June 7

Today was Wacky Wednesday. We started by reading the story Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Suess.  Today, the students were also in charge of planning the day.  They were thoughtful about the day and they planned fun, but educational activities.  We started our day with math rather than our regular Daily 5.  We played a game of addition/subtraction war and then we finished our math challenge from yesterday.  We gave each letter a value and then we found the value of different words.

For example, the word Bag would be worth $2+ $1 + $7 = $10.  We also challenged ourselves to find the value of our name and lastly, find a word worth $25 and $50.  This was a hard challenge but many students started to find some words by the end of the class.   At home, you could try this together by finding the value of your names, grandparents names, or even street name!  It is fun to see the different strategies that the students use and how much they are able to do mentally!  

After math, we worked on designing our boat.  Students know their boats need to float, be stable, be able to move, hold a load of 10 marbles and survive a collision with an "iceberg".  Students are working in pairs or groups of three to collaboratively plan, prototype, and test the boat.   We got off to a good start!  We are still taking in supplies if you have other things at home you would like to send in!

We also worked in Google Docs on our giant descriptive writing.  We are working on using strong verbs and powerful adjectives to describe our imaginative giants.  Working on Google Docs allows us to practice our typing skills, use assistive technology, and learn how to share document so we can collaboratively edit each other's work. 

This afternoon we went into the project room to make some "Giants".  We traced each other's bodies and then used our rough copy of our giant to create a life sized version.  Tomorrow we will start to paint our giants.  Next week, we will use these to do some non-standard measurement.  

Tomorrow our literacy week continues with Colourful Thursday.  Wear different colours, all one colour or even clashing colours to go with tomorrow's theme.  It is also our Great Book Exchange.  Students are invited to bring in their quarters to buy some gently used books.  This will allow them to stock up on summer reading books!

We went outside this morning to read a fun story called "This is a Moose".  It is a cute story about how people (or moose) can do anything they want if they choose to.  This book even went to space!

Don't you just love Sam's "Wacky" hair?

May 23

Welcome back to everyone! I hope you all had a great long weekend and had a chance to enjoy the amazing weather!  What a treat!

Today we had a great morning as it was filled with music and laughs. We had the Acapella group : Hoja in our school today.  They taught us a little about what acapella is, how we can make some of the songs, and of course entertained us with their songs.  They played lots of the hits and the students had the chance to dance and sing along.  For many of us the funniest parts were when Mr. Dyck went on stage and joined the group to the song BBQ Stain.  He sported a pink hat and some great dance moves that made everyone smile.  Another great part was when two of the singers sang "Pretty Lady" to Ms. Carstairs.  She was very embarrassed but was such a great sport. If you want to know more about Hoja, check them out here: Hoja's Website

We have also been busy preparing for our assembly, which will be June 2nd.  You are invited to join us in the morning in the gym or come to our Volunteer Appreciation in the afternoon as we will perform at each.  Each student got to choose how they would like to contribute to our assembly: playing the Acadian spoons, creating a First Nations canoe or writing riddles about Canadian Wildlife.  We have been working on this for two sessions and are eager to see how it all turns out.

In math, we have still been working on addition and subtraction strategies, but not as intensely as before as many of us have the hang on it.  It is important that we don't forget these strategies so we will continue to work on this for the rest of the year. We have also been learning more about patterning. We feel confident with repeating patterns, identifying the pattern core, and finishing patterns, and now we are starting to look at growing patterns and how to solve them.  You can practice these on IXL: D2.

In writing, we are learning more about how to make our reader more engaged and interested in our writing. We are using our senses to help write a descriptive writing piece about a giant.  We are learning about ways to describe our giants using similes and other comparative writing. We will post some as we get finished!

We hope everyone has a great week!

Coming up:

• Movie Night on Friday: Beauty and the Beast
• Please send in Learning Common Makerspace donations!
• Aboriginal Learning Centre Field Trip - Monday