October 19, 2017

Good afternoon families!

This morning we introduced a new self-regulation program to room 18 students called the "Zones of Regulation" as part of health. It is a wonderful program that helps provide students with language to recognize their emotions and provide them with strategies to self-regulate. There are four zones: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue. The colours work much like a traffic light system and recognize a student's emotions and energy levels, and can mean more than just mad, frustrated, happy, and sad. Ask your child what other emotional state Yellow and Blue can represent. The students had some very rich discussion around the zones and will be bringing back strategies for our next health lesson as to how we can try to work our way back to green. The big lesson here is that our brain works best in green and so while some students naturally "live" in the yellow zone, we want to provide them with strategies to get into the green zone as much as possible.

After this we looked over some of the math work we've completed over the last few weeks for areas of strength and growth. We have found that most students are ready to move on and so there will be a short quiz tomorrow that will be marked and sent home for you to look at on Monday.

Following recess, we moved into Science again as we are unable to access the computers. Students reviewed the concept of Air pressure and how it affects weather changes. We also built a science glossary so that students have somewhere to look when they need clarification of scientific terms.

After lunch students worked on reading either with myself in a group or independently at their desks. We are taking a few steps back to practice self-control during this time so that we can work up to whole class independent guided reading groups. Once we finished reading, we discussed the comma and how it is used in a variety of situations. We chose a selection of sentences and as a group added punctuation where it was missing.

We played soccer in gym and then finished the day off with our class novel.

Reminders:
- We will be painting tomorrow, so please remind your child to dress appropriately
- Swimming begins on Monday and we are the FIRST group to go, so please think about getting your swimming gear ready now (towel, plastic bag, swimsuit, underwear if your child wears their swimsuit under their clothes to school)
- If you have not sent in your swim forms yet, please do so ASAP. Students who do not have these forms returned to us on Monday will not be able to ride the bus to the pool/participate