RMH

Math

The Kindergarten to Grade 3 students have been working on learning numbers, the many different ways to count and how to represent numbers. The students have used their fingers and toes, counting bears and beans to count. (Just to name a few.) A magical wizard visited the class and erased all the numbers in the 100-chart to stop the students from counting. The students worked together, filled the 100-chart, and won over the wizard. The Counting-On Circle Game was a favorite among the students. In this game, the students chose a number and count on from the number. Students increased the challenge by increasing the speed. Next, we learned to count by 10s. Penny Game was a fun way to practice, in which students threw a penny onto the 100-chart and then represented the number using base ten blocks. There are many more numbers to count, and many different ways to count and represent them, so we are happy to be continuing on with this unit.

Keeping the Beat and Rhythm

All students have been learning about duration in music. The students began to understand the beat in music as they listened to their own heartbeat. Students quickly connected that they could change their heart beat to make it faster or slower, just like the beat in music changes. Clapping, tapping, jumping, skipping, and marching were all used to practice keeping the beat to a variety of music. Students learned that the rhythm dances over the beat. The students used visualization, echo clap, dancing, arm swaying and hand clapping games to keep the rhythm. In our open mic sessions, students used rhythm symbols to create their own composition. Students had a lot of fun sharing each other’s compositions and trying to replicate it by following the rhythm symbols: tah, ti-ti and rest.

Poetry

This month, the Grades 4 to 8 have been working on a Poetry Unit. Throughout the unit, students read, interpreted and analyzed a variety of poems. The unit began with students learning about various poetic devices such as simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, alliteration and rhyme in interesting ways.  Among the class's favourites was listening to music and realizing the poetry hidden behind the beat and rhythm. Creative poems were written in our class, such as: “Bacon,” a delectable concrete poem about the joys of bacon; “Princess of Old,” a creative found poem that mastered the use of alliteration; and “Rainbow,” a haiku poem that illustrates the beauty of summer and rainbows. 

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