadian animals

http://kids.sandiegozoo.org/animals --Great photos and information, but a little less intuitive to navigate

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/animals.html --Good for cool facts about your animals, less good as a primary source

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/mna/main.cfm?lang=_en  --More advanced set-up, best viewed with an adult, but some interesting maps of habitats and specimen pictures

I'm anticipating that the acrostic and the vocabulary sheet parts of the project will be tricky, so I hope to demonstrate those a little more in depth as students begin to learn about their animals. If you have any questions, please do let me know.

Sincerely, 

Lisa Goegan

Dictionaries and Atlases

Dear Parents,

The past couple of weeks, I've been introducing students to new types of texts--atlases and dictionaries. In this world of Googlemaps and online dictionaries, it's important to remember that once these were things we looked up in books, mostly because some of the things that are intuitive about deciphering these kinds of resources to adults are the result of long hours of frustration using indexes and trying to find a word that's not spelled the way you think it should be.

So many types of texts have features that are unique. Students can better understand how to access these tools when they're taught them directly.

One of the science units in Grade One is Daily and Seasonal Changes. For this unit, it makes sense to me to dip toes in and out as we go through the daily and seasonal changes that make up the year: We track the weather and temperature daily in the classroom and our December field trip to High Park Nature Centre was a great way of getting students thinking about how changes in weather affect animals and how they adapt to their environments through the seasons.

For the rest, I've cribbed a bit from this page: www.mrcollinson.ca/DailyAndSeasonalChanges and seen where the conversation goes.

Students have been fascinated by talking about shadows and thinking about the rotation of the earth both on its axis and around the sun and a number of map related topics have come up, especially as students think about why Mexico and Cuba are so nice to visit from Canada at this time of year.


This book on Maps has been a long favourite in the classroom (Our copy is heavily taped).

I've also brought in some student atlases that include more features, like lines of latitude and longitude, for example. We spent some time looking at those today and I asked students what they noticed.

Today's letter of the day, with notes from student observations of Atlases

In this week's journals, students are drawing their own maps and incorporating some of the features we talked about during today's morning circle.

Thinking about dictionaries, one of our recurrent questions is "What do you do when you don't know what to do?" Some students always ask me to spell unfamiliar words for them--even though spelling isn't paramount to me, it is for some of them. Picture dictionaries seemed like a nice tool to help to address that. 

We talked about how a dictionary is organized alphabetically.



We discussed how not just the first letters go in alphabetical order, they all do--and there's a little box at the top to tell you what the first and last words on the page are.



These dictionaries also include a frequently used words index....


And thematic pages, in case you want to dive into a topic more deeply.




Interestingly, these dictionaries have been taken out quite a bit during quiet reading and Reading Buddies periods this week. We did some dictionary races on Friday that were a lot of fun as well as helping to build dexterity with different dictionary skills.






We'll be looking at non-fiction texts more closely in the next little while as we begin to research animals. Features like infographics, indexes, and tables of contents are not necessarily intuitive for beginning readers. We hope to unpack these some more in coming weeks.

Regards,

Ms. Goegan

Pick an Interview Time

Dear Parents,

A bunch of things are coming up very fast:

1. Reports go home on the 10th. I missed sending home interview request forms today, but expect them tomorrow. I'm going to try to let you book online this term and see how it works for you and me (I'll send email confirmation of any times booked this way, to be sure).

Here's the link for Thursday night interview slots:
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/selfsched?sstoken=UU5RM3RFdlRBWTR0fGRlZmF1bHR8NWFhNzhlOTEyMmUzYTc5ODI3NjFlYmU1NjBiMzc1OTg

And the link for Friday morning slots:
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/selfsched?sstoken=UU5RM3RFdlRBWTR0fGRlZmF1bHR8NWFhNzhlOTEyMmUzYTc5ODI3NjFlYmU1NjBiMzc1OTg

If it works out, you can book in your preferred time specifically based on what's available.

2. Monday is 100th Day. We'll be doing a range of math based activities and students are invited to dress up as though they were 100 years old.

3. Tuesday is Valentine's Day. There will be time for a card exchange and some festive themed activities. I would prefer if cards were sent for all children in the class if you choose to send them. Names are not necessary; however, if you'd like a list of first names, email me and I'll send one along.

4. I have sent the finished letters along to the Prime Minister's Office today. We'll hope to hear a response soon.



As a general sort of overview:

We are finishing up the last bits of our Health unit and starting in again on Science. I emptied the folders and sent home the energy unit, so we could begin fresh. We'll be making a food rainbow on Friday I hope.



We have also just finished our Geometry unit and are beginning Data Management. I've been doing some dpa by having students pair up to make different shapes.

This is a circle

This is a square

Together they're making a star

Another star

The number 4

This is a lot of fun for the kids and spurs on some creative problem solving. Here are 3 ways to make a W:

Lastly, I've shuffled reading groups somewhat so that there are again 5 groups. The new group has yet to pick a name but is considering Cotton Candies, Jelly Beans, and Lollipops. The lowest reading group is focusing on Level D, Chocolate Chips are E, Skittles are F/G, Gummy Bears are practicing writing skills at G but reading novels at K/L/M, and Smarties are practicing writing skills at I, but reading at M or above.

Finally, we did some guided breathing today after lunch and listened to some soundscapes. Some are soothing and others are meant to build focus. I promised to send along the link:

http://asoftmurmur.com/

Have a great week!

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan

Building the tallest tower during activity time.