Wednesday, September 30

It was a Wacky Wednesday in room 80 today!  We had a switcheroo with Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Zwack.

We started the day with Miss Gordon joining us,  She is our Mount Royal University student teacher.  She spent the morning observing the routines of our classroom and helping out where needed.  We are so happy to have her as a part of our class!

As we didn't have time to get going on our writing yesterday, we started with some Work on Writing time for the whole class.  We reviewed expectations using our i-chart and made a list of possible writing formats that we could experiment with!  Next, we chose a topic from our writing idea heart and set about focusing on writing for ten minutes with no stopping!  We did a really great job and all agreed that after a quick break we could do another ten minutes.  Mrs. Zwack and Ms. Gordon were very impressed with our writing stamina.

Mrs. Bowles came in from 9 to 10 am and we worked on math. We looked at the importance of Math By Myself.  We broke into two groups and one group logged into Mathletics. We all could get in so we should be able to do more at home.  The other group worked on Today's Number and Roll It, Write It, Expand It.  Then we switched groups.

During snack and read aloud time, we discovered the Edward Tulane had been broken and was having some sort of dream.  He was all clean and dressed in a fine red silk suit and had wings to fly to the starts int he sky.  We made a detailed sketch in our visual journals to show the transformation of Edward.  We are getting very close to the end of the novel!

We had our second drumming lesson today and we had some pretty challenging patterns to follow.  It was very cool when we had three different beats going at the same time.  We look forward to sharing these with you next Friday!

Mrs. Zwack was teaching for a part of the afternoon today - Wacky Wednesday!  We met with Mrs. Peterson's class and finished up our activity from yesterday.  Please keep talking with your children about the idea of democracy and the upcoming election!  They are surprising us every day with what they know and understand!

When Mrs. Bowles returned we learned more about Terry Fox. We watched part of the movie Terry.  We didn't want to stop but.... we will continue either tomorrow or Friday.

We finished the book No Talking - it was great!  Tomorrow we will learn more about Gandhi and we will try No Talking for the afternoon.  Do you think we will be able to do it?

We were AWESOME in dance!  We rocked, we rolled, we jazzed and we grooved to the tunes.  Thank you Ms. Janelle!

Things to Remember:
1.)  Terry Fox Pledges and forms.
2.)  Terry Fox Run on Friday morning - families please come and join us!

Question of the Day:

One of Gandhi's quotes is  You must be the change you wish to see in the world! How can we as a class be the change?

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Today we worked on our Daily 5 with some choice first round and then working on handwriting and working on writing.  We moved our Election Inquiry to before snack and story as Mrs Peterson's class was in drumming during our usual time.

In writing time, we discussed how being faced with a big empty page can be very intimidating!  The best cure for that, is to write about something they know about and care about.  We drew a big heart on the first page of our writing journal and filled it with topics of personal interest.  Please tell your parents some of the things that you wrote in your heart.

During our Election work, we re-watched the Democracy video from last week.  We then talked about some of the tricky vocabulary used in the video and made connections to what we have been hearing and seeing on television and taking about in our homes.  Our activity today was to read a variety of scenarios and to decide as a small group whether it would be best for one person to decide what to do or should there be a vote?  We will be sharing our results tomorrow.

Another crazy afternoon!  We didn't get half of what Mrs. Bowles had planned, but it was very productive.  We started our afternoon off with music. We were counting beats in some of our favourite songs.

In math, we were introduced to Math by Myself. We talked about the importance of why we would do math by our self. You came up with some great thoughts:
1.)  Build stamina in math
2.)   Become independent
3.)  It is fun
4.) Become better at math

We learned about a math activity that we can try called  "Today's Number" - we learned about standard form, expanded form, word form, greater than and less than, sum of digits, 10 less and more, 100 less and more, and 1000 less and more,  rounding  and place value charts. That was a lot.


We also discussed BYOD - Bring Your Own Device.  We will be sending more information on this home over the next week.

In science, we were true scientists. We examined real "oil sands."  We had to write about our experiences and used our senses to discuss what we noticed.  We didn't use two of our senses: hearing and tasting.  YUCK!!  We wrote like scientists about our experiences.

It was off to gym with Mr. McDougall.  We did a 1 km run and added to our class total. So far we have run 140 km!  Then we played a new game with pool noodles and balls.  It was a great day to be outside.



1.)   Terry Fox Pledges and forms
2.)  Demographic forms - if there are any changes




After almost finishing No Talking we discussed having a Gandhi Day on Thursday.  I know we haven't learned a lot about him yet but think of one thing that we could do as part of our celebration and write about it. You may want to learn a little more about him. How could you find out some information about him?

Monday, September 28

We had a very productive day in room 80 today!

We were able to make self-selected choices in Daily 5 with people working on either Read to Self, Read to Someone or Word Work.  That allowed Mrs. Zwack to read with individual students and to complete some assessments.  Mrs. Zwack was very proud of everyone for staying on task and being able to manage their jobs well.

After snack and read aloud, we went to the hub for One World Drumming.  This was very fun and we learned a lot!  Our drums are from Africa and we learned how to play them using two different beats.  We also learned that it is very important to listen carefully to the instructions and to be careful with the instruments.  We are looking forward to being able to play a song together!

After drumming we had a few minutes to label our diagram of the brain in our journals.  We created "job bubbles" for each part including:  the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the amygdala.  Have your child tell you what each of these brain parts does!



Thank you, thank you, thank you!  For such a great afternoon!

We really brought our 'math brains' to school today.  We started off with some strategies around numbers and making numbers with base ten blocks.  We made sure that we all know the proper names for each of the blocks that we use:

unit block

tens rod


hundreds flat


thousands block

We made some numbers based on the following requirements:  it has some hundreds flats, one more tens rod than hundreds and 2 - less ones than hundreds flats.

The students made many different combinations.  Then Spencer challenged us to identify the number from the following illustration.

We talked about and experimented what happens when we have more than 10 units, rods or flats.  When we were all done we found out that the number that Spencer drew was 1 340.

In science, we have decided that there are not any real good videos that explain how gasoline is refined from oil, so we have decided to make our own.  Today we tried to learn a little bit more about the refining process. Tomorrow we are going to break it down into parts that we can understand and decide how to make our video from there.



In gym, we worked on running.  Our goal is to add to the "Run With Terry" map in the hub.  Each square on the map equals about 100 km.  Both our classes in phys. ed. ran a total of 73 km today!  We were absolutely amazing!! We will help finish Terry's Run in no time!!


1.)  Tomorrow is the first Peace Ambassador meeting at lunch.  Please bring your lunch!
2.)  Mrs. Bowles will be sending in the Scholastic Book order in tomorrow - please bring any remaining orders.
3.)  We will be doing a count for the Terry Fox Snacks tomorrow - please make sure all orders are in.
4.)  Student demographic forms - if you have any changes on your child's information please send forms back corrected
5.)  Running Club tomorrow - it will be a beautiful day for the run.
6.)  Please keep collecting pledges for our run Friday morning.

Question of the day:

Think of a number that only takes 4 words to say.  Please don't write a number that has been written by another student.

For example:  4 023  Four Thousand Twenty-three

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Good Evening Everyone,

This morning we met two lovely ladies who are coming to our class to work on their first Mt. Royal University student teaching experience.  They will be coming in every Wednesday morning to learn about teaching and to start working with students.

We looked at a cartoon picture today and had a wonderful discussion about what it means to be a HERO.  The students had so many interesting and thoughtful ideas to share.  We spent some time writing about this in our journals and will share tomorrow.

After snack and our outdoor movement break, we met again with Mrs. Peterson's class to review our work form yesterday and to give it another try now that we know a bit more about how to work together to accomplish the task.  We discovered a few interesting things through our discussions such as:
Sometimes we pick a leader and we don't always agree with their decisions.
We can use voting to help ensure everyone has a say.
It is challenging to get things done when some people don't follow the rules.
Maybe we should have the people prove how they would be good for the job of leader.

We watched a video about democracy and will go over it again tomorrow to build understanding of that concept!  You can watch it at home and discuss if you are interested!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgBBfM8SYPA&feature=youtu.be

This afternoon was a little on the crazy side after our Subway lunch.  We needed a little quiet time after all of that excitement so we watch a video about Terry Fox.  It was interesting to see him and hear him speak. We learned about the Order of Canada and how many people came out to see him.  The video was called "I Have a Dream" and we discussed how we are keeping his dream alive.

In math, we did a Terry Fox math problem.  This is what we were working on:

 Inspired by Terry Fox, Mrs. Bowles decided she would like to run a marathon. A marathon is 42 km long. On the first day, she ran 1 km, on the next day she ran 2 km.  The day after that, she ran 3 km.  If she continues that pattern, how many days will it take her to run a TOTAL of 42 km?

We learned that sometimes making a chart will help us keep our learning organized and easy to follow. We then learned a new game called "Hundreds Board Tic Tac Toe."  This will help us with the place value learning that we are moving on to.

We had a number of handouts today, so we spent some time going over everything.  Tonight there will be Scholastic Book orders, demographic forms and Terry Fox Treat Order Forms in your backpack.

Dance was a lot of fun today.  We learned a new dance which Miss Janelle taught us as a game.  We moved from one corner of the gym to the next and had a whole dance by the time we got back to the starting point.

Things to Remember:

1.  Parents - The demographic forms went home today - this form is coming home today and they must verify the information and only if we need to make corrections do they need to return it to the school.  Meet the Teacher night is an excellent time to return it.

2.)  Terry Fox Fun Snack order forms went home today - Due Date is MONDAY, September 28

3.)  Scholastic Order Forms  went home today. Please read the note about how you can sign up online to pay with a credit card.

4.)  Mrs. Bowles will be at a workshop tomorrow afternoon - please show your Cranston hospitality and that we are great ambassadors of good behaviour

5.)  Cranston School Open House tomorrow.  Please check the time of your session.

6.) No school on Friday as teachers are at a Professional Development Workshop.

Question of the Day:

Today we talked about Terry Fox a lot.  Do you think that he is hero?  If so what makes him a hero?