We had another great day at swimming today! We see lots of evidence of students showing a growth mindset and trying new things that challenge them. They have been fantastic in the change room and on the bus! When we returned to class, we had our snack and listened to Masterpiece. We followed up with Daily 5 and student choice for their Literacy activity. We had avery peaceful afternoon. we had a few minutes o sketch time then we went into math activities. We reviewed the games we have been introduced to this year before choosing an activity. After, students where ask to continue work on the streets and avenues problem in math. This time they looked for patterns and/or connections in their work. Some connections were: "this reminds me of area and perimeter" "this is just like multiplication" "6x3 is the same as 3x6" We finished the day by creating a promise to save water page in our visual journal. Important Note for Grade 4 Students Please ask your child to give you the blue paper in their backpack this evening! It is a time sensitive notice about the Calgary Young Writers' Conference opportunity for our grade 4 students. Please read over the information carefully and if your child is interested and you are in agreement with the terms, please send back the bottom of the form either tomorrow or Friday. Students will be selected on Friday from the forms that come in as there is a limit for each school attending. If your child is not selected in the first round, we may have an opportunity to add more students in round two of registration. This is an amazing opportunity and Mrs. Zwack has been involved with it for many years. She highly recommends it! Reminders: We have swimming tomorrow so its important to get to school on time
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For those students participating in the FOOD (cooking/baking) WONDER TIME
on Friday, Feb. 2, we are asking that you prepare and bring your favorite toppings to fill a pita. This could include items such as lettuce, tomato, cucumber, peppers, banana, apples, cheese, hummus and wowbutter. Due to various student allergies, we ask that any items brought are peanut free. Approx.1/2 - 1 CUP (total prepared toppings) should be enough to fill a pita! The pitas will be provided by Byblos Bakery and are egg and nut FREE but may contain traces of milk products. If you have a student that is allergic to wheat or gluten, please bring in your own gluten free bread to make a sandwich or they can make a salad from the pita fillings as well. What is the structure of persuasive writing? We started our day with a visit to Shouldice Pool for swimming. The students are getting very proficient at getting attendance done and getting on the bus quickly. In the afternoon, we worked on pencil sketches emphasizing dark, medium and light values. The we had a practice fire drill. Considering how cold it was, the students handle the drill very well. When we returned from outside, we continued exploring persuasive writing. We watched a commercial on banning white grocery bags and identified the structure of persuasive writing. Then we started a problem that involved streets and avenues and stoplights. We used toothpicks to represent streets and avenues. Students were then challenged to a grid using the toothpicks and determine the number of stoplights they would need. Amrit made a grid of 4 streets and 3 avenues and counted the number of intersections. He said he would need 12 stoplights. Charlotte had 5 streets and 10 avenues and group counted by fives to determine that she would need 50 stoplights. Zephrym found a pattern. He was not the only one. If he had 10 streets and 4 avenues he would need 40 stoplights. He multiplied them together. We finished the day with a video on the migration routes of sea turtles and traced their journeys on the big map in the Learning Commons area. Reminders: We are going swimming again tomorrow morning Our morning was very busy. No sooner had we arrived at school we were off to the pool for swimming lessons. When we got back we were vey tired. We had a snack and read from Masterpiece by Elise Broach. Mr. Kelly's group went to music and Mrs. Zwack's group worked in their visual journals. We had our Meditation Monday time. Mrs Bates read the book, Giggle, Giggle, Quack by Doreen Cronin/illustrated by Betsy Lewin (see the link below). It is part of our persuasive writing project we are starting. How do we use persuasive writing? or When do we use persuasive writing? We had music then math skills activities. We started an experiment today as part of our waste in the world science inquiry. We introduced scientific vocabulary of hypothesis and diagrams. Reminders: We have swimming again tomorrow. We head to the pool first thing after the morning bell so make sure you're on time Book orders are due tomorrow Happy Thursday!
This morning we started our day with a focused Read to Self time. Students use this time to apply the reading strategies that they have learned, while reading a "good fit" book of their choice. They are building their reading stamina and independence. Next, we spent some time finishing up our Visual Journal pages for My Fantastic Elastic Brain and Flipping My Lid. The students are demonstrating amazing understanding of these concepts and are able to represent this understanding clearly and in some very unique ways! We continue to focus on developing our Reading Response writing during Book Club time. Students start each round of Book Club with a sharing of their writing from the previous day as a way to share and discuss their thoughts and opinions with one another. They then move into a group reading time and end with their new written response. We are aiming for students to "respond" to the reading rather than simply "retelling" the main events and to back up their thinking with details from the text. We listened to the story "The Day the Crayon's Quit" and discussed the arguments the crayons had and how this was an example of persuasive writing. In math we did math by myself and math with someone and had a chance to practice our new game from yesterday about multiplication. Some very special guests joined us at the end of the day for a presentation about water. They came from CPAWs and shared with us all the things that pollute our waters and the affects it has on animal life. We created our own sample of water and discussed what we can do to help. We were left with an action challenge: to find a way to keep the water clean and healthy. You can visit actionchallenge.ca for information about the challenge. Our homework is to make a promise and plan about saving water. They will be back to see us in 2 weeks. Reminders: Report Cards Come home TODAY Swimming begins on Monday - please come dressed in your bathing suit and bring a towel and underwear in your bag. Volunteers we will have volunteer clearance forms for you to complete for us at the pool. Book orders due Tuesday We made a map of Alberta using loose parts!!! You wouldn't believe the different shapes that we thought our province was. We included mountains and the Bow river. Then Mrs. Zwack showed us what the map of Alberta actually looks like. We were excited to see if our predictions and prior knowledge were correct. We continue to work on our Writing Blitz where students work in their groups with three teachers to further develop their writing skills! We then moved on to snack and our wonderful read aloud Masterpiece. Things are really getting exciting! In book Club time today we discussed some new response sentence starters to help us to think deeply about our reading. In the afternoon we listened to the story "Dear Mrs. LaRue". In the story a dog is writing his owner letters from Obedience school. We talked about how this was persuasive writing. We will begin to explore persuasive writing over the next few weeks. In math we learned a new game called "How Many Rows?" We rolled a die to make different arrays and then had to calculate how much space we were able to colour. This is a great game to play with a partner or by your self. All you need is dice and a 10 x 10 grid. After our outside break we went to the hub and explored migration of a variety of animals on a Giant map! Reminders:
Swimming starts next week No School Friday Report Cards go home tomorrow We had a great morning today and welcomed Ms. Shepard to our class. She will be Mr. Kelly's substitute for this week. We started the morning reviewing the video below. Many students have seen this before but today we looked for connections to our work on Growth Mindset and on Our Fantastic Elastic Brain! Following our discussion, we went to work finishing up our Visual Journal pages to represent our understanding. We are looking for students to apply their learning about the brain to their understanding of non-fiction text features. Next we worked on our Word work and finished up our sorting and recording and went on to do some Speed Sorts. In writing, students went to their groups and focused on there tasks. Each group has a different focus to take their writing to the next level. After snack and reading of Masterpiece the classes went off to PE and music. In the afternoon we listened to the story "I Wanna Iguana" and discussed the authors intention. We talked about Persuasion. In math we finished up our Area and Perimeter Problems about Mr. Kelly's Kitchen. We documented our learning of the past week on Sea turtles in our visual journals. Reminders: Swimming starts Monday! Report Cards go home on Thursday. No school for students on Friday! Book orders due January 30th. This morning in Grade 3/4 we got new words for Words their Way. We sorted our words with our group and some of us recorded our words on paper. We also did Daily 5. We watched Mrs. Zwack and Ms. Low's Brain Video to learn about our emotions and how our brains control them. Did you know you can use your hand as a model of the brain?
Then we had an assembly for The Right to Play. We learned about the Right to Play around the world and how games can teach important lessons. In the afternoon the Peace Ambassadors attended the Right to Play workshop. The learned some new games to teach other students. In the classroom we did Math Practice games and continued to work on our Area and Perimeter problems from Friday. Mr. Kelly's class did Daily 5 while Mrs. Bates/Mrs. Zwack's class went to music. It was Mindful Monday so we practiced Mindful listening. We also finished learning about the Sea Turtle through our Video. Book Orders are Due January 30. ***All swimming forms should now have been returned. We continue our exploration of how our brains work and a growth mindset. Question of the Day: What does background, mid-ground and foreground mean? Then we started an art perspective with a focus on scale and perspective. We are working to complete an ink and wash drawing that has been inspired by the art work of Kelly Murphy. She is the illustrator of our novel, Masterpiece. Check her work. The link has been posted below. then we had Book Club and talked about connecting to our books with personal experiences. Students had a choice of a prediction or connection to write about after reading. In the afternoon, we completed our practice sketches inspired by Kelly Murphy. The students observed that objects in art that are in the foreground appear to be larger than objects in the background (even though they might not be in real life). Artist use this to help them create a sense of depth to their work. Once again, the students demonstrated what great artists they are. In math, we had practice time. Then we got new math journals today! Our journals are divided up into three sections, 1) vocabulary, 2) strategies and 3) math problems. We took a body break and finished the day watching, TURTLES. This is our introduction to waste in our inquiry for science. Reminders: Swim forms are due ASAP Wonder Time starts tomorrow! Let the exploration begin! We started our day with further discussion about growth mindset. After that we looked at the importance of k=making personal connections when reading. Mr>kelly shared the book, The Bureau of Misplaced Dads by Eric Veille /illustrated Pauline Martin. Mr.Kelly"s personal connection: He lost his son while Christmas shopping a few years ago. We shared our stories about being lost or misplaced loved ones. The students then helped Mr. Kelly write a journal entry. We used the sentence starter: The part when... reminds me of ... When a little boy realizes, “I accidentally misplaced my dad this morning,” he runs outside to look for him. There he meets a man who tells the boy he works at the Bureau of Misplaced Dads. “Come with me,” the man says. ...Google Books We had gym and Book Club. In Book Club we made predictions that were supported by the books each was reading. The afternoon we started off with drawing sea turtles. In math we read the story "The Wolf's Chicken Stew". Our challenge was to figure out different combinations of cookies that the Wolf could make for the chicks. For inquiry we learned more about Sea Turtles through a video called "The Incredible Journey". Reminders: Swim Forms are due ASAP |
AuthorMr. Kelly Archives
June 2018
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