Sept. 10-14

We've had another wonderful week of learning in room 11!

In math we continued to learn important lessons about math from Jo Boler's week of Inspirational Math. Students learned that mistakes are valuable, and help us to learn. They also learned that when you believe in yourself, your brain actually grows! We worked on learning the place value of numbers up to the 10 000's for grade 4's and up to the 100 000's for grade fives. Students can now write numbers in expanded form, standard form and in words. Ask your child to explain these to you. To practise at home, write a number for your child and have him/her practise saying it correctly out loud, then write it in words on paper. Some students also chose to write a math pretest this week. Those will be returned on Monday. All students logged into a math program, called Prodigy. This website can be used in school or at home. Students have their usernames and passwords in their agendas.

In language, students finished their "I Am" poem, using positive adjectives to describe themselves. They put this poem on watercolour paper, and used mixed media to bring it to life as an art piece. These will be on display next week. We continued with our read aloud novel, Fatty Legs, which is a novel about an Inuit girl in a Residential School. We began a reading program called the first twenty days, which is by Fountas and Pinnell. Students learned that reading requires hard thinking, so we will be silent during independent reading time. Students are also working on a reading letter to me about their current book. In addition, students read a text about 9-11, highlighting the town of Gander, Newfoundland, and the story that unfolded there. Ask your child about what he/she learned about Gander's efforts. Lastly, students wrote a CASI, which is a mandatory reading comprehension test. The results of this test will be used to guide my teaching.

Finally, we continued the meditation program on the website calm.com. We did a program called "7 days of calm," which teaches how to meditate. The students decided that they'd like to continue, so we also began the next program, "21 days of calm.." Here is link to that site if you'd like check it out: https://www.calm.com/.

Important Upcoming Dates:
Monday, Sept. 17: picture day
Tuesday, Sept. 18: steelpan starts at 9AM (NO early start this week)
Thursday, Sept. 20: Curriculum Night
Friday, Sept. 21: Terry Fox run
Wednesday, Oct. 3: cross country meet

Homework:
1) Read for 20- 30 minutes daily at home.
2) Practise the 3 times tables and work on memorizing them.