Tag Archives: environment

Week 2!

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Hello Everyone!

Week 2 is in the books! I hope everyone feels a little more settled in their routines and is finding some time to relax this weekend!

Here is a recap of last week!

-We started our new Question of the Day morning routine! Each day a question is posted for the students to answer. It should only take a few minutes to do, but I feel like it might help with developing a morning routine that prepares us for the school day. Before the students start to answer their question they get unpacked and settled. So far…we have been doing better than ANY other class I have taught with bringing the purple Communication Folders (aka Home Reading). Keep up the good work!! FYI-in case your child has not shared it with you…we have filled out our September calendar. Please check it over for important dates and feel free to add anything you think we may have missed OR something that is important for you as a family to remember!

-We are on a roll with The Problim Children! I love it when students ask if I could read for longer or ask me to read for a second time in the same day! There are so many benefits to reading to your child. These kids are NOT too old to be read to. They love it. It is a great opportunity to model what good readers do, to teach/learn new vocabulary and discuss comprehension šŸ™‚

-We are getting the hang of those Number Puzzles! If you are finding the Puzzle Helpers (at home practice) a challenge, please let me know. I’m here to help!

-Back by popular demand….zentangles (images created by repeated patterns)! Each year I attempt to do something different for the Inquiry Log covers and I am outvoted! I am very excited for these projects to be finished. They are all going to be amazing and unique. BUT you’ll have to wait until Meet the Teacher night to see them!!!

New to zentangles? Here are some examples!

-It is International Dot Day today (Saturday!). They say Dot Day is September 15ish…because it is more important to celebrate the message than to celebrate on the actual day! “Just make a mark and see where it takes you”. I love it! We often talk about Dot Day in the form of art, but it can really be about anything! Take a risk, try something new, test out an idea…see what happens!

Dot Day Song

-I attended the Manitoba Nature Summit with Lori on Friday/Saturday. We had the BEST time learning about the importance of outdoor play, free play, even ‘risky’ play. We heard from some excellent keynote speakers and even participated in a mini forest school session. We have so many ideas to bring to Montrose…stay tuned for exciting news!

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What’s Happening This Week?!

-It’s the Terry Fox Run @Assiniboine Park this Sunday (tomorrow). Registration begins at 8:30 and the walk/run begins at 9:30. Since I am already registered I won’t be there too early, but Hudson and I will be there rain or shine. We’d love to see you there too!!!

-No School on Monday

-We are beginning some common work times with 122 & 126 this week. During these common working times students will be in mixed groupings and may or may not be working in 123 (with em). We really enjoy working together as a 3/4 team and find that the students create a great bond with one another when we use this approach. Each term we change the groupings so the students can work with a variety of other students and teachers too!

-We will finish our zentangles and start another art project as well! Earlier this week I had asked for driftwood for our next project. If you were able to find any, could you please send it in on Tuesday for us? Thanks!!

-On Tuesday we have a special presentation from Ms Mary! Mary is from the Green Action Centre. She will be doing about 8 presentations for us throughout the year. Each presentation has an environmental focus to help us become more aware and more educated to make more environmentally friendly choices! Our first talk will be about Littlerless Lunches!

-The 21 students (7 from each room) that were randomly selected for the farm field trip will be away on Wednesday, September 19. Please dress for the weather and pack a lunch. Again, if your child is not coming to the farm, he/she will be going on a different field trip later this year. Once details have been finalized I will let you know what we will be doing/where we are going! Lori and I are going to the farm with the kids. The rest of the 3/4 students will be doing something fun too…any guesses?!

-Book orders will be submitted on Thursday. Thanks for the orders so far! Once I order it will take 1-2 weeks for the books to arrive. *Is anyone interested in being my book order helper? The task consists of putting together the orders once a month. It is an “at home” job. Let me know if you want to help us out with that!

-Monday, September 24 is Meet the Teacher night! Order forms for pizza were sent home on Friday (with the oldest sibling). I am looking forward to chatting with you whether you are new or returning to the 123 community!

-The Ask Me question is now up! Please let me know via typed or oral comment what you have done to connect with nature this weekend! Haven’t been outside yet?! There is still lots of time šŸ™‚

Until next time,

Danielle

Sunday Funday!

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Hello Everyone!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend! Iā€™m sure the beautiful weather got many of you outdoors! Itā€™s hard to believe that it has been so hot already and itā€™s still only May!

Hereā€™s a little recap of last week at school

-Outdoor Classroom Day! We spent day outside doing mostly what we do inside, with the exception of technology! Some of the kids loved it, some liked it and some would rather spend a shorter time outside (like we are doing for our 30 for 30). It. Was. Hot! Which was part of the reason some kids didnā€™t love it (and why some did)! Itā€™s important for us to get outside regardless of the weather. We canā€™t spend 5 months inside because itā€™s too cold…or 3 months in br sure itā€™s too hot! We just need to adjust to the weather! On Tuesday we moved around to find shade, took a break inside for lunch and choir and made sure to drink plenty of fluids. The community clean up and seed planting seemed to be on the list of favourite activities. Thank you to the 3/4 team for taking on this outdoor adventure. A big thank you to the students who are self proclaimed ā€œnot outdoorsy peopleā€ for not only participating, but making the most of their day

-Our seeds are starting to sprout! Stay tuned via Seesaw to watch the growth process! As the kids notice changes they will snap a photo and label it with any important information and add it to their Seesaw portfolio. This is a great way to talk about this experiment at home!

-We have another growing experiment happening at school! This is also your Ask Me question for the weekend! Together we brainstormed different places to Ā grow plants in the room where the amount of sunlight would vary and provide different watering options for our pumpkin seeds. We have settled on 6 different ideas and now you need to make a prediction and comment what seeds you think will have the best growth (via the Seesaw post). We have charts up around the room to track the watering schedule and growth. This should be fun!!

-Our Book Clubs are almost over!! We will finish reading/making this week and then share our experiences and recommendations with the other groups. Groups that are making iMovie trailers will have their video posted to Seesaw as they are finished. What a fantastic app! The kids are doing a great job creating the trailers and making the connection that itā€™s actually the technology version of writing a book recommendation!

-Divide and Conquer! We are working through division, fractions and decimals right now! These are often the concepts that students ā€œfearā€ the most…until we get going. Then they realize that we use these skills in our everyday lives and that knowing how to add/subtract/multiply and understanding place value all really help! However, some students are realizing that not having recall for the multiplication facts is affecting their speed for learning the basic facts for division. By now we should be able to recall the facts for 2 to 20, 5 to 50, 10 to 100, 3 to 30 and 4 to 40. The students may still be developing the answers for the remainingĀ facts, but they should be able to determine them using a strategy they know. Take a few minutes each day to listen to your child skip count or do flashcards. Itā€™s will help with their confidence 😊

Whatā€™s happening this week?!

-Family Life is starting! You all should have received a note to give you the heads up. Helen is working with the grade 4s and I will be working with the grade 3s. In grade 3 we will talk about personal safety and families. The grade 4s will learn about growth and development in changing bodies.

-We Belong Vertical Groups #3! Our final session will happen on Tuesday! The students will rotate to whichever activity they havenā€™t done yet. I believe our cluster will be going to the treaty activity.

-We will continue our daily edits, listen to Wishtree and post our May reading and writing samples. It will also be days 23-27 of our 30 for 30 challenge!!

-The 30 day environmental pledges should be completed by now. We will be checking in with the school and community to ask if theyā€™ve completed their pledge and then take our posters down. We generated a lot of interest and many important conversations. Well done 123!!

That covers it for this week! Iā€™m sad not to be ending this post with a #GoJetsGo but our team has a great season and we will be ready for a new run to the cup for 2019!

Until next time,

Danielle

Lest We Forget

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What a great Remembrance Day service today. If you were able to attend, I’m sure you would agree that the 1/2s did a great job putting on the assembly and ALL the kids sounded lovely. A special thank you to Ms V for always having the kids ready to perform. She truly has a gift šŸ™‚

We talked a lot about Peace, Kindness, Poppies and Remembrance Day this week. It is so important to honour and respect those who gave their lives and have allowed us to live our lives freely. We want to spread the message of kindness and to give everyone a “piece of peace”.

*The Ask Me question this week says: “Ask me about Remembrance Day”. Write/draw about the conversations you had as a family šŸ™‚

Let’s recap other parts of our week:

-Our plastic bag research/ideas for a positive change was a great activity. We had some fantastic discussions and possible solutions to the plastic bag problem. What really stuck out to the students was how many plastic bags are used each second around the world (160 000) and how many animals die each year from eating or being caught in the bags (1 million birds and 100 000 sea turtles and other animals). We talked about plastic bags being “evil”-but why were plastic bag invented? We learned that plastic bags were produced in 1977 as an effort to stop paper bags from being used. The number of trees being cut was becoming a problem. People then did not know that there was a big problem with their solution! Another thing to note is that the intent of plastic bags was for them to be multi-use, not single-use. We have some options! You use plastic bags? Ok…now reuse them! Use them for groceries on another day, to pick up dog waste, as a trash can liner, or donate them to a second hand store. If you can’t do any of those suggestions, recycle them at your grocery store (they cannot be recycled in your recycling bin at home). Don’t use plastic bags? Keep using your reusable cloth bags, bins or boxes…Keep practicing environmental stewardship!

We can link this to our 6Rs of Room 123! Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Respect, Repeat! Let’s make a positive change!

-Choose your own math time! We opened up some new math manipulatives and let me tell you…it sure was exciting! Most of the resources are magnets or dice and deal with place value, time and money. We also have some fraction magnets (for later on). The challenge is to create some sort of game or activity using the new resources that reflects a math skill we’ve been working on. This is something we will be doing regularly. It is a fun way to model and communicate our math thinking

-Frank Einstein: Well we are about 60 pages into our new book. This new series has definitely sparked an interest in some of our young readers! Frank Einstein is a scientist who has ‘invented’ robots who can actually think for themselves! There is a lot of scientific language, diagrams of inventions and characters with names resembling actual scientists! We left off with someone coming to the door of Frank’s lab…who will it be?!!?

-Happy Birthday Winnipeg! Many of us didn’t realize that it was Winnipeg’s birthday on November 8! Winnipeg became a city in 1873…making our great city 144 years old!

Looking forward!

-The book order should arrive early next week. The December order is due on December 1 to make sure we get them before the holidays!

-Turkey Toonie Tuesdays are back! Please send in a toonie if you can!

-See Saw: We are getting more familiar with See Saw and will be ready to invite parents when you come in for conferences next week. I think you are going to love this tool as much as the kids do! Thanks for your patience as we tackle learning something new together!

-Report cards go home on Monday! You will also receive your appointment time for your child’s conference. If the appointment time does not work, please call the office or come see me to make an alternate arrangement šŸ™‚ *Reminder: There is no school on Friday

I look forward to seeing you all next week!

Until next time,

Danielle

November News!

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Another weekend already?! This week went by even more quickly that last week!!

Let’s recap!

*Maker Monday!: It just happened to be Monday when we had Maker time with Murray and the kids coined it Maker Monday (which was fitting and awesome!) Well…it turns out that we love baking AND being able to connect what we’ve learned about rocks and minerals in a new and exciting way! We also enjoyed creating with plasticine of course (which is always a crowd favourite)!

*Hallowe’en 2017!:

We had a really great day on Hallowe’en. Thanks again for bringing in the supplies and for not bringing in any extras at this time. It was our goal to really limit the amount of sugar intake for the kids! If you weren’t able to send in any items this time…don’t worry, there will be more opportunities! Thanks to our parent volunteers for helping out and making sure we had a fun time!

*”Witch” One Doesn’t Belong?!:

We all created a “Which” One Doesn’t Belong (W.O.D.B.) Hallowe’en version (hence…the Witch/Which switch!!)

Can you find at least 3 different reasons why one of the pictures doesn’t belong? The task is to name a square that doesn’t belong (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right) and state why. If one of the squares has a difference…the other 3 have a commonality. For example: the bottom left doesn’t belong because it has been coloured (and the other 3 are not). The top left doesn’t belong because it is the only character that is wearing a hat (the other 3 are not). The bottom right doesn’t belong because it is facing a different direction than the other 3 (they are all facing forward). There may be more…what do you notice? WODB are a fun way to look for patterns. You can use pictures, objects, drawings, numbers, etc. They are great because there are multiple correct answers and you need to use reasoning skills. Try one at home!

*Plastic Bags Galore!: This is just a snapshot of the bags that an anonymous person dropped off for us last week! Basically…they doubled the amount of bags that we had already collected! This was a great math activity! As a class we helped to count the remaining bags. It was important to label the “bags of bags” and try to keep the number of “bags within the bags” a ‘friendly’ number so we could find the total more easily. A great mental math strategy lesson in a real life situation! We collected over 6 600 bags! That is 6 600+ fewer bags in our landfills, blowing in our communities and killing our animals. Way to go Montrosians!! Our plastic bag drive is over…but are there still ways we, as Manitobans, can make an impact on our environment? It is a great chance to practice environmental stewardship and become difference makers!

We read a book called…

It is about the journey of a plastic bag. That bag travelled so far, so quickly. The book had some astonishing facts about plastic bags. We also looked at a website that had even more facts that had our heads spinning. Take a look…

Discussion is to be continued…for a LONG time. We CAN and WILL make a difference!

 

This leads me to…

*Ask Me Question: This week’s question says “Ask me about the plastic bag project”. It is my hope that students and parents have a conversation about the book we read, facts we’ve learned, plastic bag collection we did for the past few weeks, etc. If this inspires kids to do more research…even better! Kids come back to school ready to talk about continuing our efforts in environmental stewardship…I’m ready! I am super excited to read what they have to say!!!

Getting ready for next week!

*You guessed it…the plastic bag conversation will be happening for sure!

*We are ready to start our third read aloud book of the year! This one is called Frank Einstein. There is a series of at least 4 books. Maybe it will inspire some kids to continue reading if they decide they like the first one! (I already bought the 4 they had at the bookstore!)

*The book order is due on Tuesday! Please get those orders in ASAP šŸ™‚

*We will finish up our study of patterns and do some more work on mental math strategies and estimation.

*We’re also working on creating a new bulletin board featuring…Words You “Moose”-t Try! (Moose-t=Must ;)). One of our goals lately has been replacing some of our commonly used words with more exciting words. This is a good strategy to make our writing more interesting to read, not to mention write!

*Students in Helen’s W.T.W. group will have an assessment on Tuesday! (both Salmon and Lilac groups)

*Friday is our Remembrance Day Assembly. It begins at 2:20 and all are welcome to attend.

Ms. V has asked that all students wear a white top and dark bottoms.

*Our November calendar is up! I am trying to get students to use the monthly calendar to keep themselves organized! It is a great tool to use to create some independence, instead of always asking me when important and exciting events are happening!

*Ever heard of See Saw? Not the playground type…but the digital portfolio version?!? Your child may have been talking about See Saw and you are probably wondering what it is all about! AND possibly why you haven’t heard about it from me!! We are starting to use See Saw in Room 123 as a digital portfolio. Once I wrap my head around it a bit more you will receive more information and will be invited to view your child’s portfolio through an app. For now I have included a link for you to look at. This will give you a glimpse, but you will not be able to sign in. My goal is to have everything ready for you at Parent/Teacher conferences on the 16th/17th. This is another new program for me…but I’m doing my best to embrace the new technology!!! The kids are loving it so far (they want me to send you the information….NOW!). I just need to play around with it a bit more so I can hopefully answer some of your questions!

In the meantime…take a look!

See Saw

We are practicing making meaningful comments because that is a feature of See Saw, so please feel free to make a comment on this post as extra practice!

Until next time,

Danielle

The final stretch!

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Good morning and happy Sunday! Ā I am writing this post from SeaTac airport and realizing how I will not be enjoying the time change today! The alarm rang at 4:30 😩 and I won’t get home until 5:30! Oh well! It was all worth it to meet up some friends and experience a new city!! Seattle is a great city. The forecast looked gloomy but it only rained for about 10 minutes (of the whole trip)! One of the coolest things was the amount of Blue Jays fans in the crowd and all over the city. Everywhere we looked there was someone wearing that Blue Jay blue! I hope you could tell on tv just how many fans there were and how exciting it was to have so much support for Canada’s team! I think it is super cool that the whole country supports the Jays even though many fans live very far from Toronto! I saw a sign that read “We spell color without “u”! I thought it was a clever one and really showed some of the friendly 🇨🇦Ā vs 🇺🇸Ā banter!

I’ll try to rotate these pics later!

This gum walk was disgusting!

Space Needle!

Ice cream sandwich and a view!

Market!!

Original Starbucks!!

Osuna Matata! Just before the Jays won!

 

Anyhoo…back to school! I’m sure things were great while I was away 🙂!! Tomorrow is our big field trip to Gimli! Please arrive on time because we are leaving at 9:00. The bus ride will be quite long (about 90 minutes) so we need to make sure everyone uses the washroom before the school bell rings at 8:55. We are asking that all students bring a litter-less lunch so we keep on track with our environmental responsibility and that everyone is dressed for the weather. We will be doing some fun activities that coincide with our enviro inquiry and celebrate a beautiful place we have in Canada that is so close to home. I’m sure it’ll be a great day.

Later on this week we will have our final vertical group Canada 150 session. All kids in 123,124 and 125 will rotate through the two remaining stations. Soon our Canada 150 celebration will also take place. Stay tuned for details!!

This week we will also display our research projects and share some of our knowledge to educate others. I’m sure our Montrose friends will be excited to hear from us! We will also continue with math groups and learning the Robert Munsch plays that we will present near the end of the school year.

It’s hard to believe that it’s time to start wrapping things up already!!

Looking forward to another great week at school!!

Until next time,

Danielle

The Final Weeks!

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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 šŸ™‚

-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. šŸ™‚

-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 šŸ™‚ 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 šŸ™

-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!

Ā 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