Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Conferences, conferences, conferences!

Just a reminder that student-led conferences will be held this Thursday starting at 6:30! Students will walk you through some of the work they've done in class and will show you the assessment tools that are being used to check whether they're meeting learning criteria and outcomes. There will be multiple families in the classroom at one time and so this will not be a good opportunity to discuss your child's current achievement - this can be done through e-mail, phone, or by booking a separate meeting time at another date. Bookings are now open through your "My CBE" Account.

And now, a recap of what has been going on in room 18!

Yesterday students were given a quiz using the area model of division. This model has worked well to support the learning of about half the class but has not been accessible to all students as yet. This is to be expected and is the reason for us moving into another model of division this week. The goal is to present students with multiple models of division prior to a summative assessment of their skills, so that they may practice and choose the model that best suits their learning needs. Today, we recognized that what was REALLY tripping students up on the area model was in fact the basic facts portion of simple division and having students access their multiplication knowledge as a strategy of working through those difficulties. So, we practiced basic facts, and tomorrow we shall move on to a new model of division.

We had library today and set some pretty specific criteria around books that should be taken out of the library as many students are checking out materials that are well below their level of challenge. The expectation currently is that students should be taking out one "just right" challenge book, one "vacation" book, and one "buddy" book to try to meet their needs, their interests, and then care for others.

In Language Arts, students have begun their last expository writing style and are moving into Procedural Writing. Today we discussed the components of procedural writing and began to work toward writing a "How-To" writing sample by choosing something we can teach to someone else and brainstorming a list of steps that must be taken in order to complete the task or learn the skill. We will then be combining this with our knowledge of transitional language and paragraph writing before entering our writing sample into our blog.

As we had an evidence capture today, students had another day of social studies and were asked to consider the challenges the various groups living in Canada were experiencing prior to Confederation, and how those challenges were used as catalysts to motivate people toward creating the country of Canada.

Reminders:
-Thursday: Student led conferences begin at 6:30 and end at 8:30
-Friday: PD DAY - NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS