October 9th, 2019
It is so hard to believe that the leaves are changing and we have been back in school for over a month. September flew with a lot of getting to know you activities, rehearsing routines, and setting the tone for a great year of learning together.
In Language, we are continuing to work on setting the tone for our language workshops. During Readers’ Workshop, we are building reading lives for ourselves. Students are learning strategies to determine just right books, practicing fluent reading strategies and are setting reading goals for themselves. Home reading will begin soon. The expectation is that everyone is reading every night! Please look for a weekly goal setting sheet to track nightly reading. Students can log library books, books from home, magazines, or the leveled home reading texts. The logs will be used to help assess report card learning skills in the area of responsibility and self regulation. During writing time, we are setting the tone for our Writers’ Workshop by setting up our tools for writing, developing purposes for writing, and reviewing the writing process. We practice our oral communication skills daily through our morning meetings.
In Math, we have been learning about repeating patterns and growing and shrinking patterns. We have been practicing skip counting forwards and backwards and are learning to identify patterns that we see in numbers. These skills will help us with addition and subtraction, which is coming up. Please keep practicing skip counting at home. You can pick different numbers to start at and count by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s and even 100’s! Please keep an eye out for MathUp information or fun math games that come home periodically. I hope you will find these helpful strategies to support the learning at home.
In Science, we are exploring Forces Causing Movement. Students will be required to identify a force as a push or a pull, as well as different types of forces that can cause or stop movement. They are learning to identify forces in the world around us and will be investigating devices that use forces to create movement.
In Social Studies, we have begun to learn about Communities in Canada, 1780-1850. We have discovered that that is a long time ago…. even before Mrs. Chapman was born! To support our learning, we will be taking a field trip to the Laurel Creek Outdoor Learning Centre on November 6, where we will be participating in the First Nations, Inuit and Metis program. Please check out School Day for this information.
On the topic of field trips, we also have a trip to the Safety Village coming up on November 1! Students will learn about bicycle safety. Please send your child to school with a bike helmet.
Our class had the wonderful opportunity to help prepare for Empire’s World CP Day assembly. We learned a little about CP and how our friends, Ella and Dilava, live their lives. We learned that different is different, and different is GREAT! You can check out our photo on the World CP Day website!
Our next endeavor is helping with the Toasty Toes campaign. Please send in NEW socks for women, men and children. We are collecting for those who are at-risk or experiencing homelessness. Our students are demonstrating a great deal of empathy through this excercise. It is wonderful to see!
