Monthly Archives: April 2018

And then it was May!!

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Hi Everyone!!

Just like that we are headed into May! Wow!!

-I hope you all enjoyed the production of We Are Monsters last week!! So much goes on “behind the scenes” for these musicals to take place and all the hard work by students, staff and parent volunteers is greatly appreciated! Those catchy songs are still in my head!!

-Our 30 Day Outdoor Challenge is in full swing! This past week we: did our observation stations with 122 & 126 (twice), had Yoga with Murray, Phys.Ed with Mr. Strachan, writer’s notebook time, math and a scavenger hunt! I’m excited to see what this week will bring for us! Please remember to dress for the weather. We are going out rain or shine!

-The 30 Day Outdoor Challenge is the Ask Me question for this week too! Continue to track the time you spend outside before/after school. What kinds of things are you doing? How does committing to more time outdoors make you feel? Let me know by either posting a comment on Seesaw or writing a comment in the Home Reading folder

-We are looking forward to a more ‘normal’ week at school! Last week was full of interruptions and special events. This week we will go about business as usual!

-Reminder: The Grade 4 Book Club (Flora & Ulysses) will meet tomorrow at lunch in Room 123. We will provide a little treat for the group, however feel free to bring your own treat if you’d rather. Please be mindful of allergies when you pack your lunch as we have students with dairy, egg, nut, kiwi and fish allergies within our group

-May Book Orders have been sent home. Please have any orders you’d like to make sent in (to me or through the Scholastic website) by May 8

-On Friday we are having our first of 3 “We Belong” vertical group activities. An email was sent on about a special request for the May 4 meeting:

-There is no Day 2 this week so that means no Genius Hour. We will however be sharing our projects with our buddies on Thursday to help them get started on their own Genius Hour journey!

-Our 30 day pledges have been very well received! The WSD has been sharing our project which has helped the tweet I made to promote our project reach more than 1500 people! Great job guys!!

-Run Club starts on Tuesday, May 1!! If your child showed an interest in joining they were sent home with a note on Friday. Please sign and return that note ASAP. Need a note? Just ask! If you’re interested in joining us (walking, running, helping with supervision) please come out! Hope to see you at 8:10 Tuesday morning!

Have a great rest of your weekend!

AND…

#GoJetsGo

Option…wear white/jets gear on the above dates!

Until next time,

Danielle

Happy Earth Day!!

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Hello Everyone!

I’m so excited to be writing this as the sun is shining and the temperature is on its way to 18 degrees! It looks like a perfect day to celebrate Earth Day!

Here is a little recap of the past 2 weeks at school and a glimpse of what to expect this week. I needed a little blogging break last weekend. I had “Winnipeg Jets brain”!

-Our 30 day pledge posters and sign up sheets are on the bulletin boards and people have already started to sign up! The students did a great job creating their posters and we are very excited to make a difference within the Montrose community! The WSD twitter account saw a post I made to spread the word about our action plan and they were inspired by our efforts. They asked if they could post that information on their account!

Take a look! WSD Twitter “moment”

     

They also included a few photographs that Murray posted about our inquiry morning last week! Great job Room 123 and Montrose kids 🙂

-The Ask Me question has to do with the calendar that was sent home earlier last week. If you are in Grade 4  you will remember this from last year and if you are in Grade 3 you may have noticed us doing this last year…it is our 2nd Annual 30 Day Outdoor Challenge! The ‘school version’ begins on Monday and the ‘home version’ begins when you see fit! At school we will spend at least 30 minutes per day outside. We will play, read, explore, work, whatever we decide to do! At home you can use the calendar to track what you’ve been up to. If you wish to share photos please do! You can email me or send photographs through Seesaw or Instagram. Have fun 🙂

-The inquiry morning with 122, 126 and Murray was very interesting! We had a lot of objects put out for students to write down their wonderings and things that they noticed. We also had a book browse and a Maker challenge. This will kick off our next inquiry study about plants, soils and the connections to all living things 🙂

The Seesaw reflections that the students did really helped me see the direction they’d like to take the inquiry. Some of the common themes are bees, planting seeds, compost and hybrid fruit. I bet we can come up with some fun ways to learn about these exciting topics 🙂

-We finished The Wild Robot by Peter Brown! It took us 12 school days…that’s pretty amazing! I’m happy to report that the class really enjoyed the book, even those who didn’t like it at the beginning! It is a good reminder that sometimes  you need to keep reading. If you give up on a book too early you might just miss out on something that you could really enjoy! We are currently reading A Boy Called Bat by Elana Arnold. April is Autism Awareness month and we are reading this book to remind us about some of the things Lori shared with us about Autism. It is a great book and I look forward to continuing reading it this week!

-We are almost finished our Time for Times book and we have completed our Mental Math Dictionary. The students are working hard learning their multiplication facts and knowing that if they do not know a fact that they can skip count, start from a fact they do know, turn the fact around (3×9 can be thought of as 9×3 so you only have to double 9 and add one more group).

-We Are Monsters! It is the week of our school musical!! Tomorrow afternoon (Monday) is the dress rehearsal. Students are asked to dress and do their hair as outlined in the emails that have been sent by the costume committee. Jocelyn has also sent a reminder email on Friday! The performance times for Wednesday, April 25 are at 10:00, 1:30 and 7:00. Please wear your outfit and have your hair done on this day too. I have a parent volunteer to help me with make up on Wednesday morning. I’d love a second set of hands if anyone is able to join us. The stage is nearly set and looks great! I cannot wait for the show! Still need tickets? I’m pretty sure the evening show is sold out, but there are tickets available for the morning and afternoon performances 🙂

That’s it for now. I hope you enjoy your Earth Day. I’m headed to the park with Hudson and later I’m going to a special Earth Day Yoga class. I look forward to hearing  how you celebrated!

Until next time,

Danielle

#GoJetsGo

April Snow…Just Has To Go!!

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Hi Everyone!

I’ve heard that April showers bring May flowers, but this April snow just has to go!! Anyone else think we’d have more signs of Spring by now? I had this nice picture in my mind that I’d go away for Spring Break and come back to puddles instead of snow hills. Oh well…it’ll happen when it happens I guess.

I enjoyed hearing about everyone’s breaks. Whether you went away or relaxed I’m sure it felt great to take a bit of a break. Now that we are back it seems impossible to think that there are less than 3 months before summer break begins. We have so much to learn and discover until then and we aren’t wasting any time!!

Here is a recap of last week!

-We started a new book called The Wild Robot (by Peter Brown)

We have mixed reviews about the book so far (we are about 100 pages in). Some kids are really enjoying it, some are waiting to get “hooked”, some have expressed that it isn’t their favourite. I’m so glad that kids are comfortable enough to share their true feelings. I am not offended nor do I take it personally if kids don’t love the books I choose to read to them. I’d love for every kid to fall in love with every book I read and recommend, BUT it just isn’t realistic. I do put a lot of thought into what I choose to read and the kids totally understand why I chose this one. Have them share what’s happening so far!!

-The grade 4 Book Club is in full swing. If you are having difficulty finding a copy of


please let me know and I’ll see what I can to do help. I think I’ve had a chance to reach out to all the kids from 123, but I know students from other classes were having some trouble finding a copy. We have 21 kids on our book club list! This is more than expected…so there is a bit of a book shortage in the city! Reminder: we meet once, on April 30, at lunch, to meet/eat and discuss the book!!

-Book Clubs with 122 and 126: This is part of the Ask Me question for this week (posted on Seesaw). We have 73 students split into 12 groups that are led by 6 adults! The students seem to be excited about doing these book clubs and let me tell you…I am too! We meet for an hour on Days 1 and 3, then can use a half hour on Day 5s as a work/‘ketchup’ time. Ask your child about the book they are reading, who is in their group and who their book club leader is, etc. We will meet until the end of May and this will replace our WTW sessions. Therefore there won’t be spelling words coming home on a regular basis anymore. We will be doing spelling in other formats for the rest of the year.

-Multiplication Fun: We’ve been having some fun with multiplication this week. Some of the work we’ve been doing includes crack the code puzzles, games and creating our own “colour by number” sheets (multiplication version). It’s a fun way to learn basic facts and students can work on facts at different paces and challenge themselves as they are ready. 2 digit multiplication will be next for those students who are ready. (Below is an example of the type of puzzle we’ve been doing, but is different from the actual puzzles we’ve been solving. It is one that I found online  from https://www.math-salamanders.com/).

-Earth Day Inquiry: I shop a clothing line called 10 Tree (Disclaimer: this is by no means an endorsement for 10 Tree) and was sent an email about an Earth Day initiative. The email was a really neat idea that I wanted to share with the kids. Turns out they liked it too. I’d like to share it with you as well because it serves as the inspiration for our next inquiry project. We are in the planning stage but hope to have our newest (interactive) bulletin board up and running soon!! We plan on using the following ideas (AND 8 more of our own) to inspire our school community to make a pledge and make a change for 30 days! We have been talking a lot about changes we’d like to see and how we also need businesses to make initiatives to help people to become more aware. #BeTheChangeYouWishToSeeInTheWorld

Ten Tree Pledge

-The Twitter!: I had many things to share via Twitter with the kids. We had a great time scrolling through my “likes” and seeing what happened around the Twitter world while we were on Spring Break!

-Book order was sent in on Friday and should arrive next week

What’s Coming Up Next!

-I am away on Monday morning for PD (but will still be in the building). We have a substitute who is new to the school and I expect to hear lovely things from her upon my return. Please show her a warm Montrose welcome 🙂 #BAM

-Swimming lessons for Grade 4s start on Wednesday. The kids are divided into two groups. Half of our class is going with 122 in the first session and the other half is going with 123 in the second session. The first group will eat lunch a per usual and the second group will eat lunch when they return. Please send your child to school with everything they will need for the pool. As for the grade 3s…we will think of something fun to do 😉

-We will try again with Genius Hour this week (also on Wednesday). Last week we had some challenges with remembering how to be active listeners and how to demonstrate expected behaviours. I look forward to seeing a positive change this week 😊

-Book Clubs will happen on Tuesday and Thursday morning (9:30-10:30)

 

-In the next few months we have a LOT of birthdays coming up. I’d just like to remind families of allergies that we have in the class and in the school. Please be mindful of kids with allergies as you decide if you’d like to bring in a treat to celebrate a birthday. We want all students to be able to take part in all class activities and student safety is our top priority. Bringing a birthday treat is not mandatory and many students do not bring in anything at all, so please do not feel like you have to send something in. We’ve also been talking a lot about products that have extra (wasteful) packaging and therefore we are encouraging families to consider this before providing a snack. We are challenging families to send in snacks that contribute as little waste as possible (which also relates to snacks with the most Heath benefits…fruit, vegetables, etc.). Thanks for your cooperation!

-Whiteout!!! Let’s support our Winnipeg Jets and wear white during the playoffs! Whether you are a hockey fan or not, you might feel yourself getting into the spirit that the community the Jets brings to our city. #GoJetsGo

Have a great rest of your weekend!

Until next time,

Danielle