News from Room 156 March 26th/12

Dear Parents,

I would like to thank Mrs. Mellon, Mrs. Gray, Mrs. Oreopoulos, Mrs. Stecher, Mrs. Doig, Mrs. Vaughan and Mrs. Valdes-Collette for volunteering to drive us all to see the movie "The Lorax". It was a delightful show and the children loved it. It ties in nicely with our science unit on Air and Water, and I will also tie it into Earth Day and planning posters for media works.

We will continue our science unit on Air and Water into mid to late April and then we will be learning about different species of animals. The children will be choosing an animal of their choice and will be doing a project on it. This will be presented in class.

In social studies we are continuing to learn about Canada, mapping skills and how other countries have different customs and traditions. As a class we will divide up into groups and study four different countries.

We just finished an art project on cracked crayon. The children learned about contrasting colour and how to copy from a thumb nail sketch. The results were terrific. You might want to stop by and see them on our class bulletin board. We will be continuing to work on contrasting colour in our next assignment as well.

In language arts we have just finished up on our procedural writing. Our next writing focus will be on descriptive writing and then we will be moving on to writing fairy tales which is quite a large unit. This of course will focus on beginning, middle, end, problem, solution, characters and setting.

The children will be creating their own fairy tale and writing it for others to read. Drama will also be involved in this unit. We are hoping to perform for you !!

In math we are learning about addition with regrouping. We are also learning our timestables 2's and 5's. This week I will be introducing the 10's. Each day we have a two to four minute quiz on them and we also play a timestable game. I am encouraging the children to practise each night for 10 minutes to help them memorize them. We will have a final contest after we cover the tables 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's and 10's. This will give the children a good head start for next year. We are also focusing again on number facts to 18. This all ties into our number sense and numeration strand. It really makes it easier for your child to work on their addition and regrouping when they have these facts memorized.

Thank you all for your continued support.