Thursday November 19th

This is our Thursday/Friday for this week, as tomorrow is a professional development day for our teachers.   We tried our best to fit two days worth of work into one day, but didn't quite get through it all!!  Maybe we need to come in on Saturday?  What do you think?

This morning we started with music with Mrs. Jones and then set to work on our storyboards to prepare for Jeff Stockton's visit.  We were very careful to include only the main details and some simple sketches.  This storyboard will become the basis for our storytelling project.

Jeff Stockton was so wonderful with us today!  Each visit he shares some new techniques with us and even Mrs. Zwack learns something new.  Today he told us that we can learn our stories by imprinting the main events onto our fingertips.  He explained that everything that is most important to us we have felt with our fingertips.  If we touch each finger to an event on our storyboard as we say the event aloud, it will start to work its way into our memory.  Then, when we do our storytelling and we feel the nervous "whoosh!" we can touch our fingers behind our backs to remember what comes next!

Our homework is to practice our introductions and to learn the main events of our story board for next week.  We will send a copy of the storyboards home on Monday for the students to review for Thursday's class.


Where has the week gone?  I can't believe that it is the weekend tomorrow for the students (not the teachers).

Today was a very busy afternoon in our classroom.  We began our afternoon with math.  In Mrs. Bowles' group we reviewed what a repeating pattern was.  We used lots of examples and non-examples to write our definition.  We worked on a problem where we had to use repeating patterns to find the answer.  Look at the problem below.

From here we looked at how to "show our thinking."  We went back through the pattern and wrote down all Mrs. Bowles' expectations.  I think we have a way to communicate so others know exactly what we're doing when finding the answer to a problem.  We then looked at a new type of pattern, an increasing pattern.  We are learning about the vocabulary that a mathematician uses. We talked about how the word "bigger" has to do with size and not increasing numbers.  We discussed why the term increasing works much better.  This lesson will lead us into how we can use charts to help us identify patterns and predict answers to the questions.

Our science inquiry is beginning to heat up!  Today we were looking at finding out facts about Mars.  We used books and safe sites to help us find facts.  We talked today about how these are 'googleable.' answers.  We will be using these facts to answer our "deeper" questions we will have later on.

In gym, we continued our work on striking objects.  We played floor hockey and again used the giant Q - Tips.

We finished up our day checking the blog and tweeting about our learning.

Things to Remember:
1.)  No School tomorrow for students.
2.)  Families Helping Families
- what we have collected so far:

Uno and Toothpaste,

Comfy Blanket

* craft supplies and a graphic novel for the 9 year old boy
* an adult colouring book and an adventure novel for the 11 year old girl
* socks for the mom and the dad
* some baking supplies for the family

Question of the Day:

Find three NEW facts about Mars.  You cannot write down a fact that someone else has written.