Monday, November 27

Can you believe it is almost December??  4 school weeks until the Christmas holidays.  Wow, time has flown by!  With December coming, we have some theme days ahead.  Check out this calendar:

In Language, we are continuing our work on persuasive writing.  I have been sharing the OREO strategy with them.  Basically, it stands for Opinion, Reason, Evidence, Opinion.  It helps provide some structure in their writing, and it also promotes writing their ideas in paragraphs.

In Math, we will be moving on to measuring area, using square centimetres and non-standard units.

Monday, November 20

 Weather is getting colder!  Make sure your child has a good fitting pair of winter boots (expecting it to snow this week) plus a good hat and mitts/gloves.  These always go missing during the day, so it is a good idea to put their initials or name on an inside tag so that they can be returned more quickly!

Announcements for this week:

• Parent/Teacher interviews are this Thursday, from 3:30 - 7:00 pm.  If you haven't signed up and would like an interview, please use the link in the email I sent the other day.  If you requested a phone interview, I will try to call at the allotted time, but could be delayed a few minutes depending on how behind I may get.  The call from we will be listed as "No Caller ID".  If you requested an in-person interview, I will open the door as soon as the previous one is complete.  Interviews run 10 minutes, and I will have to try to stick to that timeframe as other families are trying to coordinate multiple interview.  
• Walking Wednesdays start soon.  If your child was interested, they would have received a permission letter sent home by our principal.  Please make sure that the other online forms are filled out as well (accessed through the parent portal), as one of them also involved off-site activities.
• Today, a box of chocolate was sent home to each family as part of the School Council fundraising efforts.  There was a page sent home with all the information and explanations that you would need to understand what this is for and how to go about it.  Whatever chocolate is not sold, please return back with the money sales by the deadline (December 18th).
• this week is Bully Awareness Week, so you may here some discussions around this topic.  Also, we will be having a Bus Safety presentation this week.

In Language this week, we will be working further on persuasive writing.  Last week, we started our first task of writing a small movie review, and trying to use some persuasive language to either convince people to see their movie or perhaps even avoid seeing it!  We will be working on this a little more this week.

 

In Math, we are working on comparing numbers to 1000.  Specifically, we are rounding numbers to their nearest 10 and 100.  Also, we are comparing the size of numbers using the greater than and less than symbols ( > and < ).

Monday, November 13

I hope you all had a great weekend!  The class last week spent some time learning about Remembrance Day.  I was very impressed that some went home to try to learn parts of In Flanders Fields.

There aren't any updates for school activities this week, so I will stick to our subjects.

In Language, the biggest introduction this week is a Spelling and Vocabulary online program that the class was introduced to today.  It is linked in the Language workspace, and it is through Typing Club.  There is a typing practice course linked there, in addition to the Spelling/Vocabulary lessons.  The class will be provided a little time each week, but they are welcome to keep practising at home if interested!

In Math, we are going to spend a little time reviewing numbers to 1000, and will then start the Estimating and Comparing Whole Numbers unit. 

In Science, we will be moving on this week from our unit on Soils.  They will be starting the Forces unit, which should run into the new year.  

Also, in the Arts, we will be starting some work with Drama.  Again, this should carry us into the new year.

Monday, November 6

 For those that celebrate, I hope you had a fun Halloween.  I heard the dance at the school was fun and it was nice to see the various fun costumes for the day.

• this next week is the Scholastic Book Fair.  We went today to look and shop.  For those that didn't bring money and they were interested in some things, I had them write down the name of the book and price.  They can always return to the book fair on Wednesday or early next Monday.
• this Friday is a PD day, so the school is closed.
• we will be having our Remembrance Day service on Thursday morning.

This is a short week.  They still got their Working with Words lesson today.  The rest of the week we will be reading some Remembrance Day readings and will be taking a look at the poem In Flanders Fields.  

In Math, we will be working further on numbers to 1000.  Specifically, we will be examining numbers within place value charts and writing numbers in expanded form (eg. 200 + 30 +9).  

In Science, we will have one more lesson on Soils, looking specifically at decomposers and composting.