Another week…another weekend!

I’d like to thank all the families for coming out this past week to chat about your child’s progress. It’s so nice to connect with families, set some goals for the upcoming term and really build strong relationships.

It was also very exciting to introduce See Saw to you!! I think this is a great tool for students, families and teachers! Over half the families have already signed up!! I’ll be trying out the “Announcement” feature soon to make sure it works how I think it is supposed to! Please feel free to comment on your child’s work. We will also be using See Saw in the computer lab a few times a cycle so students can read their comments and comment on the work of their classmates. We are trying to focus on proper sentence structure when typing, as we would if we were using pencil and paper. We will continue to review and discuss what makes a “good comment”.

About Last Week!

-Book orders arrived and the next one is due on December 1st

-Turkey Toonie Tuesday started and will run for the next few weeks. Thank you to those families who made a donation

-We are about half way through Frank Einstein! The book has inspired one of our students to create his own robot for Genius Hour (more info about Genius Hour further down this post!)

-We started a mini inquiry (or minquiry!) about the Fitzgerald-Trouts/Esta Spalding. As a group we think she needs to continue writing books for the series and have come up with some suggestions for her. At first it was simply  a writing exercise…but in this age of technology why wouldn’t we at least try to connect with the author (Spalding)?!! Let’s see where this takes us!

-Our final rocks and Minerals project with Murray is underway. Our time with him is up at the end of December (there are actually only about 10 more sessions with him)!! Groups have been formed based on interest and questions we still want to answer. I’m really looking forward to making connections between rocks and Minerals and the world around us. This will naturally lead into our study of habitats for January!

-Thanks to Tony and Derrick for bringing in a HUGE map for the kids! It was so cool to have such a large map of Canada in the gym. We even got to walk on it!! The kids had a blast locating places they’ve traveled. They learned about some important “map features” . It was a pretty neat experience!

-Murray did a really fun Yoga class with us last week. I had the pleasure of coming in at the end of class when the group was sharing what they had created. The task was to build something inspired by Yoga. Some kids had Lego people doing poses, some created indoor/outdoor Yoga spaces and some reflected on Yoga being Peace. Hearing how the kids described their creations and connections was truly beautiful

-Ask me…this week’s question reads “Ask me to print the alphabet using my best printing (uppercase and lowercase letters). This task is part of our ‘printing program’. We are going back to basics for a bit before starting cursive writing. If I can’t read what your child is saying it makes it difficult for them to show their thinking!

Looking Ahead!

-We are going to be transferring what we know about place value into multi digit addition and subtraction with regrouping. This is often an area where kids “get stuck”. We will work through problems in many different ways to help each child feel confident and comfortable!

-Genius Hour! I know I’ve mentioned this a bit before, but here’s a refresher if you need one! Genius Hour is when students have voice and choice to learn about something they’re interested in. So far we’ve been brainstorming ideas and watching videos to help inspire us! It’s a year long project, so we aren’t looking for a topic that will only require an hour of research! Some of the students have written me a proposal for their project and are starting to do some research.

Watch this video to learn a bit mire about the idea of Genius Hour! It’s a great video minus the use of the word “geeky” 🙁

There is a chance your child will want to work on their project at home. This is totally fine with me as long as they still have things to work on during Genius Hour at school (Day 2 from 2:30-3:30 is our scheduled working time as of now)

I can’t wait to see what they will come up with!!! Again…have any special talents we can tap into?!?!! Let us know!!!

Have a great weekend!

Until next time,

Danielle