June 9th Update!

So much to do...such little time! This week's blog post needs to be short and sweet because I have so many other things to do for school!

LITERACY

We've planned our Stuck Story as a class and the students did a fantastic job! 

Next, we have to brainstorm a setting dictionary by thinking of all of the nouns that we are going to encounter and list a few specific verbs for each one. Then, we will start writing our story, one paragraph at a time. Each component of our plan has its own paragraph, with the exception of our character and motive...we will put those together into one paragraph. Each paragraph will take us one day to write and edit. By editing the paragraphs right after we finish writing them, we avoid that colossal task of editing the whole story at the end! Do you remember being so exhausted from all of the writing, you had no energy to put into editing? It was brutal! While writing, we will be paying attention to our sentence starters by tracking them for each paragraph, exactly the way we did with our animal paragraphs. I can't wait for the kids to see how awesome of writers they have become! Students will each be given a copy of our story to illustrate, just like their very own picture book!

NUMERACY

I wanted to take a minute to explain how we are progressing through math these days. The first four units in math (Patterns, Place Value, Addition & Subtraction, Multiplication & Division) are massive and have so many specific learning objectives for the students. These units require a lot of review of past concepts before proceeding into new content. The last four units (Measurement, Geometry, Data Analysis and Fractions) have very few learning objectives and are much more concrete concepts, which are easier for students to learn. We have finished our Measurement unit and all of the students did very well. We are going to do our Geometry Unit this week and will start into our Fractions unit as well. Our Data Analysis objectives are easily covered by a Year End Party Planning survey activity, where students are asked to collect data, create a bar graph and then interpret the results. It sounds chaotic and rushed but I want to assure you that the hands on, concrete nature of these units are perfect for this time of year when attention spans are a bit on the short side. If you have any questions or concerns about any of this, please feel free to contact me.

SCIENCE

We are finished our last unit and the students enjoyed completing a Butterfly Life Cycle slide show. If you are interested in seeing it, the students can access their google or google classroom accounts from home and share it with you. 

We released our butterflies on Thursday before the wet weather hit us on Friday. I have to say that these were the most hesitant butterflies we've ever had! They didn't want to leave us! I had to physically remove them from the enclosure and place them on a near by flowering shrub. To see photos of our release, click on the link below.

Butterfly Photos!

ART

The students enjoyed painting these butterfly masks on Friday! I bought these masks for the first time a couple of years ago when I was on Vancouver Island at the Coombs Old Country Market. My students LOVED painting them using pointillism last year but I didn't have any left. My mom was recently on the island, taking care of things after my aunt passed away. She brought me home enough masks to last me two years! The students really appreciated this special project!

SOCIAL STUDIES

We finished up our unit on Ukraine by creating a knowledge web or list based on everything that we've learned. The students focused on finding important details about ten different topics from their notes:

1. quick facts
2. food
3. geography
4. education and language
5. religion
6. farming
7. manufacturing
8. celebrations and traditions
9. climate
10. life in Ukraine

The students did a fantastic job with this project! Finding the key facts amongst a large amount of information is such an important student skill. The students have really developed these skills as more mature learners.

We are going to move onto our final country of study, Peru. For this unit, we are going to do research online using a National Geographic Kids webpage and a variety of videos. Peru is a great country to end with! The students are going to love it!

Reminders...

ALL LIBRARY BOOKS ARE DUE BACK IMMEDIATELY

June 11 - DQ Blizzard Hot Lunch Order

June 11 - Bike Rodeo (bring your bike to school)

June 17 - Grade 3 Ukrainian Village

June 18 - School Council & Fundraising AGMs 6:00/6:30 pm

June 20 - Cultural Showcase - Gr. 1 - 4 @ EIA

June 21 - Indigenous Peoples Day - Elder Florence Visit

June 24 - School Triathlon

(bring your bike to school)

June 25 - Fun Day (afternoon)

June 26 & 27 - FREE Swim in the morning

June 27 - Last Day of School - Grade 1 - 4