Good afternoon!

We had a great, interesting, and very different day today. Our Gr. 5 girls were gone to Girl Power at Syncrude Sports and Wellness Center, so we had some Gr. 5 boys join our class today in their place. Our classroom was definitely full, but we had a lot of fun and we got a lot of work done.

We started off with some First Steps Reading Activities. Today we were working on the following reading strategies: predicting, inferring, and synthesizing. To do this we listened as a class to Roald Dahl’s “The Enormous Crocodile.” We split the story into three parts, and after each sections we worked through an activity that corresponded to a reading strategy. After the first part of the story we worked on predicting. Students pretended to gaze into a crystal ball and tried to think of what the future had in store for the crocodile. We had a crystal ball anchor chart at the front of the room, and students were able to come and add a post-it with their prediction to the crystal ball. After the second part of the story we worked on inferring. Students worked in pairs or groups of three to interview one another. They had to be a character from the story (The Enormous Crocodile, Mary, Toto, Humpy Rumpy, School Children, Mugglewump, the Rolly Polly Bird, or Trunky) and ask and respond to questions from their characters perspective. I saw a lot of great creativity go into some peoples answers. Finally we worked on synthesizing. Students graded the crocodile using our current rating scale (P, M, A, B, NE) on his abilities. They looked at his sneakiness, cleverness, and his ability to make friends. We had some different responses for the first two, but most of us agreed that he should recieve an NE for making friends – he didn’t even try!

For French today we reviewed our numbers from 1-31. This is an activity that we haven’t done in a while. We did this by player bingo. Students created their own bingo sheet and I called the numbers in French. This requires students to practice their listening skills. I also write the French number on the board, to help students who are more visual. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of people were really close to winning!

This afternoon we worked on Health. We worked on our First Aid. The Gr. 5 girls we be getting the opportunity to work on First Aid in two weeks when the boys are gone. Today we worked on: ESM, Choking, CPR, and Severe Bleeding. We had a lot of fun practicing, and everyone was working hard. It was great to see how well students did at remembering the steps, and working together.

Don’t forget, it’s Green Day tomorrow!

Homework: Read 20 minutes

                         Reading Journal (Friday)

                         Spelling Quiz (Friday)

                         Multiplication Quiz (Friday)

                         Language Arts: Good copies of Letters

                         Math: Gr. 5 – pgs. 228-229 #1-9

                         Book Orders – May 23rd

                         May 16th – Green Day (tomorrow!)

                         May 17th – Intent Forms Due

                         May 24th – Metis Festival