Thanksgiving Thoughts...

Thanksgiving is here and we have been busy in our class thinking about what we're thankful for.  It's special to see all of the thoughtful choices the students have made, and I love that so many of them have come out of our discussions around an important book we read called:  I Have a Right to Be a Child.  Many of us are thankful for families that love and care for us, being able to go to school, having clean water to drink and fresh air to breathe, and warm houses to live in. 

I hope everyone enjoys a wonderful Thanksgiving with family.  Here are our Fall Birch Tree printmaking pictures to warm your hearts and homes as you are gathering together:

Lessons From Pete the Cat

We've been doing some trickier pattern problem solving in our class.  On this day, we had a list of pattern "ingredients" and we had to figure out the "recipe".  We chose the math tools we wanted to use and talked and shared to work through the problem.

It seems that Pete the Cat has some great advice for problem solving in life AND math!  I was so proud to see this student work through the hard parts to learn something new and know that "It was all good!"  I'm sure Pete the Cat would appreciate the X's and O's!!!

Gratitude Graffiti Project

We had a surprise visit from our Big Buddies today!  We were invited to be a part of their Gratitude Graffiti Project.  We learned how the project has grown from far away, all the way to Vancouver.  Our Buddy Teacher Mrs. Booth thought about how amazing it would be for students at our school to show their appreciation for the things they're grateful for.  Today we all wrote our ideas on ribbons and tied them to the fence in front of the school.  Stop by some time and read about all of the things we appreciate in life!

                                      

What are YOU grateful for?

Pattern Persistence!

Today we used our 100's Board app on our iPads to help us build and extend number patterns.  We chose pattern starters and covered up the numbers with counters.  This helped us picture, extend, and even record our patterns!  We noticed lots of important things as we were working...

Aedan said, "I did counting by 2's multicoloured.  They're all in straight lines going down."
Kate said, "I counted by 12's.  It made a diagonal picture."
Max said, "I've got angles by 3's."
Tomas said, "These are the 7's.  They're in a line up and across."
Simon said, "I have a bunch of patterns and basically, they're all connected.  I did odds and evens all in a row with different colours."

I wonder what we'll notice next about number patterns...

Our Reading Tree

Did you know our classroom has a Reading Tree?  Each month, we will watch our Reading Tree grow as the students spend special time curled up with books at home.  Each night we try our best to make time to read to our families AND enjoy listening to our families read to us.  We keep track of the books and/or chapters we read, and every time we reach ten we add a new shape to the tree.  

In September, we collected leaves and some of us had three on the tree!  It's fun to talk and share about our favorite books, and recommend books to each other during our book exchange time.  We look back at what we read and how often we read and set goals for the next month.  We are so lucky to have our families supporting us at home!  I wonder what our Reading Tree will look like in October?

Playing With Patterns

We are enjoying creating and extending different kinds of patterns in Room 204.  We love to get our hands on different math tools and are challenging ourselves to build more complex patterns.  It's so interesting to see what others' have created and we love to go for "gallery walks" to make observations.  Here are some statements the students made during a recent reflection:

What We Notice About Patterns:

* You can extend a pattern (if it's really a pattern).

* Your pattern can extend in more than one direction.

* You can change an attribute and still have the same pattern.

* You can make a growing pattern.

What are you noticing about patterns?