Nov. 17

 We had a wonderful day of learning today!

 In math, we used our knowledge from making groups of ten with our buttons to start to represent numbers using tens rods and units.  We were given a number and using a variety of different types of blocks, we made groups of ten to show the number.  You can see that many of us used this as an opportunity to make some fun patterns too!

We also had the chance to sign out the school computers and we reset our passwords to a more personal password. We spent some time reviewing why it is important to have our own passwords and who is allowed to have our password (parent, grandparents and babysitters if necessary, and teachers).  We will start to use technology more regularly in our class for big projects, but also just for our day to day activities such as math games, writing, and even reading.   As we will be using the computers more, I am asking students to bring in their own pair of headphones in a ziploc bag.  Please label these headphones with your child's name.  We will keep these at the school for the year and return back to you in June.  Thank you in advance for your help with this!  If this is something you are unable to bring, please send me an email and we can come up with a plan :)

Have a great evening!

Coming up:
Early Dismissal tomorrow
Mrs. Jordan away Monday morning at Learning Leader meeting

Nov. 16

Believe it or not... it is true: we are one month away from Winter Break!  Where does the time go?

Our focus in Social Studies continues to be on communities.  Today we continued to talk about community, but in a much broader sense than just Evanston or Calgary.  Knowing that communities share common aspects, we spent some time brainstorming what all Canadians share and how Canada is a community.  We came up with: our flag, our money, Justin Trudeau, (yes... some of us knew this!!), freedom, and shared land.

The focus in social studies this year is looking at different types of communities within Canada so it is important that students have a clear understanding between city, province, and country.  We have been working at differentiating these three terms and learning about what they each are.

On Monday we looked at the Maritime provinces and many of us were in awe of the beauty we saw with the rugged coastlines and blue oceans.  Today we did a brief overview of the central provinces of Canada, Quebec,and Manitoba.  We were especially intrigued by Quebec City and their winter festival and Ottawa and Parliament.

If you wanted to find out more about Canada, here is a good site with many links to other sites:
Canada LInks
Canada Map Puzzle

Coming up:

• Oral Sharing starts tomorrow!
• Early Dismissal Friday
• Mrs. Jordan away Monday morning at Learning Leader Meeting. 

Nov. 15

In math today, we started to look at place value and how each digit in a number represents a different value.  For example in 29 the 2 represents 20 and the 9 represents 9 ones.
To start to grasp this concept, we practiced counting buttons and grouping them by 10s. Very quickly, we started to see that grouping by 10 made counting large numbers much easier.  This is something that you could have your child do at home as it is a fun and easy process. Here is what we did:

1. Used cups to help us count the buttons
2. Filled each cup with 10 buttons.  Left the single buttons on the table in front of the cups.
3. Drew a picture to show the cups and labelled each cup skip counting by 10
4. Under the picture we wrote how many tens and ones we had and then we wrote the total number.

Starting to count 

Groups of ten into cups

36 Buttons 

60 buttons

Showing Numbers in Different Ways

 Showing Numbers in Different Ways

When we finished, we discussed what we learned and noticed about counting today. Here are some of the questions we asked:
1. Is it faster for you to count by ones or by tens? Why do you think that?
2. Did you make a mistake counting? How did grouping by 10 help you when you made a mistake?
3. How can you use the cups to help you count?
4. When would you use this in real life?

Tomorrow, we will continue to work on this and then we will do a similar math activity but use blocks and start to form ten rods.  Using tens and ones blocks will be a key manipulative through the year and it is important that students understand what they represent and the value they have before we use them.


Coming up:

• Photo retakes tomorrow
• Early Dismissal tomorrow

Nov. 14

Today we had an opportunity to finish sharing our prototypes for our Magnetic Design Thinking Project.  It was so exciting for all of us to see the thoughtfulness, creativity, and problem solving that went into each prototype.

Here are our finished prototypes - remember that these are prototypes made with the materials we had accessible so we need to use our imagination a bit when looking at them :)

Push in the Chairs:The box is a pretend chair. Inside is a magnet.  In real life, this magnet would sit on the back of the chair. The wand magnet on top would be super strong and when held up, it would push in the chairs. This solves many students problems of forgetting to tuck in their chairs. 

The Remote Control BroomThe broom and dustpan would be attached to a remote control car.  A magnet would be placed underneath.  By driving the car around the room, the broom would sweep up the mess after snack and the  magnet would attract any staples or other small metal bits off the floor. This helps solve the problem of having a dirty floor in the classroom in the afternoon.

The Robot BroomThis contraption is one part of a robot broom.  The broom would be attached to the robot's leg and would detect dirt. The broom would sweet up the mess after snack and the magnet placed under the robot would attract any staples or other small metal bits off the floor. This helps solve the problem of having a dirty floor in the classroom in the afternoon. 

Metal DetectorThis simple device would save teachers a lot of time!  It is a strong magnet attached to a stick.  It would allow anyone to pick up metal from the floor (those pesky staples after changing a bulletin board) without even bending down!  This may be something I will implement in the class this year!

Case of the Missing CarpetPart of being a new school means doing without a few luxuries. One of those being a carpet. Students decided they would like to invent a carpet that is made up of individual pieces. These pieces can stick together by magnets for times that we buddy read, work in small groups, or even as a whole class, but can be taken apart quickly and easily during individual times. 

Case of the Missing Carpet 2Like the above example, students recognized that we didn't have a carpet and saw that they had the chance to design something a little different from a traditional classroom carpet.  They would use strong magnets and sew them into the carpet pieces so we had flexible carpet pieces. We can hope we get something like this!  

It was fun to see the excitement and pride on the students' faces as they presented their creations to the class.  They had the chance to see themselves as inventors and designers. Some questions you could ask your child about the process are:

• What did you enjoy about designing?
• What do you feel most proud about?
• Wid you run into any problems? How did you solve them?
• What would you change about your prototype?
• If you had any materials in the world, how would your prototype change?

Please note: Photo retake day is WEDNESDAY not tomorrow! Sorry for the confusion!
Picture retakes will take place on Wednesday November 16^th.  If you would like retakes for your child please return the original proof sheet with retakes requested on the envelope.  If you no longer have the original proofs please send a note requesting retakes.

Nov. 10

It was so nice to see many parents and family members at our Remembrance Day Ceremony today. Our class did a wonderful job of being respectful during our ceremony. We spent lots of time discussing why this was a more solemn and serious ceremony.  We also handed out poppies to all students.  We reviewed that our poppies are a symbol or peace and talked about what they represent. Because of these conversations, students showed responsible behaviour throughout the day with them. 

For our class contribution, we sang a song called "Dona Nobis Pacem".  They sang it beautifully and proudly. We also presented a short slideshow called "What is Peace at Ken Taylor School?".  We did some writing to give specific examples, some pictures to show this and included some of our poppies to display this symbol of peace.  Each child had the chance to either speak, show their artwork, show their poppy, or present the class wreath.  Here are a few of the pictures that we showed:

I hope you have a great weekend!

Coming up:

• No school tomorrow
• Photo Orders due Nov. 15
• Photo retakes Nov. 15
• Poinsettia orders due Nov. 21

Nov. 9

Thank you to everyone for sending in all their things for the Me Shoeboxes. We have really enjoyed looking at them and talking about them in class.

We are going to start our Oral Sharing next week. The purpose of oral sharing is:

·      To learn more about others
·      To share about ourselves
·      To practice good speaking skills in front of others (eye contact, expression, volume of voice etc)
·      To give feedback to our peers
·      To ask good questions to learn more about a topic or a person

Each morning, three students will have 1- 3 minutes to share about their family, using their picture as a starting point. They could talk about:

·      Who is in their family/how many people are in their family
·      What they love best about their family
·      What they like to do with their family
·      Where their family moved from (if not from Calgary originally)

Here is a schedule for their sharing. We will do some writing in class this week and next about our family and this will come home early next week in case they would like to practice. They are welcome to use their writing as a starting point but they can change/edit it as they want.   This doesn’t need to be anything too formal. This is just a chance for students to practice speaking to others in a safe environment and for students to learn to ask good questions to get more information.  We will continue to do this through the year with various topics.

Nov. 17	Nov. 18	Nov. 21	Nov. 22	Nov. 23
Kyle Bosco Justin Carter	Adam Ramish Jayden Isra Thomas	Tandra Ella Catrrina Sam	Everee Zoe Chloe Kieran	Makennia Juliette Ben Katerina

Coming Up:

• Veterans' Food Drive this week. Send in non-perishable food donations if you can. 
• Remembrance Day Ceremony tomorrow at 9:30am
• No School Friday
• Photo Orders due Nov. 15
• Photo retakes Nov. 15
• Poinsettia orders due Nov. 21.

Nov. 8

As part our Magnets unit, we are continuing to work on a design thinking problem.  We have defined our problems in our classroom that we think we can improve and we have come up with different ways to solve those problems. Today we started the prototyping stage of this process and we are actually creating models of our ideas. During this stage, we actually get to MAKE our ideas.  We are using a growth mindset throughout this process as we quickly realized that some of our ideas wouldn't work.  Instead of giving up, we worked together and  came up with new, creative solutions.  Keep posted for updates on our prototypes!

  

    

Coming up:

• Veterans' Food Drive this week. Send in non-perishable food donations if you can. 
• Remembrance Day Ceremony Thursday at 9:30am
• No School Friday
• Photo Orders due Nov. 15
• Photo retakes Nov. 15
• Poinsettia orders due  Nov. 21.