Hello Everyone,

I hope you are enjoying this beautiful weather while it lasts!

Yesterday was the Manitoba Teacher’s Society Professional Development Day (MTSPD Day). Each October all teachers in Manitoba are given the choice of PD they’d like to receive and learn from other educators, authors and public figures. Our grade 3/4 team chose to go to the Science Teachers Association of Manitoba (STAM) PD. Our day consisted of listening to our local meteorologist, John Sauder, speak about his job and also about climate change, doing a session with the Wildlife Haven Rehabilitation Centre, a session with Prairie Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre and a session with the Science coach from Frontier School Division called Big Ideas with Superhero Science. It was a day full of learning and making plans for some of our upcoming Science themes.

What Happened Last Week At School?!

-We did two sessions of our third round of Common Learning Times. On Tuesday we will wrap up the final session of that round and then begin the final round on Thursday (yes we know it’s Hallowe’en!)

-We finished Bat and the End of Everything! That’s it for Bat…for now at least. We are unsure if the author is working on another book for the series, but we are moving onto our next series…the Fitzgerald Trouts!

*Please take a look at the Ask Me question this week as it is about our thoughts about the Bat books!

P.S.-I met an actual Saw Whet owl on Friday and had to share with your because of Bat’s school…Saw Whet School!!!

-We made and revealed our fossils! I hope you enjoyed the video reveals! The students are getting good at using our technology in the class as a way to community and share what we are doing at school!

-Wednesday was Global Take Me Outside Day and we sure did celebrate! It was chilly, but that didn’t stop us from spending about 2 hours outside together for our Outside-a-Thon! There is no bad weather, just poor clothing choices! Great job bringing in your pledges…we still have some time to get them in before the final tally 🙂

-We read all about Super Flex and his experience with Rock Brain! We are just finishing up our backgrounds for a new green screen project….read all about it in the next section of this post!! The students are using the language we have learned from the Social Detective book and from Super Flex. We continue to refer to expected and unexpected behaviours throughout the day and also to some of the “Unthinkables” that come to visit. The project is going great so far and I  look forward to developing things further as we learn more about using the tools we need to be our own Super Flex hero!

-We have started our “Word Work” for spelling. Together as a class we created the document below. This will help us to be organized as we all have different spelling words. Once students have completed 4-6 tasks, and done a ‘pre-test’ with a friend, they can do their assessment with me. The next step will be to get 10 new words. The students might have these words ready to go because they had more than 10 errors from the First Hundred list, or they may need to move onto the Second Hundred words (which I will assess them on). Once we have learned the words they become part of our “No Excuse” words and should be spelled correctly in our everyday writing.

What To Expect This Week:

-New book orders will be going home this week!

-Monday we are doing a special Hallowe’en craft/project! A Montrosian grandmother from the community has gifted us spider plants to repot! Since they are called Spider Plants and since we have Ginny (the greatest crafter in the world!) we are making a spider craft to go with our plant! We will be using washed out milk cartons as our ‘pots’ as a  way to reuse materials. Hallowe’en is on a Day 6 and that is our busiest day of the school cycle, so we wanted to get this in early and not feel rushed on Thursday.

-On Monday we will also be starting our STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) time with Murray and one of the support teachers from the division. They will be working on coding with us! Our time slot is from 9:00-10:30 on Monday. We will have 3 sessions in total (once per cycle).

-We will be using the green screen to put ourselves in our Super Flex backgrounds! If your child brought home their background to finish, please send them back to school on Monday so we can begin the green screen process. On green screen days (Monday and possibly Tuesday if we can’t finish), students cannot wear green (or even blueish or yellowish green) clothing, or they will disappear in the photograph! Since Super Flex is really “US”, we are creating a background that has a Super Flex situation and then using the green screen to put “US” into the image! Some students have expressed an interest to bring in something to wear as part of their superhero persona (capes, etc.). That is fine with me (within reason-which we have talked about as a class), but am leaving the details up to you as a family.

-Hallowe’en Celebration…Students are invited to wear their Hallowe’en costumes in the AFTERNOON on the 31st. In the morning we have business as usual, except Mr. Strachan is turning the gym into….a haunted gym! After that the students have Performing Arts with Erin. In the afternoon the students have French at 1:00 and then we can do some celebrating in the class. We will have some treats that the kids are going to “mine”! Inside the treats there will be precious gems and the gems will be worth different values and they will have to determine how much value their treat has! This is connected to our Rocks and Minerals unit and also gives us a nice chance to have a treat together. For this celebration we are asking families to not send in extra treats as we will have our mining treat and some juice as a snack. We are not having a “party”, but infusing some activities throughout the day/week instead.

Have a really great weekend!

Until next time,

Danielle