Beth Vanderweerd, the Roots of Empathy facilitator, also made a book of the kids' drawings of the reasons that a baby might cry. The students really enjoyed her reading of it. They made drawings this week of reasons they themselves might cry or be sad.
The kids wrote more from their puppet show drawings and on many other topics. They started using our classroom dictionaries as a resource for writing, for ideas as well as for words. Some of them started using new writing paper with more lines that are smaller.
We finally finished our alphabet review! We also had our second dictée. We discussed the sound "k" and I asked the students for the 3 letters that make that sound (c, k, and q). I asked them to vote on which letter they thought was usually in a word if they heard the "k" sound (some students are in the habit of using "k" all the time...). Most thought it was "c," but we did a word sort of familiar words with that sound to find out. The proof lined up with our prediction! We also began to discuss hard and soft c and g.
We reviewed the vocabulary of city places introduced last week. Each student chose one place (restaurant, park, museum...) to create on a small paper. The kids labelled their city places and we made a city street with all the places lined up along it.
We looked at some maps made by a DaVinci class, in preparation for our mapping project next week. We identified the legends on the maps, and the kids saw how the symbols in the legend were like a code for understanding what was on the map.
We did our numeracy centres again. And we waded into more complicated "math sentences" (equations) which lend a more complex understanding to the "equal" symbol (=). I wrote the equation 2 + 2 = 1 + 3 and asked if it made any sense. After some discussion, most students agreed that it did. Then I showed the class how to use two-coloured counters to create this kind of equation, using a template that acts as a scaffold. They start by placing the same number of counters in each circle. Then they need to flip them until the number of yellow and red is different on the 2 sides. Then they count the yellow and red counters in each circle and write the equation that corresponds. We did this together in a circle, and then those who could do it independently went to the tables to make more equations while I worked with some less sure kids on the carpet.
We also used the day's snack to tell a story about a brother and sister whose mother needed to give them the same number of vegetables (to be fair) but one liked tomatoes more and one liked pea pods more. We wrote a math equation from our story, 4 + 1 = 3 + 2.
We had our first session with our visiting artists - it was great!!! Leslie and Jade showed the students various self-portraits by Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo as an introduction to self-portraits.
Then the artists talked about different line qualities and how they might express different feelings. The kids practised drawing different kinds of lines and then were given heavy paper and pastels. With these materials they drew lines to express how they were feeling right now.
Then Leslie talked about warm and cool colours, and demonstrated how to wet the paper and then paint tempera colours onto it such that the wax pastel resists the paint. The students chose a palette of either warm or cool colours to paint over their pastel drawings.
They began by painting a layer of water onto their drawing.
And then they added the colour!
Next week Leslie and Jade will return and guide the kids in adding layers onto these abstract backgrounds to produce their first self-portraits!
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