Good evening!

What a busy second week of school! Today we started with a Social Studies lesson on the important bodies of water in Canada. We learned about the oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic), the Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario), the St. Lawrence River, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We were able to label all of these things on the Canada maps in our Social Duotang, and then we reviewed our Provinces/Territories and Capitals. Don’t forget that we have a quiz on Monday. You should review your maps at home! Forgot your duotang? The AGENDA has a great map of Canada in the back or you could play our game from earlier in the week.

In Math today we completed a Math 5 Live Lesson on Patterns. You can review the lesson at the link below:

http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/me5l/html/math5.html

username: LA19     password: 1193

The great thing about Math 5 Live is that it gives the students a little break from having to listen to just plain old me all the time, but it is also very interactive. Students are welcome to review the lesson at home. There are also links at the top, for parents, that can be very helpful, such as notes on the content and extra practice work that can be printed at home.

In our Writer’s Notebooks today we added a page called a Heart Map. Students brainstormed lists of things that they love. We will be able to use the lists from our Authority List and Heart Map later, once we have begun free writing. These are great places to turn back to and look when you are in need of inspiration or an idea. Don’t forget, the covers are due Monday!

Did you know our classroom has a classroom twitter page as well? You can follow us at @Classroom5K to see some of our daily activities and adventures.

Don’t forget, there is no school tomorrow!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts – Writer’s Notebook Covers (Monday), Heart Map (Monday)

Math – finish pg. 8 #1-6

Social – Provinces/Territories/Capitals Quiz

Welcome Back BBQ – September 18th @ 5:30 pm

Spirit Week for Food Bank Donations – all next week! Monday – Timberlea Colours

 

Sorry, today is going to be a very short post. I just wanted to add the username and password for the Math Makes Sense ebook, so that students are able to access the textbook from a home computer or device if necessary.

Website: http://www.mathmakessense.ca/

Username: Timberlea_student

Password: student2009

Agenda:

Read 20 mins.

Language Arts – Writer’s Notebook covers (Monday)

Math – pg. 8 #1-6

Social – Provinces/Territories/Capitals Quiz (Monday)

Running Club Forms (Thursday)

BBQ Form – ASAP (Sept. 18th @ 5:30 pm)

Good evening!

Today we started with another lesson on predicting, which is our reading strategy this month. The students have been practicing using their schema and the information from the book to make strong, relevant predictions. Today we talked a little bit about inferring. An inference is when we combine evidence with what we know to come to a conclusion. In order to differentiate between predicting and inferring, we watched the Pixar short “For the Birds”. Students used the title and the opening scenes to make predictions about what they thought the video would be about. Then, we paused the video at a critical moment. Using the evidence and what we know (our schema!) we were able to conclude exactly what would happen next. It was a great activity, and I was so impressed with everyone’s participation.

In Math today we began to discuss patterns and equations. We reviewed recognizing patterns and writing a pattern rule. Then students worked to solve one of the following patterns:

• 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, …
• 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, …
• 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, …
• 1, 2, 5, 10, 17, 26, …

Students had to identify a pattern rule, write the next 5 terms, and be able to explain what they did to one term to get the next term. After students had solved their pattern, we had student volunteers come and teach their chosen pattern to the class. The students did a great job at sharing how the recognized the pattern, how the found the next terms, and even describing the pattern rule to the class. Tomorrow we will continue to practice and review these concepts.

We also added another page to our Writer’s Notebooks today. Students had completed the outline of their books yesterday. Today we added a table of contents and an authority list. An authority list is where students are able to list things that they are an authority or an expert on. I heard a lot of really unique things! We have experts on zombies, dogs, baking, measuring, minecraft, persuading people, reading, gymnastics, etc. all in our classroom. Remember, students have until Monday to complete the cover of their Writer’s Notebook, but they need to continue to bring the notebook to school so that we can continue using it in class. I was pleased to see how many people had started or finished decorating their workbooks already!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts – Writer’s Notebook Cover (Monday), Authority List (tomorrow)

Running Club Form (Thursday)

BBQ Form – ASAP

Good evening!

Today we continued to review our provinces and territories. It took a little bit of teamwork but we finally got our fastest score down to 40 seconds! We’ll have to see if Ms. McNeil’s class is able to beat that great record. Since we are doing so well with our provinces, we are going to be practicing our capitals as well. Today we listened to this song to help us start thinking about the capitals of each province:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjgOQDUOGAg

It is really fun to sing along to! We also began labeling the capitals on our map of Canada, something we’ll continue with tomorrow. Psssssst. We will be having a quiz on the provinces and territories pretty soon! It is a good idea to practice at home. Remember that you can practice at home using the same website we have been using in class (http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Canadian_Geography.htm). Maybe you’ll even be able to beat my score of 20 seconds!

In French today we started to discuss the French calendar. Students are working towards being able to discuss the months, seasons, etc. This will help us in our Clothing unit, when students will have to be able to discuss which clothing to wear at different times of the year. We also used a song to help us with the days of the week. Check it out below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVHzu60QVKI

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Family BBQ – Sept. 18th @ 5:30 pm

Running Club – Permission Forms due Thursday

Good evening,

Today we started our Mapping unit in Social Studies. Students will be need to learn the provinces, territories, and their capitals during this unit. Today students labelled the provinces on a map of Canada, and then we used this great web resource to help practice recognizing the provinces. Want to practice at home? Click on the link below:

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Canadian_Geography.htm

We were able to get as fast as 211 seconds on the first level. I found out this afternoon that Ms. McNeil’s class was able to get up to 60 seconds! I think we will have to practice some more and see if we can beat their record on Monday.

In Art today we started discussing colour – one of the elements of art that we will be learning about this year. We began with examining the colour wheel and discussing primary, secondary, and tertiary colours. We then discussed how artists use colour to influence their viewers. For example, artwork that uses a lot of primary colours (red, blue, yellow) is often thought to appear bold and cheerful. Artwork that uses colours that are opposite one another on the colour wheel (Eg. purple and yellow) are very striking and often appear to be energetic. Finally, colours that are next to one another on the colour wheel can create a calming effect (eg. red, red-orange, red). We used our knowledge of the effects of colour to create some pretty bold, energetic, and calming works all in one! Check out some of our work below.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Check Classroom Blog

Welcome Back BBQ – Sept. 18th @ 5:30

Art – finish unfinished work (Monday)

 

“School,

Effort, and

Play.

Trying your best

Each hour of the day,

Making new friends,

Being good as you can

Exciting discoveries,

Reading books with a friend.”

– Boni Fulgham

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Good afternoon!

Today we posted our daily schedule for the first time, began some introductory activities in our different subject areas. Our daily schedule has not yet been finalized, as adjustments may need to be made to be inclusive of our students attending Arabic language classes as well as our Book Buddies. You can see our temporary schedule below:

Timetable2014-2015

Using our schedule as an outline, we started some learning activities in both Language Arts and Social Studies today. In Language Arts, we started to discuss our first reading strategy of the year – predicting. Students and I discussed what a prediction is and what makes a good prediction. Here is the equation that we wrote for writing good predictions:

What the book tells/shows you   +   your schema   =   good prediction

What is schema? Well… technically schema is the underlying organizational pattern or structure. But I tell students to think about it this way: your brain is filled with all of the knowledge that you have from all of your learning and experiences. Your brain has to organize all that information. Our brains are rooms filled with filing cabinets and files of all of that knowledge, but it can be hard sometimes to remember where you filed the information or to find the file you are looking for. Our reading strategies are just one way that we can help our brain to find the right file so that we can use that information. That’s why we need to practice them. It takes a while to help your brain learn how to and where to look for information that it has stored.

Today, as stated above, we practiced making predictions. We made some predictions about a Tumblebook called “Jessie’s Island” together, and then students worked in pairs to make some predictions about picture books that we have available in our classroom. You can see pictures of some of our work below. We were using something called a “Think Sheet” to help summarize our learning and understanding.

I just want t quickly remind parents that our school calendar has dramatically changed this year. We now have full day Fridays on some days and no school Fridays on others. I’ve attached a 1-page document below that parents can post at home on their fridge, bulletin boards, etc. to help our families to remember which Fridays we will be having school. We do have a full day tomorrow, and dismissal is at 2:45 pm as per any school day.

2014 – 2015 District Calendar

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Welcome Back BBQ – September 18th @ 5:30 pm

Check Classroom Blog

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to a new school year!

We have been having a wonderful first two days here in 5K. We spent most of our day yesterday organizing our supplies and learning about our classroom routines. We put our duotangs, notebooks, pencils, etc. into the correct bins, students got their own bins in the classroom and organized their supplies between their desks and their bins. Students are able to choose which items they place in the desk or in the bin, but they are responsible for keeping both tidy. Students will not typically be keeping their supplies in their lockers. Lockers will be used for personal items like jackets, backpacks, lunches, etc. Throughout the rest of our day yesterday, we mainly spent time getting to know one another. One activity that we completed was an “Ice Cream Social” in which students spent time learning each others’ favorite flavours of ice cream. You can view the activity below:

Icecream Social

We also completed a “Classroom Treasure Hunt” to help students learn about some of the things in our classroom such as the bulletin boards, classroom library, IN bin, etc. and we started reading our first Read-Aloud book of the year, “Sideways Stories From Wayside School” by Louis Sachar. I read aloud during snack everyday, and typically we are able to finish 6-7 books this way as a class. After reading, students do complete small comprehension activities and we often use our Read-Aloud book to practice First Steps Reading Strategies.

Today the students and I focused on some TRIBES activities and other activities to help build our classroom community. We had our first TRIBES circle of the year and reviewed our four TRIBES Agreements: the right to pass, no put downs – appreciations, mutual respect, and attentive listening. We then played a small game that had students practice attentive listening – Name Wave. To play this game, a student says their name while performing a fun or silly action. The action and name is then passed around the circle, similar to doing the wave at a sporting event. Students did a great job. Later today we further discussed no put downs. Students recorded a put down that may have been said to them or to someone they know in the past, onto a piece of paper. Students then crumpled up the paper and we had what we call an Indoor Snowball Fight. Students were then asked to pick up a “snowball” close to them and read the put down. I asked students to consider how they would feel if they had experienced the put down themselves, and how reading the put downs made them feel. When we finished the activity we completed the most important step – we threw them all away. All the paper with put downs on them was thrown in the garbage. We discussed our plan on being a class that doesn’t have put downs in it, and then closed with another TRIBES circle. Students passed around Bob the Frog (our talking object) and shared an appreciation statement that they had for someone in our classroom about the past two days. I heard so many wonderful things about people making new friends, playing together on the playground, and helping one another in class. Keep up the great work everyone.

We also completed a small Art activity today called, “A Map of My Life.” Check out some of our completed maps below. Tomorrow… we’ll be finishing working on our Time Capsule!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Email Request Forms – ASAP

Welcome Back BBQ – September 18th @5:30 pm

Arabic Forms – send a note tomorrow or an email to Mr. Dhooma by tomorrow please