April 22 - 26

Sorry for the lack of updates!  All the Mondays with no school threw things off a little.  I have also seen very little views on these pages of late, so I will be slowing down here.  If there is important timely information to share, I will send out an email. You are welcome to email myself and/or the school to ask questions and get information as well!

I did want to share two important dates.  

• we will be having a field trip on Monday, May 27th to Baxters Conservation Area.  More information will be shared soon, but I did want to share this date now.  There will be a cost to this trip since we are having to cover the full cost of the workshops and the bussing.  I will be sending a permission letter home soon once we finalize the details and cost.
• EQAO is coming up and will start on Tuesday, May 21st.  It usually takes a week, so it will also be  continuing into the first part of the following week (after our field trip of course!).

March 18 - 21

 I hope everyone had a safe and fun March Break!  I can't believe it is already spring.  Where did winter go?

Just a few updates for what we will be covering in the next little bit.

Language:  We will be working a little further on narrative writing.  The class will be working in small groups to co-create a short story.  More information will be shared with the class this week.  Also, they will be getting a new writing task this week.  This will be the third such task, and it has been great to see their writing and editing improve!

Math: This week, we will be working on data management.  This entails reading and making different types of charts and graphs.  Following this, we will be heading into fractions soon.

Science:  We will be wrapping up our work on structures before the end of March.  Once we hit April, we will be moving onto Plants.

Religion: Lots to go through over the next two weeks as we head into Easter weekend.  We will be looking at the Stations of the Cross and having further discussions around Lent.

Coding: We will be starting some work on coding over the next few weeks.  The class was introduced to the website Kodable before the March Break (there is a link in the workspace) and we will also be using the website code.org for further coding activities.

Dance: We will be having a dance presentation this Friday, as well as learning some more dance moves through the National Ballet School of Canada.  They have been helping us learn some Hip-Hop dance moves!

February 26 - March 1

 Sorry, with Family Day last week, I guess it has been a few weeks.   Some little updates:

• on Tuesday we are receiving a French concert from Roland Bibeau in the afternoon.
• this Wednesday is Pink Shirt Day (Anti-Bullying Day)

In Math, we have moved onto measurement.  Last week, we made our "Metric Staircase" to help us understand the differences between kilo-, centi- and milli- units. We will be continuing some measurements of length, weight and capacity this week.

In Language, there has been a focus on writing short stories.  Specifically, we have been working on a short story called "The Day I Got to be Principal".  I have been trying to spend extra time with the class on the editing process, wanting them to focus on sentence structure, punctuation and what a paragraph looks like.

In Science, we have moved onto Strong and Stable Structures.  Today, we had a brief experiment where they tried to make the tallest tower out of paper that they could, but they had to lift it from the floor (while it stood on a small whiteboard) to their table without it falling over.  It was a lot of fun to discover what made some towers more stable than others.

We have also started some dance classes through the National Ballet School of Canada.  Right now, we are learning about Hip-Hop dance, and learning some of the basic moves.  Lots of fun!

February 12 - 16

 A busy week ahead with a some interruptions to our regular flow.  Today was a good example as we were trying to get our Valentine's Day bags prepared, we ran out of time for our Working with Words lesson.  We will try to get the lesson done on Wednesday, and give a very light quiz on Friday.

Other updates:

• Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday or as the kids like to say Pancake Tuesday.  The parent council will be sending around pancakes tomorrow for the kids to eat.  Also, to acknowledge the day, the children are encouraged to wear Green, Purple, or Gold.
• Wednesday is both Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day.  For Ash Wednesday, we will be having a service in the morning.  Our Valentine's Day card exchange will happen third block.  Please remember that the children should bring cards for all if they are exchanging cards (a class list was sent on Friday) and we are not allowed to pass out food in the classroom due to allergies in the school.
• Next Monday is Family Day, so there is no school that day.
  
  

February 5 - 9

 I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend!  Pretty quiet week ahead, but I will try to give a brief summary of things that we are doing in class.

In Math, we will be moving onto adding and subtracting larger numbers this week.  I would recommend reviewing 2-digit addition and subtraction as we move onto 3-digit. 

In Language, we we will be doing another reading sample this week from an old EQAO test.  We will be looking at how to write great full sentence answers.  Also, we will be going over our writing sample from last week (A Dog's Adventure), and looking at ways to improve and edit our sentences.

In Science, we are finishing up our unit on Forces with a final little project using magnets.  Today, they tried to construct a door lock using a magnet.  They will be given a little more time tomorrow before we do a walk around to check each others work out.

In Gym, we are trying out Handball, and learning about healthy eating choices in Health class.

As we are wrapping up our Drama lessons, we will be moving onto Dance.  We will be having some dance activities over the next few weeks as well as some on-line instruction and activities from professional dancers.

January 29 - February 2

This week we will be going through both the Little Red Riding Hood stories, and will be having our Puppet Comedy show for drama.  In math, please continue to practice your multiplication facts!

Small reminder as well that this Friday is a PD day, so there will not be any classes that day.

January 22 - 26

 Very short post today!  Not much to update, but here are a few:

• Math:  We are still working on our multiplication and division.  It would be very help to keep practising the multiplication facts to x9 to help put them to memory!
• Language: We are working further with quotation marks and will be presenting our Little Red Riding Hood stories late this week.
• Science:  We are finishing up some work on forces.  Today, we discussed balancing forces and even centre of gravity came up!
• Drama: On Thursday, we will present our jokes with our puppets or teddy bears in our "Comedy Special".  Each student has found 5 jokes they like, and they will try to tell these in a loud, clear voice while showing some "body language" with their puppets.
• There are two presentations this week!  On Tuesday morning, we will have a Mad Science presentation (thank you parent council!) and on Wednesday afternoon there will be a school presentation at the end of the day from Quincy Mack called "Be an All-Star"