Today, we read a fable, “Rabbit Tricks Elephant and Whale” together. As we read we identified the features of a fable and discussed the lesson that the story teaches us-the moral. In the following Flipgrid students discussed the moral of the story as well as the importance of respect. Students have lots of opinions and are now working to support those opinions with proof from the text.
Another year of speeches has come and gone! The students worked very hard to work through the writing process (plan, draft, revise/edit, publish) to create their speeches. I am very proud of each of my students! Getting up and speaking in front of your peers is not an easy thing to do!
Congratulations students of 2018 on a job well done!!
So much accountable talk was had in this math class! It was definitely a success!
Today, we began a new unit in our literacy program – FABLES!
We started off by reading, “The Grasshopper and the Ants”. We enjoyed this book as it provided some text as well as pages without text. This allowed us to really consider the illustrations and tell the story in our own way. Students realized that illustrations are an important part of picture books.
The next step was to read another version of the story and watch a video based on the story and then make comparisons.
Finally, we identified the features of a Fable.
It is always so much fun making Valentine Monsters to hold all of our valentines! Not only do students get a chance to use their creativity in a visual arts capacity, they also use their creativity in a writing capacity. After using tissue boxes and construction paper to create a monster, students then wrote descriptive paragraphs about their monster.
As we continue to investigate the attributes of 2D shapes students were given the following challenge:
Students worked in partners and did a fantastic job of collaborating and using accountable talk!
The next task was to use FlipGrid to reflect on the investigation.
This visual arts lesson began with a video about a famous artist: van Gogh.
Students highlighted the painting, Starry Night and talked about the lines that were used to create the sky. There were many opinions about the feelings and actions that these lines created!
So, we decided to have a go at using lines and colour to create some wind and snowstorms. Students used pastels in a variety of cool colours to create a “windy, stormy” background.
The next step was to look at our faces and determine what our eyes, mouth and eyebrows look like when we are surprised. We imagined that the wind caught our hats and blew them up into the sky!
Students used construction paper to create a “zoomed in” picture of a snowman as his hat is blown from his head.
The results are wonderful! Each snowman has a different expression. I wonder what each snowman would be saying if we gave them speech bubbles?
Today we continued to build on our knowledge of 2D shapes.
We started out with a read aloud:
Then, students used geoboards to make a variety of polygons. Then, they looked at each other’s boards to determine similarities and differences. This was the beginning of shape descriptions.
After some wonderful math talk, using lots of new math vocabulary it was time to work on writing descriptions!
Students made a polygon on the geoboards and then wrote a description of the shape.
The next challenge was to match the descriptions to the shapes!
After some discussion students determined what made a good description and what was not. Students realized that they could use what they learned in our measurement unit such as length, area, and perimeter when writing their descriptions.
Can you tell which of these descriptions is the better one?
Description B
Description A