Happy Wednesday!
The new words of the week are:
ou, qui, quoi, mercredi, ici
A couple students have already lost their green sheet with the words, but I don't know who. If you discover it's your child, remind them to ask for the green word sheet again tomorrow.
At our parent-teacher interviews in November, one common concern was that children aren't eating enough of their lunch. Since then, I have been staying with the class a little longer to make sure everyone has gotten started. I've also arranged for two grade 5 students to sit at our class' table every day. They started this week and are helping us open thermoses, and are keeping an eye out to make sure everyone is eating the main part of their lunch. If this was a concern for you, I would really appreciate some feedback on how lunch is going now (particularly this week). If you have noticed an improvement, or if you haven't, could you please email me to let me know? I want the kids to be at their best for our post-lunch math lessons! Thanks!
Ask your child about math this week!!! Monday, we started learning about another type of diagram (we have already done a lot of work with bar graphs and will do another project using these next week). We are using Venn diagrams to help us sort and classify objects according to their attributes.
Yesterday, we sorted buttons into two different circles. The rule for one circle was that the buttons were big. The rule in the other circle was that the buttons had 2 holes. Then, we moved the circles together until they overlapped (creating a Venn diagram). We talked about how the buttons we put in the middle have to be part of both circles, and follow both rules. The buttons that went in the middle were big with two holes. This is a fairly challenging idea, but I'm happy with how the class responded. Many students were eager to place buttons in the appropriate area, and they even recognized when a button didn't follow any rule and needed to be placed outside of both circles!
After this activity, each group was given a Venn diagram and a bin of materials to classify. They had to come up with their own sorting rule. Here are some pictures of what we did!
This group was given Lego. The red circle is all RED, the blue circle is all THIN pieces, therefore, the middle area is THIN, RED pieces of Lego.
This group was given large beads which are sorted into RED beads, SQUARE beads, and in the middle are RED SQUARE beads.
This group had a set of plastic building materials with people. As you can see, one circle is for only GREEN pieces. The other circle is for PEOPLE. The middle area is for PEOPLE that are mounted on a GREEN base.
This group had to use flat sides that attach to form 3-D shapes. They put all GREY sides into one circle, and all SQUARE sides into the other circle. The middle area contains the GREY SQUARE sides. They sorted every last piece in the bin!!
Oooo, this group had the animals! They sorted them into animals that are mostly BLACK, animals that are mostly YELLOW and animals that have some black AND yellow. (Later we talked about how it can be very difficult to have two colour rules because you can't have something that's ALL black and ALL yellow at the same time, it's better to think of a different rule for the second circle. We did another animal sort using Meat Eater, Plant Eater, and Eats meat AND plants.)
This group had wooden blocks. There are blue blocks neatly arranged in the blue circle, and rectangular blocks in the red circle. In the middle are the blue rectangles.
One challenge was that the tendency is to create a third rule for where the circles overlap. That's not the idea! The rules shouldn't be, for example, red, green and yellow. That's three different rules! It would be better to say something like, yellow, triangles, and in the middle, yellow triangles. Clear as mud?
You can practise making a Venn diagram and sorting at home using whatever materials you happen to have. Lego, blocks, toys... Try making up a sorting rule and see if your child can guess it. Then, let them sort the same materials using a different rule and see if you can guess it!
One more chat & chew idea! We were talking about activities that we do with our families, for example, play baseball, watch movies, play games, go skating... Your child would like to know what kinds of activities YOU did with your family when you were growing up! Coming up, we will be acting out different situations (things we do with friends, how to solve a problem) using paper bag puppets that we made today! The picture above is of our community rules (the wrong thing to do, then the right thing to do).
In art, we have been using our time to decorate for the holidays! I mentioned the Menorahs that we made for Hanukkah - they look AMAZING on the windows (see below). Tomorrow we are doing a Christmas craft, and we also had time to draw some pictures of whatever holiday(s) we want. From these, I had a hard time selecting the next two Artists of the month, but I eventually settled on two that represent different traditions.
In other news, one student had the great idea to start a story writing club for when we have free time. This is them during their first session!
Talk to you later,
Tamara
