Happy Tuesday Everyone!

Last week was another great week being your child’s teacher! I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting about how this year has been so positive for me. I truly feel so lucky to be part of such a great school community 🙂

-We have competed the sharing of our environmental solutions with each other. It was very interesting to see and hear how differently the class interpreted the task. Some of their minds went to mythical solutions, some went to blasting our problems to space, some had other animals helping us out and some went more practical like creating filters, writing letters, developing new water treatment facilities or working together to clean up. What they all had in common was…the BUT! Every solution had something that wouldn’t make it perfect. Maybe the “but” was that rocket ships were expensive to build and send to space or maybe it was that Justin Trudeau might not listen to what we here in Winnipeg had to say. The beauty of all of this was the creativity, the communication and collaboration between students, the critical thinking, the learning, the sharing, the passion! I really loved doing this project. I think it really helped us to think about our environmental responsibilities as Canadians and as people that rely on this planet to sustain life!

-One of our students has started a Garbage Picker Upper Club! It is easy to join…just go out into the community, pick up garbage, recycle what needs to be recycled and make our world a better place! Hudson and I joined! Another example of how what we learn at school is being brought home and then shared with others. 🙂

-Math: We have divided and conquered! Students have completed their division books and have learned that to divide means to share equally! We started from sharing objects into equal groups, then talked about the difference between number of sets and number in each set, learned about divisor, dividend and quotient, introduced what to do when you can’t share equally and have leftovers (which we call remainders) and worked on the relationship between multiplication and division with fact families. Grade 4s also dove into long division! Having recall for basic multiplication facts sure helps with division! The grade 3s have reviewed their answers as a group and now the grade 4s will do the same. We really like checking our work together so we can answer questions and do more examples if needed. Please make sure to have our work at school each day so we can either work on it or check the answers. Sometimes students want to work at home or need more time to complete pages which is good with me as long as we remember to bring the work back each day and that they fully understand the work before they go home 🙂 Next up…fractions!

-Ask Me…Question: A little late on the post but thank you so much for doing the Ask Me question over the weekend. We did an example with how students could research their topic with the topic of plastic straws (after I had read an article on Twitter about the danger of overusing drinking straws). We read through a few websites, found some interesting facts and talked about how to search what we wanted to know. We also talked about how it can be difficult to find facts that you can trust online. This is a skill that we all have to develop as we live in the age of technology! It was important to have the research done so we can plan out the poster that we will hang in the school. We will finish up the poster planning tomorrow so that students are ready to transfer their work to the actual poster board on Thursday and Friday. No facts=no poster 🙁

-30×30: We did it!!! Today was our 30th day of our 30 for 30 challenge! We were great! Rain or shine. Hot or cold. We made it outside for at least 30 extra minutes each day. Today we celebrated with a whole day (almost) outside. Thanks so much to our parent volunteers for transforming our ‘garden’ space. Check out the new view we have outside of Room 123!

 What a great before and after!

We will continue to go out as often as possible and experience the benefits that being outside has to offer!

-Field Trip Update: Reminder that our field trip to Gimli is coming up on Monday (June 12). Please dress for the weather!!! Bring lots of water to drink and we are asking that you bring a litterless lunch. We are going to spend the day outside and enjoy what Gimli has to offer. Throughout the day we will have activities such as: nature sketching, instant challenges, water education (regarding algae, litter, etc.), organized games, free time and a community walk. I am away on Thursday/Friday so please email me if you have an questions. We are leaving right at 9:00 on Monday so arrive at school on time!! Can’t wait!

Have a great rest of the week! I’ll try to post some pictures of my trip to Seattle to watch the Blue Jays!!

Until next time,

Danielle