April 13th - April 17th
It has been a while since we had a full week in the classroom but we've certainly made good use of the five days that we've had together. We welcomed Ethan's mom, Hua, on Monday who worked with students during the morning period and ensured that we kicked off the week with a good start.
The "Pupils of the Week" were Sasha and Ryan. Our suspicions that Sasha likes to play with LEGO were confirmed and we also discovered that he enjoys playing the game of pool. Perhaps this will progress into the wonderful high paced game of Snooker when he gets bigger! Meanwhile Ryan is a big fan of chocolate ice- cream and we learned that his favourite animal is the cheetah! With the warmer weather coming there should be plenty of opportunity for him to indulge in many an ice-cream delight.
It has been a while since we had a full week in the classroom but we've certainly made good use of the five days that we've had together. We welcomed Ethan's mom, Hua, on Monday who worked with students during the morning period and ensured that we kicked off the week with a good start.
The "Pupils of the Week" were Sasha and Ryan. Our suspicions that Sasha likes to play with LEGO were confirmed and we also discovered that he enjoys playing the game of pool. Perhaps this will progress into the wonderful high paced game of Snooker when he gets bigger! Meanwhile Ryan is a big fan of chocolate ice- cream and we learned that his favourite animal is the cheetah! With the warmer weather coming there should be plenty of opportunity for him to indulge in many an ice-cream delight.
Talking of the warmer weather. We have been able to take our activities and exploration outdoors more often this week and the students have certainly enjoyed the time outside from exploring puddles and the rings that occur when you drop stones in them to using chalks on the walls. Fun and learning was certainly had by everyone and long may this fine weather continue.
Our phoneme of the week was "th". We explored how it can actually make two sounds as demonstrated in the words "THEM" (hard sound) and THROUGH" (soft). A subtle difference but a difference nonetheless. Some of the words that we identified that used both of these sounds were: these, they, the thunder, threw and throne... Oh and "throw up" was mentioned a couple of times too - it was decided we only had to write up "throw".
Students continued with their Dragonfly projects this week by adding a splash of colour to their insects using acrylic paints on the dragon flies themselves, pastels to add details to the foreground and glued tissue paper tiles to complete the sky. They are looking fantastic and we'll put pictures of them in the Class Art Gallery for you to view online when they are finished. Students also researched Dragonflies and other animals of their choice using the website "pebble go" on the computers in the classroom.
A new game called Waggle was introduced which is great dice game to reinforce number recognition, one-one correspondence and fine motor skills. We rolled a dice and collected the number that was shown with unifix cubes and placed the "unifix tower" on the game board. The first player to complete their board wins. So simple, so fun and so easy for students play themselves.
A new game called Waggle was introduced which is great dice game to reinforce number recognition, one-one correspondence and fine motor skills. We rolled a dice and collected the number that was shown with unifix cubes and placed the "unifix tower" on the game board. The first player to complete their board wins. So simple, so fun and so easy for students play themselves.
Finally, a big thank you to everyone who has emailed me about the languages and heritages that we have in the classroom. At first glance you would never realize or appreciate the diversity that is within the classroom. This week we focussed upon calling the attendance in Italian and locating Italy on the world map. Some with more success that others. But I suppose Italy and Iceland do both start with the same letter!
Until next time, have a wonderful week!
Until next time, have a wonderful week!