Welcome back!
Welcome back and Happy New Year, everyone! It has been SO nice to have kids back in school and have some feeling of normalcy back in the classroom.
We had a really lovely week, albeit one of transition. There are some changes in our classroom– we all have our own table space, facing foward and we have a different schedule to have staggered lunch and recess. We are all adapting to the changes, but had a very good week, all told.
We are starting a unit on fairy tales and began our week by learning about predicting and retelling using ‘The Mitten” by Jan Brett. We retold the story using scrambled pictures of the story and then used ozobots to show the sequencing!
In Math, we are revisiting our addition strategies and reviewed Adding with Zero and Counting on. We are also doing some interesting math problems in some shorter time periods we have, due to the new schedules. So, we did some tricky logic puzzles and are going to be doing some tangrams next week.
We are continuing on with a study of the sky and have been looking at models of why we have day and night, using a globe and lamp. We made our own models using paper. We also learned about why we have the seasons and are categorising the months of the year into seasons, according to where the earth’s position is around the sun. It’s pretty hard to grasp, but we are enjoying learning about it!
This Friday was Black Excellence Day, which is a day to celebrate the many accomplishments of Black Canadians in all different fields. Although he is not Canadian, we studied the art of Jean Michel Basquiat as someone who knew how talented he was from a very young age. He knew he would be a famous artist as a child and followed his dreams to become one of the most well known and innovative artists in North America. We enjoyed studying his work, reading the book “Radiant Child” by Javaka Steptoe. Basquiat’s art challenges us to be messy, paint outside the lines, draw with passion and with our hearts and to take risks. I was wishing each parent was there to see the children drawing with such focus and passion, listening to jazz (as would Basquiat). I asked Mr. Maan (our afternoon EA) to take a video as my phone was hooked up to the speaker. The quality turned out not very well, but the feeling in the room was inspirational. I wish you could have all been flies on the wall!
I am late to post pictures and videos from the week on Seesaw– I’m out of practice! But will post them now for you to have a look at some of our work this week.
Just a reminder- I will be out of the classroom on Monday and Tuesday and the students will have the same TOC for both days. Can’t wait to see them again on Wednesday!
AND, do you like getting blog posts with what we are doing? Is it redundant with Seesaw? I would love some feedback on the modes of communication coming to you– At the moment I post on Seesaw, send blogs when I am able (weekly/biweekly), a monthly newsletter to print and have at home, and send emails with immediate information and ‘housekeeping’ type things. If you have an opinion and/or time, please let me know!
Take care, be well, and with gratitude,
Ms. Merkel