Dear Parents,
These last weeks before break are busy ones. We enjoy some fun activities, but also work hard and learn a lot. Please don’t forget to let the office or the teachers know of absences. Important Dates and Peace Festival Activities Dec. 17- Keynote speaker about empathy and caring for others and an opportunity to shop at Peace Festival Market. Please note that the Market includes student-created crafts (proceeds will go to Inn From the Cold -cash only), as well as goods from Nepal (proceeds go to Medical Mercy Canada’s Nepal project- cash or credit card accepted) This is also open at lunch recess Mon-Wed. Dec. 18- Skating @Lakeview for Peace Festival (bring helmets and skates) Dec. 19- Fun carnival games in the gym - non-perishable food items welcomed to play some games! Dec. 20 - Potluck Lunch Sign Up Here Dec. 21- No School until January. Enjoy a restful break. Please vote for the People’s Choice award in the Canstruction Jr. competition. Voting closes Dec. 17th Our school’s entries are: The Cat in the Hat The Heart of Who-ville Gifts for Grinch www.surveymonkey.com/r/canstructionjr18 Project Beautiful: We continued to investigate the definition of “beautiful.” Our trip to the library resulted in some great clips about beauty in that space. Students began creating a video that summarizes their crowdsourced results. Humanities: We started our Mock Caldecott Unit and read several books that have won the medal. We searched for evidence in each book that meet the Caldecott criteria. Once we are familiar with what award winning books look like, we will examine books that are eligible for this year’s award and see if we can predict the winner. In writing, we began looking at the punctuation involved in written dialogue. We started by taking comic style conversations in the “Pigeon books” and turned them into written dialogue. Math: This week students looked at feedback from their multiplication check-in and made any corrections necessary. These have been uploaded to SeeSaw. While Mrs. Piper was at MRU this week marking final projects, Mrs. Price worked with the students on multiplication proofs. They analyzed different ways they can represent numbers using the array method, whether or not these methods worked and how you can mathematically justify whether they worked or not. Students then created their own proofs. Science: In Science this week, students compared forecasts using both the Farmers Almanac and the Weather Network. We are beginning to look at why we forecast weather, how we forecast weather and what instruments are used to measure/forecast weather.
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Important Dates Dec. 10 - Central Library Field Trip: 9am-2:30pm (Thanks for the tremendous volunteer response!) Dec. 18- Skating @Lakeview for Peace Festival Dec. 20 - Potluck Lunch Sign Up Here Dec. 21- No School until January! Project Beautiful: We continued to investigate the definition of “beautiful.” Our walk to MRU and the interviews we completed were a success. Students reflected on their responses and began curating some of the common ideas and words that are arising. Some students require your support this weekend. If they have not yet done so, they need to interview YOU about your thoughts on beauty. There are 2 questions to answer with either a voice recording or video recording of your response. We would also like them to find someone older than you to interview (could be a grandparent, neighbour, coach, etc.) to see how the idea of beauty might change with age and experience. All interviews will need to be completed by Monday, Dec. 10th. Math: This week we further investigated using the array model to multiply 2 digit by 2 digit numbers (and beyond!). Students found great success with this strategy and even completed a check-in this week. Look for those check-ins to be posted to SeeSaw early next week. If you would like to learn more about the array model, check out this video. Science: This week in Science we explored the reasons for the seasons. Through a combination of demonstrations, videos, group quizzes and a Kahoot we constructed our understanding of why we have seasons on earth. This TED Ed animation is a great summary of the reasons we have seasons and some common misconceptions. As we lead up to the winter solstice, now is a great time to have some conversations with your child about things they observe happening in the world around them. The changes in seasons is a fascinating topic to explore as it lives all around us, every day! Humanities: This week students shared their countries through a gallery walk. Please look for their work next week on Seesaw. We also spent time learning about absolute location. We practiced using latitude and longitude coordinates to find locations of countries. We are making progress with our reading of, “Endling.” Coming up we will work on writing dialogue and begin examining books that have won the Caldecott medal.
Central Library trip: We will be visiting the new Central Library on Dec. 10, 2018. More information will be given along with informed consent and letter outlining the details and curricular outcomes of this trip. However, we encourage you to register your child for a free library membership if they aren't already members. https://reg.calgarylibrary.ca. They will have the opportunity to sign out a book from there. If you're interested in joining us for the trip, we are looking for 4 parent volunteers per homeroom. In order to volunteer with us, please have your current volunteer form and security clearance at the office.
Project Beautiful: We continued this week to investigate the definition of “beautiful”. Students all reflected on their own individual definition of the word and wrote about it in their journals. They will be coming home this weekend with a bit of homework. We would like them to interview YOU about your thoughts on beauty. They have 2 questions to ask you and would like to either voice record or video record your responses (you choose!). We would also like them to find someone older than you to interview (could be a grandparent, neighbour, coach, etc.) to see how the idea of beauty might change with age and experience. Next week (Dec. 6) we will be taking our questions on the road and interviewing members of the public at Mount Royal University. This will help us broaden our own definitions and expand our thinking of what is beautiful. Building Community: This week we focused on supporting and enhancing community by coming up with strategies to accomplish both class’s goal of “valuing people in our community by listening to them and not talking over them”. Students collectively generated a list of specific ways we can work on this goal and we will be helping to hold each other accountable for this goal. Math: We are continuing to work on our understanding of multiplication. Please check SeeSaw for feedback on your child’s Number Pieces Arrays. Next week we will continue to work on the array method for multiplying by replacing the pictures with numbers. Thank-you for your support with our work habits goal and encouraging your child to find time for their homework this week. Science: We tackled one of our “thick” questions from our trip to the wetland, “what happens in the winter to the animals who live here?”. We created a list of animals we think use that wetland as habitat and students then did some research to determine how that animal survives the winter (ie: migration, hibernation, change of coat colour, food caches etc.). Each pair then shared one adaptation they learned about their animal with the rest of the class. This ties into another one of our questions which is “why do the seasons change?”. We generated some ideas around this question and will continue to explore it next week. Humanities: Students had an opportunity to create their own county this week. Many of the elements we learn about in geography and our study of Canada were introduced through this short term project. The project was due today and the students completed a self evaluation. If there are parts of the project they felt didn’t meet expectations they have until Monday to add to the project. Peer feedback will be provided on Monday. After peer feedback, and an opportunity for improvement, the projects will be assessed by the teacher. I am hopeful that each round of feedback results in improvements. Improving work and acting on feedback, are work habits we will be developing in term 2. Parents are welcome to provide feedback over the weekend. A copy of the rubric is available for viewing on Seesaw. The assignment can be found on google slides. |
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