Did You Know…? Many penguins spend 75% of their lives at sea.

Good afternoon,

Today our Gr. 5 students were lucky enough to participate in a Drumming Workshop. Our class was split into two groups. One group joined 5L at 9:00 am and the other group joined 5K at 10:00 am. I heard it was a lot of fun!

The Gr. 4 students and I worked on using some of the mental math strategies that we learned earlier in our unit to help us with subtraction. Today we worked on using friendly number and a counting on strategy. With friendly numbers, there are two methods you can use:

With the first method, we changed both of the numbers that we were trying to find the difference between. We saw that 299 could easily be changed to 300. We added 1 to 299, so we added 1 to 516 as well, so that are numbers would still be the same difference apart. This changed 516 to 517. Now we had to solve 517-300, which is much friendlier than 516-299. The difference was 217. However, this method can be difficult to use, as it isn’t always easy to make friendly numbers that will work (see the second example). Our second method of using friendly numbers has us change just one of the numbers that we are trying to find the difference between. Take for example 347-195. We can change 195 to the friendlier 200 by adding 5. Then we can solve 347-200 = 147. However, this is not the final answer, as we added 5 while we were solving the problem. We still need to add 5 to the answer! 147+5 = 152. So, the difference between 347-195 = 152. Many students preferred this method and found that if you made the second number (the smaller number) friendlier, it was quite easy to do. Finally, we also worked on a counting on strategy:

This strategy has you count up from the lower number until you reach the higher number. For example, if we want to solve 432-220. We can start at 220 and count up by 100’s until we reach 400. We would count up by 100 twice which is equal to 200. Next we can count on by 10’s until we reach 30. We would count up by 10 once which is equal to 210. Finally, we can count on by 1’s until we reach 2. We would count up by 1 twice which is equal 212. Since it took us 212 to count up from 220 to 432, then 432-220 = 212. Just make sure you keep track of what you count up (or down) by if you are using this strategy!

In Science today the Gr. 5 students added information to their Interactive Notebooks on what we have covered so far in their Electricity unit. We added notes on Electrical Safety, Batteries, Light bulbs, and Circuit Diagram Symbols. You can actually see all the right-hand pages in our Science books by clicking on the side links and visiting the Electricity page. I will continue to update this document throughout the unit. Then the students worked together to draw some circuit diagrams (with the correct symbols) of some example circuits we may encounter throughout this unit.

The Gr. 4 students completed another experiment about rollers. Today the students were asked to predict if it would be easier or harder to roll out Plasticine by hand or with a roller. Then, in groups of 3, students worked to complete the task and to record their observations. Most found that the rollers did significantly reduce the work required to flatten the Plasticine. Then, our Gr. 4 students also added information to their Interactive Notebooks. Just like Gr. 5, I have added our notebook right-hand pages to the “Gr. 4 – Wheels and Levers “Science page on the side links. Be sure to keep checking this document throughout the unit so that you can make sure you have and understand all of our notes.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Talk – due January 26th
• Book Club Reading (Schedules on Reading page)

Math:

• 1, 2x Tables Quiz – Tuesday

Science:

• Essential Question Check-In – Tuesday
• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th
• Trifold Board Orders – due Monday ($5.25/Board)

Secret Project Ideas – Thursday

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 28th

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Tuesdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Family Movie Night – January 22nd, 6:00 pm, School Gym, Minions

Family Literacy Night – January 27th, 6:00-7:00 pm, School Gym