Happy Monday!
Today seemed to pass by quickly! Here's a quick recap of what we worked on:
We began the day with a quick trip down to the music room to visit Mr. Wiens. Next, we came upstairs and had a hands on math lesson designed by Ms. Ryan to re-introduce division to us. Not everyone realized we were doing it, but we had a few students wondering why were were putting counters into a variety of groups figure out that yes, we were in fact doing division! When Ms. Ryan brought this fact to the students' attention at the end of math, there were some shocked looking faces (and even some scared ones!), but it was great to see how shocked everyone was that they were successfully working through division. We will be continuing with division from now on, but will not be completely diverting from multiplication yet as students need to see the connection between the two concepts. Also, students have been given last week's bi-weekly mad minute, and many are starting to see some really good improvement on their overall score.
After recess, we finished our natural vs. manmade disaster presentations and had a discussion about the forest fires that are happening down in California. We discussed the question: "Are all natural disasters really caused by nature?" We tried to make connections between what we had learned during our science unit on weather (the greenhouse effect) with what we know about extreme weather events and how it affects the geographical regions of Canada. It was quite an interesting conversation.
After lunch we took on the large task of continuing our 4 paragraph essay writing. Students are still not finished yet but are experiencing issues with transferring their point form planning from their graphic organizer into longer sentences in their blogs. We will be continuing with these as the week goes on, looking at the introduction and concluding paragraphs as well. We finished off the day by doing a read aloud from Wonder, where students heard some pretty major plot developments about how Auggie is being treated by his peers at school.
Reminders:
-Winter concert performances for our class on Thursday night! Students are being asked to be back at school for 6pm and can head up to the classroom
-Dress rehearsals for both the concerts will happen in the afternoon on the same day as the concerts if you would like to join us then.
Congratulations to this month's Pillars of Care Winners!!!!
Care for Self: Tyla
Care for Others: Karim
Care for Place: Rylee
Care for Learning:Tyler
Monday, December 11, 2017
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
December, 6, 2017
Good afternoon families of room 18!
Today we had the chance to roll up our sleeves and do the following:
We began the day by looking at an interactive video posted on the CBC website to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. We have been discussing the difference between natural and manmade disasters in Social Studies, and while we didn't have Social Studies today, it was a really neat opportunity to understand what happened as a part of that disaster and how the unfortunate event boiled down to a few simple decisions made by humans. It was a really neat 360 degree interactive video. If you have a chance, you should take a look with your student and maybe they can share some of the knowledge they have about disasters!
http://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion/
We had music with Mr. Wiens and then came back to class to continue on with our Wonderful Word Problem Week! We will be taking up some more of the answers during math tomorrow, completing another of our bi-weekly basic fact tests (which we will be switching up soon) and completing word problems written by our very own students over the course of the week.
After recess, the fun really began! We had our first, full-length experiment where we got to test materials that were possible conductors of electricity. Students used circuit kits to test materials such as balloons, keys, pennies, wooden popsicle sticks, and steel wool (just to name a few) to see which materials would conduct electricity from a battery to turn on a light. The room was buzzing with exciting scientific discoveries!
After lunch, we began to look at our first extended form of expository writing, which should hit student blogs for publishing next week (this blog will keep you posted for the next update!). We will be looking at how to use our paragraph hamburger format as an extension to create longer form writing. This will eventually be useful for procedural writing, autobiographical writing and of course, opinion writing!
We then had gym with Mr. Sadowsky and finished up the day with a learning check-in with Ms. Ryan in order to gauge understanding for our upcoming writing tasks.
Students brought home their class portrait today and will be receiving a concert newsletter tomorrow.
Reminder: There is no school this Friday!
Today we had the chance to roll up our sleeves and do the following:
We began the day by looking at an interactive video posted on the CBC website to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. We have been discussing the difference between natural and manmade disasters in Social Studies, and while we didn't have Social Studies today, it was a really neat opportunity to understand what happened as a part of that disaster and how the unfortunate event boiled down to a few simple decisions made by humans. It was a really neat 360 degree interactive video. If you have a chance, you should take a look with your student and maybe they can share some of the knowledge they have about disasters!
http://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion/
We had music with Mr. Wiens and then came back to class to continue on with our Wonderful Word Problem Week! We will be taking up some more of the answers during math tomorrow, completing another of our bi-weekly basic fact tests (which we will be switching up soon) and completing word problems written by our very own students over the course of the week.
After recess, the fun really began! We had our first, full-length experiment where we got to test materials that were possible conductors of electricity. Students used circuit kits to test materials such as balloons, keys, pennies, wooden popsicle sticks, and steel wool (just to name a few) to see which materials would conduct electricity from a battery to turn on a light. The room was buzzing with exciting scientific discoveries!
After lunch, we began to look at our first extended form of expository writing, which should hit student blogs for publishing next week (this blog will keep you posted for the next update!). We will be looking at how to use our paragraph hamburger format as an extension to create longer form writing. This will eventually be useful for procedural writing, autobiographical writing and of course, opinion writing!
We then had gym with Mr. Sadowsky and finished up the day with a learning check-in with Ms. Ryan in order to gauge understanding for our upcoming writing tasks.
Students brought home their class portrait today and will be receiving a concert newsletter tomorrow.
Reminder: There is no school this Friday!
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
December 5, 2017
Hi families of room 18!
Just a quick note to say that all of our blogs should be live starting now! By now, students should have shared their blog with you via googleDrive or using a link that would have been e-mailed to you if I had your e-mail recorded somewhere. If you have not received it, please feel free to send me an e-mail and I will look into it as some of the non-google e-mails were being a little finicky with sharing.
Students are VERY excited to share their writing with you and I hope you enjoy seeing how their writing progresses as we move into more challenging forms of expository writing and eventually, narrative writing.
Have a great night!
Just a quick note to say that all of our blogs should be live starting now! By now, students should have shared their blog with you via googleDrive or using a link that would have been e-mailed to you if I had your e-mail recorded somewhere. If you have not received it, please feel free to send me an e-mail and I will look into it as some of the non-google e-mails were being a little finicky with sharing.
Students are VERY excited to share their writing with you and I hope you enjoy seeing how their writing progresses as we move into more challenging forms of expository writing and eventually, narrative writing.
Have a great night!
Monday, December 4, 2017
December 4, 2017
Good afternoon families of room 18!
It has been a wild and crazy Monday, and all of this sunshine has created an energetic day! Here is our recap of what we did:
We began the day with a lesson on setting up our blogs. Students will be writing their 'blogs' using GoogleDrive Slides and adding to it throughout the course of the month. Tomorrow, students will be adding their first paragraph to their blog on the writing prompt "The best things about being a kid are...". We will be publishing them using Drive because we want to make sure that anything our students put online is protected as much as possible. We are excited and would like to encourage parents to follow along with our student blogs as they develop! In order to access them, you will be receiving a link through an e-mail from your child's GoogleDrive account. If your e-mail is not currently up to date with the school or was incorrect at some point when being entered, we can resend an invitation to you with the correct address or you are welcome to send me a quick e-mail with your updated address ( crlaird@cbe.ab.ca ). We should have the blogs ready with their first entry to be sent out tomorrow.
After this, we moved into math and the beginning of the Wonderful Word Problem Week! It was really fun and neat to see students feeling so successful with completing word problems and I heard several students remark about enjoying the word problems we presented them with. Today we focused on making sure we could identify the important information in front of us and which function the question was asking us to use. Then, we went out for recess.
During the period before lunch, we got to set up an experiment we will be continuing on Wednesday in Science (we may switch this to tomorrow so that we don't forget the ground work we laid today). Students had to think through the scientific process, make a hypothesis, create a process for our experiment and will get to prove their hypothesis correct or incorrect during our next science period.
After lunch, we had a MEGA language arts lesson as we planned and wrote the rough copies of our first ever blog posts. Students are super excited to add their posts onto the blog and will be including a checklist of criteria they were asked to complete before entering their writing into their blog. When you have access, take a look at your child's writing and refer to the checklist to see what their writing expectations were. If this is successful, then students will be able to add writing samples to their blog throughout the year for you to see! Hopefully it works!
We then had gym with Mr. Sadowsky and finished the day off with a few chapters from Wonder.
Reminders:
-No school this Friday!
It has been a wild and crazy Monday, and all of this sunshine has created an energetic day! Here is our recap of what we did:
We began the day with a lesson on setting up our blogs. Students will be writing their 'blogs' using GoogleDrive Slides and adding to it throughout the course of the month. Tomorrow, students will be adding their first paragraph to their blog on the writing prompt "The best things about being a kid are...". We will be publishing them using Drive because we want to make sure that anything our students put online is protected as much as possible. We are excited and would like to encourage parents to follow along with our student blogs as they develop! In order to access them, you will be receiving a link through an e-mail from your child's GoogleDrive account. If your e-mail is not currently up to date with the school or was incorrect at some point when being entered, we can resend an invitation to you with the correct address or you are welcome to send me a quick e-mail with your updated address ( crlaird@cbe.ab.ca ). We should have the blogs ready with their first entry to be sent out tomorrow.
After this, we moved into math and the beginning of the Wonderful Word Problem Week! It was really fun and neat to see students feeling so successful with completing word problems and I heard several students remark about enjoying the word problems we presented them with. Today we focused on making sure we could identify the important information in front of us and which function the question was asking us to use. Then, we went out for recess.
During the period before lunch, we got to set up an experiment we will be continuing on Wednesday in Science (we may switch this to tomorrow so that we don't forget the ground work we laid today). Students had to think through the scientific process, make a hypothesis, create a process for our experiment and will get to prove their hypothesis correct or incorrect during our next science period.
After lunch, we had a MEGA language arts lesson as we planned and wrote the rough copies of our first ever blog posts. Students are super excited to add their posts onto the blog and will be including a checklist of criteria they were asked to complete before entering their writing into their blog. When you have access, take a look at your child's writing and refer to the checklist to see what their writing expectations were. If this is successful, then students will be able to add writing samples to their blog throughout the year for you to see! Hopefully it works!
We then had gym with Mr. Sadowsky and finished the day off with a few chapters from Wonder.
Reminders:
-No school this Friday!
Friday, December 1, 2017
December 1, 2017
Happy Friday and December 1st!
Today, we had a great surprise when Mr. Hebert walked into our class during math with PINK and BLUE hair!!! Turns out Mr. Hebert had the most votes in our Movember fundraiser and so he was a good sport and died his hair for everyone. I believe we raised about $500 dollars for the Movember campaign thanks to the generous donations of Beddington students. Well done!
During math, students were given a quick math check-in before being given some mathletics time. I am really excited to see that most students are independently working through the process of using their multiplication strategies. One of the things you can do at home to help is to give them easy math sentences to work out in their heads! Most students in the class have identified that the 6, 7, and, 8 times tables are the ones giving them the most trouble. In these cases, I try to ask them to reframe the question as a 5 times table or 9 times table in order to figure out the answer to the question they have been asked. Students have a neat way of solving the 9 times table using their fingers, ask them to show you!
After math we went to gym and had a combination of practicing basketball skills and fitness Fridays. Later on, we continued to work on our natural disasters work. Students are getting creative and some groups have even made a few props for their video/presentation! They will have one more period to finish up writing their script/polish their presentation and then we will present them.
We then had some time reading with our learning buddies and finished off the day with a finish up period for unfinished LA/Social Studies/Math/Art tasks, the loose ends that accumulate when students work at different speeds.
A reminder that next Friday will be a PD day and there won't be any school Dec. 8th.
Have a great weekend!
Today, we had a great surprise when Mr. Hebert walked into our class during math with PINK and BLUE hair!!! Turns out Mr. Hebert had the most votes in our Movember fundraiser and so he was a good sport and died his hair for everyone. I believe we raised about $500 dollars for the Movember campaign thanks to the generous donations of Beddington students. Well done!
During math, students were given a quick math check-in before being given some mathletics time. I am really excited to see that most students are independently working through the process of using their multiplication strategies. One of the things you can do at home to help is to give them easy math sentences to work out in their heads! Most students in the class have identified that the 6, 7, and, 8 times tables are the ones giving them the most trouble. In these cases, I try to ask them to reframe the question as a 5 times table or 9 times table in order to figure out the answer to the question they have been asked. Students have a neat way of solving the 9 times table using their fingers, ask them to show you!
After math we went to gym and had a combination of practicing basketball skills and fitness Fridays. Later on, we continued to work on our natural disasters work. Students are getting creative and some groups have even made a few props for their video/presentation! They will have one more period to finish up writing their script/polish their presentation and then we will present them.
We then had some time reading with our learning buddies and finished off the day with a finish up period for unfinished LA/Social Studies/Math/Art tasks, the loose ends that accumulate when students work at different speeds.
A reminder that next Friday will be a PD day and there won't be any school Dec. 8th.
Have a great weekend!
Thursday, November 30, 2017
November 30, 2017
Good afternoon families of room 18!
Here is a list of today's and yesterday's activities)! Students began the day with a DEAR period. We have been doing a lot of guided reading periods recently to work on strategies and gauge reading comprehension, so students were craving some free choice reading time.
After music, students came back to work on Math and we worked on a word problem that involves multiplication. We discussed additional strategies that students will need to use when solving word problems, instead of just having to use our computational strategies to solve the math. Next week, we will be having a 'Wonderful Word Problems Week!" in which we will put all that we have been working on in multiplication into creative scenarios. Part of what students will be introduced to as a result will be some division! Be prepared!
After recess, we moved into science and discussed the scientific project through a fun puzzle activity that Ms. Ryan planned. Students learned about the different parts of the scientific process and had to put them in order based on statements taken from the process itself.
After lunch, students reviewed two blogs they had completed a scavenger hunt on in order to learn about blogs, and moved on to completing a paragraph writing exercise from yesterday that was aimed at helping students support an overarching topic throughout 3 paragraphs. We wrote one as a class, and then students were asked to write one on their own.
As students are working on pulling important facts and information from a variety of text types that are based in social studies, they may come home and say they are working on a "project". For this, we are looking into the difference between natural and manmade disasters, and how these change our physical geography in Canada. It is really an ongoing assignment in class that involves LA and Social Studies concepts. Students first looked at the Halifax Explosion, and then at the Eastern Ice Storm of 1998. Coming up, they will be synthesizing the information they pulled out into news broadcasts that I am hoping students will be able to turn into iMovies next week. If not, as students will need time to write a script, they will present their broadcast on the carpet and I will record it with our classroom iPad.
Have a great night!
Here is a list of today's and yesterday's activities)! Students began the day with a DEAR period. We have been doing a lot of guided reading periods recently to work on strategies and gauge reading comprehension, so students were craving some free choice reading time.
After music, students came back to work on Math and we worked on a word problem that involves multiplication. We discussed additional strategies that students will need to use when solving word problems, instead of just having to use our computational strategies to solve the math. Next week, we will be having a 'Wonderful Word Problems Week!" in which we will put all that we have been working on in multiplication into creative scenarios. Part of what students will be introduced to as a result will be some division! Be prepared!
After recess, we moved into science and discussed the scientific project through a fun puzzle activity that Ms. Ryan planned. Students learned about the different parts of the scientific process and had to put them in order based on statements taken from the process itself.
After lunch, students reviewed two blogs they had completed a scavenger hunt on in order to learn about blogs, and moved on to completing a paragraph writing exercise from yesterday that was aimed at helping students support an overarching topic throughout 3 paragraphs. We wrote one as a class, and then students were asked to write one on their own.
As students are working on pulling important facts and information from a variety of text types that are based in social studies, they may come home and say they are working on a "project". For this, we are looking into the difference between natural and manmade disasters, and how these change our physical geography in Canada. It is really an ongoing assignment in class that involves LA and Social Studies concepts. Students first looked at the Halifax Explosion, and then at the Eastern Ice Storm of 1998. Coming up, they will be synthesizing the information they pulled out into news broadcasts that I am hoping students will be able to turn into iMovies next week. If not, as students will need time to write a script, they will present their broadcast on the carpet and I will record it with our classroom iPad.
Have a great night!
Monday, November 27, 2017
November 27, 2017
Dear families of room 18,
Today was an unusual day. We had some unplanned changes to our routine, which did not help, but students handled the changes as well as they could. During the morning, Ms. Ryan did a lesson on empathy. Students discussed how to work through challenges with other students using a process and how to recognize someone else's emotions. Afterwards, students were introduced to the parts and functions of blogs and researched what an effective blog looks like. After recess, we reviewed our math work and practiced our basic facts in preparation for a quiz tomorrow.
After lunch, we began the afternoon with guided reading before continuing a social studies lesson from last week. We then went to gym and then finished up the day with some reflection questions about what we have read so far in Wonder.
Grade 4/5 message:
Students in Grade 4/5 will now be having daily natural breaks instead of going out as an entire group in the mornings. This will enable the students to have time for a healthy snack and body break. Please speak to your classroom teacher if you should have any questions about this change.
Today was an unusual day. We had some unplanned changes to our routine, which did not help, but students handled the changes as well as they could. During the morning, Ms. Ryan did a lesson on empathy. Students discussed how to work through challenges with other students using a process and how to recognize someone else's emotions. Afterwards, students were introduced to the parts and functions of blogs and researched what an effective blog looks like. After recess, we reviewed our math work and practiced our basic facts in preparation for a quiz tomorrow.
After lunch, we began the afternoon with guided reading before continuing a social studies lesson from last week. We then went to gym and then finished up the day with some reflection questions about what we have read so far in Wonder.
Grade 4/5 message:
Students in Grade 4/5 will now be having daily natural breaks instead of going out as an entire group in the mornings. This will enable the students to have time for a healthy snack and body break. Please speak to your classroom teacher if you should have any questions about this change.
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