Monthly Archives: February 2018

Jam Packed “Half Week”!

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Hello Everybody!

I’ve decided that this week was more like a half week! Let me explain that! No school on Monday, half the class absent on Tuesday and Wednesday, Winter Fun Day all afternoon on Thursday and a pretty regular Friday! I think if you add that up it left us with a “half week”! Don’t get me wrong…that time we had together was very well spent!

Let’s Recap!

-Green screen projects are about 2/3s completed and we’ve posted the finished projects on Seesaw. I love the parent comments!! If your child doesn’t have a video posted yet, it is likely because he or she was absent at some point of the week or we simply ran out of time. Don’t worry…more are coming! Thanks to the students who have taken on this leadership role. Your enthusiasm is greatly appreciated!

-Research projects on our animal/habitats is going really well. I think we could use one more day of research and then can start writing about our animals and where they live!

-We have found some really great tweets about animals, habitats, adaptations, human impact (positive and negative) and natural disasters. It’s my hope that your child shares some of this information with you at home!

-WTW was a bust this week! We cancelled on Tuesday since 25/73 students were missing (and a teacher and an EA!) and on Thursday it was Winter Fun Day. Tests will happen on Monday…for sure! Please review the words since it has been awhile!

-Grade 3s started their Mental Math Dictionaries. Ask your child what it means to “Use 10 as a Referent when Estimating”

-We are making progress with telling time! Please continue to practice at home. Ask your child what time it is and how many minutes until the next hour. It will help them build confidence with telling time and it only takes a few seconds!

-It was Support Staff Appreciation Day at Montrose! We are so fortunate to have an amazing team of clerks, EAs and custodians. Room 123 kids each made a personalized card for each of the support staff to thank them for their hard work. A kind word can go such a long way 🙂

-We had a lot of fun learning how to read nutrition labels. The kids are learning what those labels mean and I wouldn’t be surprised if they start looking at everything in your cupboard or tell you when something is healthy/unhealthy! They may even want to measure their portions out! Please let it happen if you can 🙂 I’ve compiled what we learned and what we brainstormed with Anna a few weeks ago and put it up as the beginning of a new bulletin board!

-This is a nice lead in for the Ask Me question (as also posted on Seesaw). This week’s question asks students to keep a food journal (either Saturday or Sunday). Write down all food that is eaten for the day and record it in the Home Reading folder. Don’t “fake it” and just eat super healthy to impress the teacher 😉 Be honest! We are going to do an activity with this information next week!

-Thanks to everyone who helped create our Olympic themed bulletin board AND to everyone who stopped by to take a look. This has been one of our most successful boards to date! I noticed so many students, staff and parents check it out and talk to each other about Canada’s performance at the Olympics!

Let’s see how many more medals we can get this weekend! Let’s shatter our previous record count!

Some things we’ve learned through the 2018 Olympics:

-How Canada is viewed by other countries

-How the media plays a role in how we receive and interpret information

-How much Math there is in sports! Some of us got very good at reading and understanding decimals as we watched replays of bobsledding, skiing, figure skating, etc.

#GoCanadaGo

Here is the plan for next week…

-Helen and I have planned another round of literature circles for the students. It will run similar to what we did with Rocks and Minerals, but this time it will be about habitats/ecosystems. We will have mixed groups with 122. When you aren’t working with your adult (Helen, Ginny or myself) you will be doing some fun activities with your group members (including “What if you had…animal” art, food chains and ecosystem posters). This will run from Monday to Friday!

-We couldn’t read Magic Misfits with so many of our friends missing…so if you were away don’t worry…you haven’t missed any of the book! We will pick up where we left off next week!

-We will continue our healthy lifestyle inquiry next week as well. I wonder see where it’ll lead us?! One thing for sure is we have discovered a great math connection (that was very evident when looking at portion size). Reading the labels has helped us with fractions, decimals, repeated addition, multiplication, division and percentages! I love making math connections to our everyday lives 🙂

– We will look at some more Inuit culture and language next week and look at this resource I found on Twitter. We will also look more closely at the map of Canada and what is considered Canada’s North.

Inuktut Language Month

-Genius Hour will take place next Thursday (March 1st). Please be prepared to work on your project.

Have a great weekend. Enjoy the beautiful weather (that has been forecasted anyway)…and #GoJetsGo!

Until next time,

Danielle

Louis Riel Weekend!!

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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!

http://www.arkive.org/

That’s it for now!!! Have an excellent weekend!

#GoJetsGo

Until next time,

Danielle

 

Be Prepared (aka Track 7)!!

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Hi!

The theme of this week’s blog post is to be prepared (which is also track #7 on the Circle of Life song list 🙂 ). Next week is a busy week and I just want us to all be in the loop! Reading this week’s blog IS the Ask Me question for the weekend. No other action is required (which was well received by the kiddos!).

So…here we go!

Monday: Day 2

-Today is a pretty normal day! It is Genius Hour from 2:30-3:30! Please be prepared to work on your project and check in with me to talk about what your next steps are. That way I can update any information that I need to about projects, offer suggestions if students need that and also get materials that we might be lacking in the room

-We are also sending home the shirt that students need to wear for the WSD production of the Circle of Life. It is super important that ALL students wear this shirt to school on Tuesday (for more information on the Circle of Life read the “Tuesday” section of this post 😉

Tuesday: Day 3

-Students must arrive to school at 8:40 because we are being picked up for the Concert Hall at 9:00

-What to wear: dark bottoms, black Circle of Life/Wildebeest shirt (provided by the school and sent home on Monday), dark shoes. *Girls are asked to wear their hair in a high ponytail so we can see the back of the shirt during the “Stampede” song. Please use some sort of hair product that helps keep the hair up all day

-Students will be at the Concert Hall all day and will return to Montrose to be dismissed at 3:30 as per usual

-Please send a lunch that your child can easily eat while at the Concert Hall. There is NO access to a microwave nor will there be extra cutlery, etc. Students all need to bring a refillable water container as well. (*Students will bring their backpacks with them to hold lunch bags *Litterless lunches are best)

-There are NO tickets available for the dress rehearsal and afternoon performance. The audience will consist of students from schools around the division

-There are NO extra tickets for the evening performance. Each student has been given 2 tickets to be used as you choose, but everyone in the audience needs their own ticket (no holding small children in your lap, etc.). It is rush seating (doors open at 6:30). Please refer to the map you received in your info packet when dropping your child off at 6:15. It is a stop, drop and go zone! Teacher volunteers (like myself) will be wearing orange shirts and will guide the students into the building and to where they need to be. Outfits are the same as the earlier shows

-The kids have been practicing for months and are ready for the show! I can’t wait to see how it has all come together 🙂

Wednesday: Happy Valentine’s Day! (Day 4)

 

-We are going to be tired today! The plan is to keep the day pretty low key!

-We will do a mini maker activity in the morning where students can create their own Valentine card holder. Please bring your own supplies (including a box if you need one) to make the holder. We have the “standard” supplies like glue, tape, paper, markers, etc. But we do NOT have any boxes collected or special Valentine themed decorations. I’d like students to work from a plan, so at some point between now and Wednesday please create a plan. I know I said you don’t have to write anything for the Ask Me question, but it’s an option to sketch there if you’d like. There may be some time on Monday to plan, but if you want to get that done this weekend I think that would be a great idea! CARDHOLDER “MUST HAVES” 1) an opening for cards 2) your name that is easily noticed

-Yoga and Music are happening as per usual

-We will also each make a “kindness card” for someone in the class (like we did in December). It makes us feel so good to be kind!!! On Monday each student will choose a random name and make a card for that person which they will give on Wednesday

-We’ve talked about using random supplies and making cards or using all the random leftover cards from throughout the years as valentine cards this year. This is NOT a requirement, but an alternative to purchasing new cards. It’s up to you! I’m just always up for promoting ways of reducing and reusing!

-We’ve also talked about making sure we know all the kids names in our class. All students have assured me that they a) still have the name sheet a student sent home to each student with their name in Hawaiian or b) can remember each student and will not forget that we have 25 students in the class. 3 students are going to be absent but I’m sure they’d love a card when they return!

-I’ve suggested that students sign their name in handwriting/cursive if they are able to. We’ve started to do some handwriting in class and doing a signature 24+ times is great practice! This is NOT mandatory…just a suggestion

-Some students have asked if they HAVE to hand out cards. The answer is no, but if you decide to hand out cards then you must to ALL students

-We will hand out cards in the afternoon and watch some Planet Earth videos to see what we can learn about animals and their habitats!

-Treats…we are keeping things really simple, so if you’d like to bring something please let it be healthy and easy. I’d appreciate knowing if you are planning on sending a snack so I can see what is coming in. Thanks in advance!

-We are also going to be doing some writing about our favourite foods THEN using that for something fun with that with Murray on Friday. Start thinking about your favourite food AND how you could describe it in a way to make someone else want to eat it!!!

Thursday: Day 5

-Art with 122 in the morning (FYI: Grade 4s will be painting)

-Winter Fun Day in the afternoon (as far as I know and will confirm this later on next week)

Friday: Day 6

-Phew…at this point we might be exhausted! Today will be pretty “normal” except our surprise fun activity with Murray 😉 Then you’ll get a long weekend to recover!

Other FYIs:

-No WTW tests this week since we actually won’t be even meeting in our WTW groups! Tests will take place the following week

-Some students have chosen to bring their animal/habitat inquiry projects home to work on. This is okay with me, but please bring in the information recording booklet on Monday. I am asking students to write point form notes that we will use to write an informational piece after we complete our research. I am also asking that they write down the name of the websites they are using so we know who to give credit to. Today was our first research day! There was a buzz of excitement in the air for sure. One thing to note is that if a student chose an animal like “bear”, they need to decide what kind of “bear” they are going to research because there are many types of “bears” and they have different types of habitats. I tried to check in with everyone, but if you notice that your child’s topic is not specific, please continue that conversation at home 🙂

-The February book order has been sent in and should arrive next week!

-Olympic themed bulletin board!

It’s a blank canvas! Students have volunteered to do some work on the bulletin board from home! The vision so far is…the sport symbols in Olympic colours, the mascots, the rings, a podium, gold, silver and bronze medals (to keep track of our medal count). Some things that no one has volunteered to make are: a big Canadian flag, flags from countries who are competing, any info on athletes, a schedule of events, the torch or info on Pyeongchang! If you’d like to create something for the board…please do!!

-I hope there were excited kids after Global School Play Day on Wednesday. We are working through getting all our reflections posted on Seesaw! If you get a chance to comment on your child’s Seesaw posts please do! We all love to hear what parents have to say about what we do and learn at school. It’s a great way to build that home/school connection

I think that’s it!! If not…we’ll be in touch!

Enjoy your weekend….Go Jets Go!

Until next time,

Danielle

Welcome February!!!

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February already AND I hear there are 6 more weeks of Winter?! If the next 6 weeks go as quickly as the last 6…it’ll be melted snow and green grass in no time!

Here is a recap of our shortened week!

-The letters the kids wrote to Austin were really great! I’m sure he’s going to be inspired to create even more amazing inventions. I love how the students are starting to see themselves as writers and are able express themselves through the written word

-The last of the addition Math practice was given to the students last Monday (January 29). I’ve written each student a note saying which pages they need to complete by Monday, February 5. We had some time at school to work on the remaining pages and many of the students have already handed their completed work in, while others have chosen to finish on the weekend. If your child does not have any math work with them at home, it should be in my possession, ready to be checked by me! I wanted to give the students lots of time to complete the work and for them to have the responsibility for completing the work by the due date. We have also worked through subtraction with regrouping and practiced our basic facts to help build recall. I urge you to use flashcards for a few minutes each day to develop recall. We watched a new Math Antics video. This one was about polygons! Ask your child what a polygon is!

-We finished Pax!! It was a tear jerker but also a bonding experience for us as a class. I know we are always hoping for a happy ending, but I think Pax ended as it should have. It was happy in its own way. The book also taught us about character development and maybe a little about ourselves!

-We are about half way through Shout Out To The Fitzgerald-Trouts! It’s pretty cool having this sneak peek. I think we’ve found 4 mistakes so far! Esta’s message about editing was pretty valuable. It’s like being detectives as we read these first few chapters!

-The art we’ve done so far is quite beautiful…see for yourself!

-Wednesday was #BellLetsTalk day! We had some important messages to share with each other, the school an the world!

We were very excited to hear that almost $7 million was raised this year and almost $100 million raised to date. Let’s keep talking and listening each day and let everyone know that they matter 🙂

-We got to touch a polar bear skin!!! How cool is that?!

-The Ask Me Question was posted on Seesaw and is to be answered in the Home Reading folder! It’s is all about celebrating reading and coincides perfectly with World Read Aloud day and I Love to Read month! It’s also a good opportunity for the students to practice their oral reading skills and for parents to hear the growth in accuracy, fluency and expression that their child has made. I read some of The Fitzgerald-Trouts without stopping at punctuation and then when only stopping at the end of a line, not at punctuation and then lastly without expression! Let me tell you…it was NOT a hit with my audience. Practice, practice, practice! Take turns reading to each other. It might just be the favourite part of your day too 🙂

-Animal/Habitat inquiry topics have been decided! All students who brought in their top 5 choices were given an animal that they were interested in. Students who didn’t submit any choices have been given a topic and if there are any concerns will have to make arrangements to speak with me. We tried to cover animals from a variety of animal types who live in a variety of habitats.

Upcoming plans!

-We will finish the Fitzgerald-Trouts and begin our next reading adventure…

It’s a great story about belonging…with a little bit of magic!

-Art round #2 starts on Monday! The grade 3s will work with me and the grade 4s will work with Helen! We will learn about the artists and practice their style and the following week we will create our final products!

-Anna (our student teacher) is going to be doing a lesson with us to kick off our next health unit. We’ve talked about a healthy mind for months and I think the students have learned some great strategies to help them cope with anxiety, fear and stress that we experience in our daily lives. We will continue to practice mindfulness each day at 1:00. Mindfulness is called a practice because we need to work on mindfulness just as we would work on skating or math. Some of the kids have asked about the app I use in class. Here it is as an FYI!

The plan is to link having a healthy lifestyle to the Olympics! We can compare what we need for optimal health to that of an athlete! This week we will work on creating a bulletin board to track Canada’s successes in Pyeongchang! #LetsGoCanada

-We will begin our animal inquiry project research in the lab and see where it takes us. That’s the beauty of inquiry. It’s not all planned out…the direction is influenced based on the interest of the students 🙂

-There is no Day 2 this week so therefore there will not be a Genius Hour work period until Monday, February 12th

– Words Their Way (WTW)…students are responsible for bringing home their words after their WTW leader tells them they are finished with the sort. Then they are told when the test day is. It was a coincidence that all groups had a test on the same day last week. Words are sent home as each group completes their tasks. We will try our best to also post words in Seesaw, but ultimately the students are responsible for transferring their words to the Home Reading folders to take home and practice before the test 🙂

-Book orders for February are due on Friday, February 9. It is also Winter Fun Day on Friday afternoon. As we receive more information we will let you know! Thank you for returning the Circle of Life permission slips and for returning tickets if you are not able to attend the evening performance. It’s almost show time!!!!!

Enjoy your weekend!!!l

Until next time,

Danielle