Friday 29 January 2016

Friday, January 29th, 2016


Happy Friday Everyone,

I have added our  30 Day Plank Challenge to the blog. Tomorrow is a day off! YAY!! Sunday is 45 seconds.  I know that this is really challenging me as at about 30 seconds I feel my body start to quiver a little bit.  This exercise is going to be great for our core.  Our core are the muscles that run up our stomach and up our back. They help support our bodies. These are important to our overall strength.  Strong core muscles help us to sit up straight, it protects all of our insides, and it will help prevent injuries when we are doing everyday activities.


The rest of our Friday went well. We continue to get our goals in IRIS.  We also had a few minutes out of the playground.  If the weather stays the way it has, please remember to be careful on the hill. It is very, very slippery.  This is great for sliding so we need to remember our sliding rules:
1.) Only slide on knees and bottom.
2.)  You cannot use anything to slide on like: shovels, backpacks, sleds, etc.
3.) Wait for a clear path and you cannot slide more than one person at a time.

We continued to look at Julien in Auggie and Me.  We discussed Julien's mom and what type of character she is.

This morning some of our friends from the Hope Hallway presented their assembly. They talked about bravery and courage. They should us how they made movies with clay people.  They did a dance and then they shared some of their writing. It was really, really good!

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1.)  There is no school on Monday - It is a teachers' Professional Development Day
2.)  See you on Tuesday

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Look at the math problem below.  Think about it and share what you thought.

Make up a subtraction question where the digits 4, 6, and 9 appear somewhere in the question.
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Thursday 28 January 2016

Thursday, January 28th, 2016

Happy Thursday Friends,


In math today we focused on finding our own subtraction strategies.  We had a problem and we had to figure out ways to use subtraction.  Some of us even used addition as a strategy and we got the right answer.  We had a round of Math Daily 3.  Many students are choosing a variety of games to practice their addition and subtraction.  We also looked at two strategies to subtract 2 and 3-digit numbers.  One was using a number line and counting up. The other strategy was using the tower method, where we subtract the ones first and then the tens.  We also tried trading.


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We are now reading the book Auggie& Me:  Three Wonder Stories.  The first story is written in Julien's perspective.  It is really interesting to see the rest of Julien's family and how they deal with issues.

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In our science inquiry things are beginning to heat up. Not on Mars of course because it is pretty cold there but in our sessions in class.  The water filtration group are finishing up their water filters and are close to being able to test them. In the structures group, we are finishing up our floor plans and we have started thinking about what materials that we will need to build our structures.

In gym, we continued working on our fitness and our endurance. We are up to 40 seconds in our 30 Day Plank Challenge. It is definitely getting harder but we can do it!

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1.)  Friday we have an assembly so we may not be outside for as long.
2.) Check out subtraction on Mathletics
3.)  Looking for information on Annie?  Please check out Mrs. McBride's blog
http://cranstonmusic.weebly.com/blog

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What do you think about Julien's mom in the story Auggie and Me?  How is she and Julien alike? Different?

Wednesday 27 January 2016

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Hello Friends,

We continued our Daily 5 work and today we focused on working with our new words.  Students completed their Bind Sort to check for words that might be tricky for them.  Afterward, we chose from Read to Self and Work on Writing.  Mrs. Zwack was working with her guided reading groups.

We watched more of the On the Way to School documentary today and were so surprised at how much effort some students must put forward to attend school each day.  We noticed that the children were so excited to go to school and didn't complain about the long journey.  Their parents and grandparents were very encouraging about getting a good education and expected good grades.

Can you remember the countries that the children were from?
Can you find these countries on a map of the world?

In math we continued our work on subtraction.  We looked at two digit subtraction with and without re-grouping.  We used base ten blocks to really "see" how this subtraction works.  We leaned a new game, "What's the difference?"

In science inquiry we looked at an article about tests that scientists are doing experiments in antarctica to see if there is life in the permafrost there.  If there is then they believe that there may be life on Mars because the two areas are so similar:  dry and cold.  They found that the microbes that they found were either dead or very dormant.  

We continued to try and add our goals and strategies into IRIS.  We are also trying to add our Mars videos into IRIS as well.  Please share these with your parents when you have added them.


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1.)  We have an assembly on Friday morning so our outdoor nature inquiry will be shortened.
2.)  Continue to practice subtraction in Mathletics.

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Which estimation strategy do you use the most?  Why does it work for you?