Hi Everyone!
I’m not sure about you…but after such a busy week I’m super excited it’s the long weekend! I hope you all have a chance to relax and spend some time outdoors. That’s my plan anyway!!! Oh…and read. I just started a new book and I’d love to finish it this weekend!!!
Here is a recap of our busiest week yet!!
-Genius Hour is still going strong. Some students are almost ready to present their first project! As students finish their projects they will share and start a new inquiry! The next Genius Hour work period will be on Wednesday. Please come prepared to work!!
-The Circle of Life performance was truly amazing. I hope that those of you were able to attend enjoyed it as much as we did. Seeing things come together was such a neat experience. Now I know what 1000 kids on stage looks like! Thanks to Ms V for all her hard work. She did an awesome job teaching us 17 songs with coordinating actions. That is quite a feat!!! I’m also pleased to report that your children were fantastic Montrose ambassadors. They did everything we asked of them and more! Great job remembering to arrive early, wear the black shirts, hair up and pack a lunch!!!! #BAM
-We had a fun, yet relaxed Valentine’s Day! The students came up with so me pretty fun valentine holders and showcased the 4Cs as they created and executed their plans! We made kindness cards for each other, exchanged cards and had a few treats. I opted out of giving traditional cards and put up a picture of a heart I found in nature and wondered what the reaction would be…to my surprise the class told me I brought enough joy to them and they didn’t need a card. How sweet! I’ll take it 😉 !!! A few students chose to make their own homemade cards and some wrote their name in handwriting. Good job everyone!
-Winter Fun Day was postponed again. The weather hasn’t been kind to us 🙁 I’ve heard it might be this upcoming Thursday and will confirm that later on this week.
-Art with 122: The art looks amazing. Anyone who has missed or not completed a task will have a “make up day” sometime very soon!
-The green screen project with Murray is…what should we say…a work in progress! We have 3 videos completed BUT we have a few students who know how to create these mini movies (which contain the love letters to our favourite food) and they will work with all the other students to finish those up next week! These will be posted to Seesaw…you are in for quite a treat!
-We are about 70 pages into the Magic Misfits. The kids seem to like it so far and we hope to read more next week!
-The Ask Me question is posted on Seesaw. I’ve attached the blog link again so you can access this easily and get some ideas. Basically the kids and I thought that after a busy week it was fitting to write our Top 3 Things About the Week! Please write the responses in the Home Reading folder!! Speaking of which…no luck in bringing the Home Reading folders more regularly in February 🙁 Sometimes I don’t see folders for weeks and weeks. I like to know what the kids are reading at home so I can make suggestions for reading material, have them make reading suggestions to other kids, see if regular reading is happening and the folder is a great tool for taking notes back and forth between home and school. It’s a communication tool that helps keep things organized. Let’s put forth a better effort in using our folders for these purposes. Also, if you haven’t updated your monthly reading graphs please do so. It’s much, much, much easier to record the monthly reading IF we are current with the daily recording. Please remember that the students are more than capable of recording their own data and being responsible for bringing the folders daily.
What’s Up for Next Week?!
-No school on Monday (Happy Louis Riel Day)!!
-Tuesday: Students in Helen and Ms Solomon’s WTW groups have spelling tests. They were asked to transfer their words this week and in case they have forgotten I have attached the word lists to Seesaw. The cherry group has a test on Thursday (unless there is Winter Fun Day) and the word lois has also been sent via Seesaw. The actual list and instructions of how the test will be done will be sent home Tuesday.
-Math: Some students have brought home some subtraction work to complete or correct. Grade 4s are to do any 15 questions per page of the subtraction and Grade 3s are asked to do 8 questions per page! Please have the books ready to hand in on Tuesday!!
-Time! We talked about what we know about time and here is what we came up with…
Some students are able to tell time easily and some cannot yet read the clock. Check in with your child this weekend to see what your child knows about time! It seemed like a good “time” to bring my this up since the Olympics are on and we need to know what time it in in Korea!!
Here are a few flashcards and a new magnetic clock we have at school to help learn how to tell time (not to be confused with ‘times’ which is actually known as multiplication;)
-The grade 3s will start working in their Mental Math Dictionaries and start to do multiplication this week. So far we know that multiplication is repeated addition. It is easier to learn how to think of numbers in groups than it is to skip count. It is also time saving AND sometimes in math we look for shortcuts and get to be “lazy”! Choosing to multiply instead of skip counting and doing repeated addition is one of those opportunities!! Being able to skip count by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 10s will be very helpful for now. Need some practice at that? Spend a few minutes each day skip counting on paper or orally!
-The grade 4s will continue to work in their Mental Math Dictionaries with Helen. They will also review subtraction and work through some reminders for multiplication before they jump into some new concepts.
-For health we are ready to talk about the food groups and learn to read nutritional labels. Please send in any labels you can so we have an assortment to choose from. We will talk about calories, vitamins, serving size, etc. We will also talk about what kind of nutrition athletes need in order to train and compete!
-On Tuesday we will have some time in the lab to do some research for our animal/habitat projects. IF you have your recording sheet at home please bring it back to school. Throughout the week we’ve seen some cool tweets about animals and the impact humans have on their life. I’m attaching a link that Helen found that has some good information on many different animals! Feel free to check it out!
That’s it for now!!! Have an excellent weekend!
#GoJetsGo
Until next time,
Danielle