Good afternoon!

We began our Friday with our weekly classroom meeting. We started with an energizer called “Milling to Music”. Students walked around the space, milling to the music. When the music stops, students turn to the nearest person and answer a question. The questions we answered today were:

1. What is your favourite Wetlands organism that we have learned about so far and why?
2. What is something new that you learned about the Appalachian Region that you didn’t know before?
3. When is a time that you felt you were being bullied?
4. How did being bullied make you feel?
5. What is one way that you can think of to stop bullying from happening?

We have been very focused on bullying this year at Timberlea School and students have discussed it several times. Our classroom did an activity earlier in the year where we brainstormed what bullying looks like, sounds like, and feels like. Some of the students’ ideas are below:

We spent a lot of time afterwards discussing their responses, and it was the students’ responses that were recorded, to how bullying feels. I have been trying to refer back to this document since this activity, reminding students that we don’t want anyone at our school to feel this way. We want Timberlea to feel like a safe and caring place. Today we discussed the importance of forgiveness. Everyone makes bad choices sometimes and everyone sometimes gets angry, sad, frustrated, etc. Sometimes we do things in the heat of the moment that we don’t truly mean. We discussed how important it can be, when this occurs, to apologize. It’s okay to make mistakes. However, we also discussed the importance of forgiveness. We need to recognize that some days, an individual isn’t trying to or wanting to bully. We all have days where we make mistakes. We can recognize when a friend is having a bad day or a bad week and we can choose to forgive them. We want to work towards showing compassion and understanding towards each other, and making sure that we don’t exclude or hurt someone just because they have made mistakes. Together we have brainstormed a new list. This list is going to be posted in our classroom and we can change it or add to it all year. It is our bullying strategies list. We came up with:

• Ignore them
• Walk away
• Tell an adult
• Put up posters/educate students
• Ask them to stop
• Talk to a teacher
• Make sure that you aren’t bullying
• Tell your friends
• Stand up for your friends/others
• Don’t bully back
• Be a team. Take care of each other
• Be hands off
• Cooperate
• Apologize when we need to. And mean it

We are going to add this to our classroom so that we can use the ideas to help us when we might not know what to do. We can even share our strategies with other classes.

In Science today, we finished discussing adaptations. Students reviewed some of the ways that plants adapt to survive in a Wetlands environment, and we organized the information in the following graphic organizer:

We then also reviewed some of the ways that animals adapt to breath, obtain food, and move, as well as behavioral adaptations. Next week students are going to be designing a robot that could survive in a Wetlands environment by considering the adaptations that we discussed today. I’m so excited to see what we come up with!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Spelling Quiz – Tuesday

Math: pgs. 62-63 #1-7, 9-14

Math Unit Test – Nov. 20th

Mathletics – 5 mins.

Mathletics Meet-up: Wednesday @ 5:30 pm and 7:00 pm

Picture Forms – ASAP

Science Projects – ASAP

Ski Days – Dec. 4th, Feb. 6th (Forms due ASAP)

Good afternoon!

We had a beautiful Remembrance Day assembly today. Students were able to lay wreaths and listen to our guest speaker from the legion. I particularly loved all the student presentations that we were able to see. Students shared information about their grandparents, read poems, sang songs, and played guitar! It was wonderful to see all that hard work that Ms. Rose and Mrs. Power do come together into such a beautiful product. Some students from our classroom presented a poem and a powerpoint presentation, as well as played in the guitar club. Want to check out the poem? The presentation we used is below:

Remembrance Day

We also had an APPLES Schools taste test today! We were tasting cherry tomatoes. We tried tomatoes from two different packages to see if we could taste a difference. Then students were asked to share whether they liked the tomatoes, sort of like the tomatoes, or didn’t like the tomatoes. 11 of us liked them, 5 of us sort of liked them, and only 6 of us didn’t like them. Attached below is a fun information sheet about this activity, plus a great recipe that you can try at home using cherry tomatoes! Special thanks to the student who chose to do the taste test as her reward!

http://www.appleschools.ca/files/GrapeTomatoes.pdf

In Math today we completed all the lessons from Unit 2! Students have been working hard on Math all this week. Today we practiced using estimation to verify our answers to addition and subtraction questions. We are also spending time working on solving multistep problems, which can be very challenging! I will be away for 3 days next week to take a course, and the students will be reviewing this unit with the TOC. Our Unit Test will be after I return on Nov. 20th. Remember to start practicing at home Grade 5! Students can start reworking on their textbook questions or using Mathletics to help them review. The “Show What You Know” and Unit Booklets will be sent home next week for students to work towards completing. We will do 2 days of class review when I return as well.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Reading Journal – Friday

Spelling Quiz – Tuesday

Math – pgs. 62-63 #1-7, 9-14

Mathletics – 5 mins.

Mathletics Meet-up – Wednesday @ 5:30 pm and 7:00 pm

Picture Forms – ASAP

Science Projects – ASAP

Ski Days – Dec. 4th and Feb. 6th (Forms due ASAP)

Today is going to be a short post! Sorry! I’m attaching some pictures to make up for it. Take a look, you can see how busy we’ve been this month and some of the things we have been preparing!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Reading Journal (Friday)

Spelling Quiz – Tuesday

Math: pg. 58-59 #1-4, 6-8

Mathletics – 5 mins.

Mathletics Meet-up: Wednesday @ 5:30 pm and 7:00 pm

Science Projects – ASAP

Picture Forms – ASAP

Ski Days – Dec. 4th, Feb. 6th (Forms due ASAP)

 

Good afternoon!

Today we started off with Math. On Tuesdays, we use our computer time to work through some Mathletics lessons. Today students were reviewing the following concepts from our current unit. They were asked to:

• Write numbers in standard form using the written form.
• Expand numbers.
• Write numbers in expanded notation.
• Practice place value up to 1,000.
• Practice place value up to 1 000 000.
• Compare numbers using <, >, or =.

 The Mathletics is a great tool for me to use. I am able to view students’ results, and the Mathletics also helps me to determine what a student’s strengths or weaknesses are within a unit. This helps me to better plan lessons or activities that are meeting the individual needs within our classroom. Once students complete their assigned activities, they can access the Live Mathletics. Have you seen the new Live Mathletics? Students loved it! Now we are able to see who from our classroom is online and are able to challenge them directly. I anticipate this making our Mathletics Meet-Ups much more interesting. Don’t forget that we have Mathletics Meet-Up twice tonight. You can log on at 5:30 pm or at 7:00 pm to compete against other members from our classroom.

In Language Arts today we review adjectives. Students have been working on expanding sentences over the last few weeks, and now we are working towards adding more detail. Students know that adjectives are describing words that describe a noun (person, place, or thing). We practiced adding adjectives to sentences today, and will continue to practice this concept throughout the week.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Reading Journal: Friday (Ninja Question – Describe the main characters)

Spelling Quiz – Tues. (downstairs, drown, down, town, own, stairs, straw, ratio, radio, worst)

Math: pg. 55 # 1-9, 11, 12

Mathletics – 5 mins.

Mathletics Meet-Up: Tonight @ 5:30 pm and 7:00 pm

Science Projects – ASAP

Ski Days: Dec. 4th, Feb. 6th (Forms due ASAP)

Picture Forms – ASAP

Good afternoon!

Today we started our day off by working on some of our assembly activities. Our students as well as Mr. Rutledge’s class will be hosting the Self-Respect Assemblies on Nov. 18th (8:30 am, 1:00 pm). We have been practicing our presentation over the last few days. We are going to be singing “What I Am” by Will.I.Am and Sesame Street. Want to check it out? See the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyVzjoj96vs

Students made some signs for our presentation today. We also filled in a small worksheet asking students to tell us “I am!” Students filled in lots of different adjectives and description about themselves. We brainstormed some words before we got started and we ended up with: smart, amazing, awesome, boss, creative, intelligent, energetic, enthusiastic, caring, nice, kind, funny, fun, curious, interesting, and many more! You can see we have a lot of great students in our class this year!

We are also responsible for our APPLE Schools Campaign this month. We are going to be teaching the rest of the school all about whole grains. We have students from both classes helping us with our daily announcements and today we discussed some of the fun ways to eat whole grains. You could eat quinoa, brown rice, wild rice, barley, whole wheat pasta, or couscous. Students then shared their favourite ways to eat whole grains. We have added them all to the APPLE Schools bulletin board. If you are going to be stopping by the school this week, feel free to take a look (in atrium). I will be posting a picture later in the week as well; I just didn’t want to interrupt the Kindergarten PTIs that were going on in the atrium today.

In Math today we discussed using benchmarks to help with estimating. Students can use number lines to make estimating more visual. An example would be to take the number 23 782.

 

Number lines provide student with visual benchmarks to use to help with estimating and rounding numbers.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Reading Journals (Friday)

Math: pg. 55 #1-9, 11, 12

Mathletics – 5 minutes

Picture Forms – ASAP

Science: Projects – ASAP

Health: FRIENDS Home Activity 1B (pg. 9) – tomorrow!

Remembrance Day Assembly – Thursday @ 8:30 am

“I saw the lovely arch

Of rainbow span the sky,

The gold sun burning

As the rain swept by.”

– Elizabeth Coatsworth, November

 

Good afternoon!

We had a pretty relaxing day today! We started off with our weekly classroom meeting. Every week during classroom meeting we review our 4 tribes’ agreements. Today we started our meeting with an energizer. We played a game that we are already familiar with; a form of follow the leader. We start with a leader beginning an action and slowly it is passed around the group until everyone is performing the same action. Today we added another step. We asked that students consider communicating with the person next to them, to better facilitate the action being passed around the circle. At first we struggled, but then we began to notice something. The more attentively we listened to the person next to us: looking at them while they were speaking, listening before acting, etc. the better we became at the game! We were able to pass around the action quicker than we have ever passed the action before! This was a great way to demonstrate the importance of attentive listening in our classroom, but it also led to another discussion. It isn’t always easy to give clear instructions! We talked about what would make someone a good leader for this activity and we came up with: know what action they are going to do, know what they want to say beforehand, keep instructions simple, clear, and speak at a reasonable volume (not to quiet, not to loud). What a great lesson to take from this game, and it is definitely something that we are going to be able to use to help us all become better listeners and leaders within our classroom!

We also had DEAR today. Not Drop Everything And Read. In our classroom DEAR stands for Drop Everything And Recess! We decided to use DEAR as the new name for secret recess. It will be a word that we can say out loud (in the hallways, agenda board, etc.) but the other classes still won’t find out about our secret recesses. Well, we had another student choose to have a secret recess for their reward this week. We played a game on the Promethean Board. The game is called Sugar, Sugar. If you want to try it at home to see if you can beat our classroom record (level 12), give a try at the link below:

http://smartboard.someschoolgames.com/

We also started our Remembrance Day art projects today. Students are creating a collage using construction paper, chalk, and tissue paper. We are exploring texture by creating different patterns and designs, on the different layers of the collage. The red poppies are really going to stand out when we add them next week! Want to see the ones that we have started? Check the images below the Agenda below.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Mathletics – 5 minutes

Picture Forms – ASAP

Science Projects – ASAP

Health – FRIENDS Home Activity 1B (pg. 9)