It is hard to believe that we are already headed into June and thinking about the end of the year. It seems like yesterday that I was applying for this job and meeting this lovely group of students. I have enjoyed this year so, so, so much AND it isn’t over yet! We still have a lot of very exciting things planned over the next 5 weeks.

Here is just a brief overview of what will be happening…so you are in the know!

-Maker Days: We are in the middle of making models of creative solutions to environmental problem (pictures of our progress below!), followed by choosing practical solutions that we can implement right way.

Pretty amazing 🙂 This is what the Ask Me question for this weekend was…to talk about the problem and the solution with our families!

We will also have a maker day for creating musical instruments for our sound unit and another maker day where we will build Lego cars with magnets attached to them. We will be ‘racing’ the cars using the forces that attract and repel! I love the maker culture we have created this year. I remember being the teacher who did a big maker project once a year because the kids loved it. Now I think…ummm the kids love it, so why would I only do it once a year?!?!? I thought of making  more as a celebration and a time to look forward to. Now I think of being a maker as a part of who we are as a class because it is who we are as people. It is not just a celebration of learning from the end of a unit but it is about celebrating the rich learning that happens along the way 🙂

-Field trip note (regarding our upcoming trip to Gimli!): Notes will be sent home on Monday! Please sign and return ASAP. I have two parent volunteers and that is likely all I’ll be able to take. If there are any other openings I’ll let you know!

-Family Life is going to start next week! Grade 3s will be looking at families and safety and the Grade 4s will be learning more about the changes that happen within the human body. They will be taught in two separate groups.

-We are well into division and will be wrapping that up and doing some fractions and decimal work soon. The Math groups we are doing with Room 122 have changed a little. We have split the kids into 3 different groups: The grade 3s are with me in 123. The grade 4s have been split into two groups. One group is with Helen in 122 and the other is with Ms Davies in the library.

In Room 123 (and I believe in 122) we have watched videos on Place Value from a site called MathAntics. We’ve found that the videos are very well done and explain concepts in an easy to follow kind of way. The grade 3s have also watched the place value video that introduces decimals. They LOVED it. We had such a rich discussion about decimals. Take a look if you are interested OR your child would like to watch the video again. My only caution is that this website is American, so we talked about some differences, for example the comma is used to separate numbers in the U.S. but in Canada we simply put a space between numbers (4,215 (U.S.) 4 215 (Canada)). We will be watching more throughout the next few weeks…so don’t watch them all at home this weekend 😉 (Unless you want to see them more than once!)

Math Antics

So far we have watched the top two videos under the Arithmetic tab (Place Value and Decimal Place Value). We are currently only watching the free videos and doing our own examples and answering questions the group has. I haven’t heard any feedback from other teachers about the lessons that are available through purchasing the subscription.

Buzz Math also remains a hit! Many of the students are coming in saying they are playing at home. Apparently there is also a free app if you’d rather use the i pad. If you need help or have any questions please let me know!

-FYI: I found this write up about Summer Learning Loss on the Winnipeg School Division website that I thought I would share with you. It gives a few ideas about what to do over the summer to “decrease the loss”. I think many people think about reading loss over the summer. This is a definite possibility, but reading isn’t the only thing to do this summer to keep on learning! It is important to practice math, writing and spelling skills too. Not to mention getting outside, doing hands on activities, making, asking questions, etc!!

-We are going to add the 30×30 at home calendar challenge in our Learning Logs and do a little write up about the experience. Please send in the completed challenge so we can get that done this week 😉

Have a great rest of your weekend. Looking forward to another week with… 2 more guest presenters, more time spent outdoors, more making, more learning!!

Until next time,

Danielle