Mme Hamilton: April 10-13, 2017

We finished the vases we started to make last week. The kids started by drawing the profile of a vase on a folded piece of paper and then cutting it out. Then they used this cut-out as a stencil to cut out a vase from black construction paper. They applied their patterned strips to the black vase, and then glued it on to the back of the black background.

Then they made flowers out of feathers to fill their vases. The flowers were made by sandwiching the feathers between 2 paper circles. We went over the steps involved first.

Then they cut out stems and glued together all the components.

They're up in the hall now!

We continued to tell the Rat Princess story, with the kids gradually taking over the telling. They help me remember the gestures! We also learned more new comptines. We talked about our goals in writing and I met with students to establish their personal writing goals. We also addressed the question again of what to do when you're writing and don't know a word in French but the teacher is busy conferencing with a student. We talked about using story ideas from various sources, from movies or books or even the stories of our classmates. Doing so is not "copying" but is a compliment to that other person. Ideas belong to everyone!

Our French digraph was "ai". We played the game again in 2 teams of reading fake French words, syllable by syllable.

We also observed the International day of Pink. The kids discussed and then each drew the things considered "boy" things and "girl" things. Then we came together and I drew 2 boxes with ideas from the kids. We found many exceptions, with boys protesting that they like rainbows and girls protesting that they like dogs. I don't think that denying the existence of gender roles is helpful with kids, because they do exist. But it helps to establish that they are invented by people (our ancestors), they are always changing, and many people don't fit into these boxes. In fact, some girls mostly like boy things and vice versa.

In math, we did another story problem with 2 steps in it, requiring a sequence of equations. They are starting to make good choices about which math tools to use to solve problems.

When the kids shared their solutions, we started using new sentence starters in French to encourage mathematical dialogue. I am teaching the kids to agree or disagree with each other's solutions, and then explain WHY. A bit of controversy in math really gets them engaged!

We also did an Easter math activity. I made a number line to 100 and cut it up into little pieces. I put the pieces into plastic eggs and hid them around the classroom. So we had a big Easter egg hunt, and then the kids had the group challenge of reconstructing the number line. They began by putting together small sections of it, and then the sections kept getting bigger until it was huge! They were very excited when it was done.