Hello everyone!
What an amazing day, full of lots of fun and activities today. We started our morning off with some Math. Each student was given their Mathletics username and password today. Mathletics is a website aligned to the Alberta and Canadian programs of studies. Students have the ability to use the site to work on lessons, gets tips and hints, look up concepts and definitions, or to get some basic math fact practice through the live Mathletics. I recommend everyone accessing the site from home as much as possible throughout the year. As a teacher, I really enjoy the Mathletics because I am able to easily change tasks or activities based on student ability and understandings, so that everyone in our class is being challenged at their own level. The activity we worked on today was a little tricky. We will definitely have to work on these concepts some more as a class before we try it again. To access your student’s Mathletics, just visit www.mathletics.ca and log in with their username and password. Many of our students have used it before and can show you around.
We also had our Wetlands trip today! We walked to the storm pond in the beautiful sunshine. Students each had the opportunity to attempt to scoop a Wetlands creature from the pond using small nets. Students would take their net back to their group and empty the net into the container of water to see if they had anything. We found some amazing things! We found some springtails, a mayfly nymph, a huge dragonfly nymph, predacious diving beetles, whirligig beetles, backswimmers, water boatmen, leeches, fairy shrimps, waterflees, and sideswimmers! Students were also allowed to try and isolate certain organisms into ice cube trays using a turkey baster, to get a closer look. Everyone did a wonderful job. All of our creatures are in a watertable in Mr. Rutledge’s room, and we will be taking another look at them tomorrow or Thursday. We also had a visit from a family of ducks!
Our Reading Journal prompt for this week is all about plot. I have asked the students to draw me a picture of a plot diagram about something that they’ve read this week. We went over how to do this in class, but I promised to post pictures online so that students can consult it if they would like. If anyone is unsure, feel free to send me an email or students can ask me in class. One method we discussed was using our story mountain template (see below). I am also posting the link for our reading journal sheets. Students have been asked to draw their own sheets this year, as part of our efforts to go as paperless as possible. However, some of our students wanted to know if they could print the sheets themselves at home. Absolutely! Just click on the link below to open up the word document.
Remember that the next time you want to access it, you can search the word “NINJA” on our right hand side search box. That will bring up the posts where it is directly mentioned.
Agenda:
Read 20 minutes
Book Orders – Sept. 27th
Reading Journal – due Friday
Spelling Quiz – Monday
Math: Pg. 19 #1, 2
Mathletics – 5 mins.
Social – Mapping Quiz (tomorrow!)
Science Project (Oct. 28th)
Terry Fox Run (Thursday)
Picture Day (Oct. 2nd)
Cowboy/girl Day – tomorrow
