Happy Valentines Day!
This week in Division 9 we have been learning lots, as usual! We have had a particularly good time doing a solar system project involving ADST (applied design science technology), science, art and literacy! On Wednesday we started talking about the solar system and different planets. We then designed our own planet, first on paper and then in a 3D version. It was so much fun and the students were VERY engaged in this project. On Thursday we then made adaptations to visit our planets- what kind of space boots would we have to make to visit each planet? I.e., for a hot fiery planet you may need fire protected boots with a force field button for falling meteorites. For an underwater planet you may need flippers and jet boosters to get away from unknown creatures. They designed and created life size 3D boots to adapt to their planet. It was also a hit with the students and they continue to amaze me with their creativity and hard work! The space boot activity will be a great link to animal adaptations soon to come. I wish I had more pictures but I was on hot glue gun duty and was in high demand!
In math we played a very fun game called Math battle which the kids keep asking to play again. This is a strategy game we all play together where they earn coins for answering math facts quickly. They then have to strategize what they do with their coins. This is a game to encourage quick recall of basic facts and cement some of the addition strategies we have been working so hard on recently. We have also been learning a difficult addition strategy called ‘part, part whole’… or sometimes called missing addends. We are getting it but it can be a difficult one! Some kids are challenging themselves with some hard word problems as well.
We read the book Kate and the Beanstalk this week, working on visualising as a reading strategy. This will be our last fairy tale as part of our fairy tale study. Through fairy tales we have been working on retelling, visualising, inferring and predicting. Good job, everyone! We also learned the short i vowel sound which makes it so we have learned and practiced all short vowel sounds in consonant-vowel-consonant words, which will help in our writing.
We have also been learning some emotional vocabulary this week using the Everyday Speech program online and doing art. I really want to expand our collective vocabulary of ways to express how we feel. This is a foundation for emotional wellness and I would encourage all of you at home to explore the great continuum of language for discussing feelings.
Happy Valentines Day to everyone and thanks for reading! 🙂