Today was PINK SHIRT DAY! Lots of the students at Eric Harvie School showed their compassion and kindness by wearing pink shirts. Ms. Belliveau worked with us to think through the lens of a bystander and reflect on feelings someone would have that was being bullied. This was a written assignment in our writers notebooks. We enjoyed 2 really good stories during snack about Alberta "A is Alberta" and Kindness "I'm Like you, You're Like me" . We did daily 5 and had book club with our groups. In gym we played dodgeball with our classroom teachers because Mr. Der was busy at the pool with other classes. Our calming after lunch consisted of swirl drawing. Then Ms. Belliveau took a survey of our comfort with Math skills by having us move through red, yellow and green sections of the class. Then we converted non standard units from a graph to standard units. In inquiry we quickly shared with groups our information we have gathered about the topic we are working on a project for. Our day ended with an assembly in the gym to discuss kindness and spread the message of Pink Shirt Day.
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We continued our work in preparation for Pink Shirt Day tomorrow. Please read yesterday's blog as we posted it late due to a communication mixup!! Part one of this work is described there and we have posted two excellent videos to watch and discuss as a family. Today's video focuses on the importance of every one being aware of what is happening around them and finding the bravery to stand up for what is right. Please have your child share the "sorting game" we played today and how it connects to Pink Shirt day. We also had a knowledge building circle where we discussed our learning and connections. We will be having a short assembly tomorrow at 2:30 around the theme of kindness and caring for one another. PLEASE WEAR SOMETHING PINK IF YOU CAN!! This afternoon we started out with a fun math activity. After Mrs. Bates showed us a graph using forks to measure different objects we set off in partners to pick a non-standard unit of measurement to measure objects in our classroom. Everyone came up with new graphs and we were able to share these with others in our class discussion.
In Science we were hard at work researching for our environmental projects. Some of us are choosing to create a poster, a presentation, create an invention or another way to tackle a problem that can help out our environment. Question of the Day: What object did you choose as your non-standard unit today for math class? Can you tell your parents or family at home what is the difference between a non-standard unit of measurement versus a standard unit of measurement? This morning Ms. B introduced the story behind Pink Shirt day which will take place on Wednesday February 28th. We encourage all students to wear pink shirts that day to acknowledge our commitment to kindness and respect for everyone. We also watched a video about standing up to support those who are being bullied. Please take a moment to watch these together as a family! We had a new assessment done today to set new targets for everyone's Words Their Way groups. This assessment helps us to see where each student has shown growth and where we need to target our upcoming word work. Please keep working on your words that were sent home last week. New groups will be formed and will start when this round is complete - Friday, March 9th. During our Book Club time, students read with their group and were asked to follow up on our Vocabulary lesson from last week by selecting 3 new words that they encountered as they read. As the found a word, they marked it with a small dot sticker and then went back after reading to use their strategies to figure out what they thought the new word meant. These were recorded in the student's Thoughtful Logs. In the afternoon we worked on our persuasive paragraphs we planned last week. We have good arguments to convince you of things like why soccer is the best sport and why we should get a puppy. After Mrs. Bates class went to Music and Mr. Kelly's class had book club we enjoyed a break outside. Upon returning into the classroom we examined the data from our waste collection last week. We discussed how this might be put into a graph and what the axes of the graph might be. Students brainstormed with a partner and shared on a whiteboard. We then looked at another graph and discussed what information it was sharing and what the axes might be. We discussed the steps to plan a waste project to help the environment. Students have a template to plan out their project and we will begin to enact our ideas very soon. We are so pleased at the passion of the students and the interesting ideas they have for helping our environment. We had a wonderful and very full day today! This morning we began by continuing the writing activity we started with Mrs. Zwack earlier this week. We are practicing our persuasive writing skills and convincing everyone about how great Alberta is and all of the reasons there are to visit our province.
Later in the morning Miss Belliveau introduced a new strategy we can use for reading, if we stumble upon a word we don't know we can use clues and hints in the book to help us figure out the meaning. After our reading lesson we gathered in the learning commons where we were able to connect with Olympic athletes over Skype! This was incredible to be included on the web conference and hear the stories and perspectives of the Olympians. They talked about the importance of setting goals for ourselves and planning steps to achieve this goals. Question of the day: What is a goal you want to set for yourself? This afternoon we weighed the garbages in our class for the third day in a row, we will be weighing this again tomorrow for the final time. The teachers were happy to see that the class is doing a great job sorting our garbage into the correct bins! In math we continued a follow up lesson on our Animal Graph that we discussed yesterday then had a chance to produce our own graphs in groups later on. In Science we talked about possible actions plans and the steps we could take to tackle an environmental problem. Reminders: All final money for Read a Thon is due tomorrow Tonight is Parent Council Meeting @ 7pm This morning we worked some more on translating our plans for our Alberta Landscape project into writing. We discussed our year long goals for writing around Is it interesting? and Is it clear? Students were then given a focused period of time to work on their independent writing. We are using this project as a formative assessment of two things:
1. How well do they understand the various landscapes of Alberta? 2. How has each student's writing shown growth since report cards were written in January? How are they applying the new skills and strategies that we have been working on during our daily Writing Blitz? The rest of our Word Work groups received their new words today. Every child should have a set of their words in their backpack for home sorting and review. Please have them cut up the word cards and work with them for a few minutes each night. We will be working on these words at school over the next two weeks. We enjoyed a special time in PE today with two visitors who brought in lacrosse equipment and introduced us to some new skills. Our students also all had time to meet in their book clubs before lunch. This afternoon Mrs. Bates was away but we carried on with her plans! We worked on Math practice activities and also launched into our work on graphing! We had a drawing lesson as well. After an outdoor movement break we moved on to Inquiry where we looked at some commercials, posters, and brochures about waste in connection to our focus on the environment and Waste in our World! Question of the Day - what are some ways to "persuade" others to agree with your ideas or opinions? WELCOME BACK MS. BELLIVEAU. We are excited to welcome back our student teacher Ms. Belliveau. She will be with us until April 20.
This morning we began to plan out a writing piece about the landforms in Alberta. Students were given a planning sheet and time to think about the important parts of these landforms. We will continue this work tomorrow. We are excited to see the finished writing pieces. Ms. Belliveau, Mrs. Shepherd and Mrs. Zwack all took new word groups and began sorting new words. In the afternoon we practiced our math skills and then we used our knowledge of mass to measure our classroom waste. It was interesting to see how much waste we created and to think about how we can better sort our waste over the coming week to change the measurements. After an outside break we came inside and began to plan for our own environmental action projects. Students all have great ideas about how they might reduce their environmental footprints. Please note, we are still looking for volunteers for Wonder Hour on Fridays. If you are available to help out please sign up: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080d44afab28abf94-ehswonder A very short blog today!
Please dress in your warm outdoor clothing as it is Winter Sports Day tomorrow afternoon. We will be outside from 12:30 to 2:30 so come prepared! Valentines will be handed out first thing in the morning due to Sports day in the afternoon. We still require volunteers for our stations. If you can join us and volunteer, we would really appreciate it. Morgan Elizabeth Tyler Kaely Beth Qunzhi Nathan Darius Nayun Brooklyn Ashton Alex Anjali Lina Llola Sam Ethan Ty Alexander Emily Bella Isabel Elisa Abby Zephrym Josh Amrit Charlotte Mason Ben London Wesley Jean-Luc Elyse Sierra Walter Michael Emily Hema Faize Nick Jordyn Jasper We have started our week with more cold and snow form the weekend, but warmer temperatures are in sight. We did have an indoor recess at lunchtime - hopefully we will be out frolicking in the snow tomorrow! We began the morning talking about "landforms" and what we thought those might be. Several students took a risk and made a guess. We then watched a new video from Travel Alberta and looked specifically for what we thought were landforms. We sure noticed a lot of them!! Have a look and see how many you can find! We listed them on chart paper and also added some water features found in Alberta. "A landform is any natural formation of rock and dirt, found on Earth. A landform can be as large as a mountain range, or as small as a hill. It can be as large as a continent, or as small as a pond. Geologists study how landforms are created, and how they interact with one another." We then moved into Daily5 and some groups had their word quiz today. The rest of the groups will have their turn tomorrow morning! New words will be coming home after the long weekend!
In our writing blitz groups we are working on a variety of skills. Mrs. Zwack's group is working on showing, not telling how our characters are feeling, using facial expressions, body language and words/thoughts of the character. Ms. Sheperd's group is working on adding details to their sentences. Mrs. Bates is working on editing and revising skills with her group in the Learning Commons. We had our Book Club time today for both classes. During this time, students read in groups and do some discussing and responding to what they have read. We are working on using a variety of sentence starters and adding details form the text to back up our thinking. In the afternoon we finished a class created persuasive paragraph. Students in Mrs. Bates/Mrs. Zwack's class had music. Students that were dressed appropriate went outside for a movement break and those that were not had a chance to do some indoor exercise. After our outside break we explores some special tools. Students have a chance to explore and make observations. Some of the observations that were made were: Charlotte-Brown tube and green tube both measured but brown tube skip counted and the green tube counted by ones Ty-five wooden blocks are the same weight as 40 unifix cubes (at a white scale) Tyler-on the brown tube there are 2 different writings “g” and “N” – “g” stands for grams but we don’t know what the “N” stands for. We think “N” is related to weight because the “g” was Mason – the scale with the yellow and red bucket we noticed when its down it is heavier and the one up is lighter. Weight pushes down on it. London – all of the materials are connected to weight because the scale tells you weight using the picture and the buckets go down and up and tubes if you put something on the end it tells you how heavy something is Beth – Blue tube is different than the brown and green London – blue tube is good for weighing light things as it has small numbers and weighs accurately Nathan – When my group was at the red and yellow bucket scale the yellow bucket was normally lighter as even with even numbers of objects it was still lighter Amrit – I realized that the tubes can only lift things with hooks Tyler – there might be another tube as the blue counts by 25s, green counts by 50s and the brown counted by 100s so maybe there is a different colour that counts by 75s Charlotte – on the white scale 5 wooden blocks are the same weight as 10 handfuls of popsicle sticks See the below pictures for further details of our explorations. Reminders: Valentine's lists were sent to Mrs. Zwack and Bates classes via e-mail. Mr. Kelly's class we will post a list in a preceding Blog post for you. Happy Friday!
We made it through a week of epic snowfall and blue days! We are all looking forward to a wonderful weekend. This morning we started off with Daily 5 and wrapping up our word work for this round. Students have been working with this batch of words for two weeks and will have a quiz on them on Monday. Doing a few practice sorts at home this weekend would be great! Next we did a math game with Mrs. Bates called Circles and Stars to practice multiplication facts. All you need is a die, paper and a pencil. Please show your parents how this game works. Mrs. Bates shared a favorite book during snack time called The Secret Language of Grown-Ups. Afterward we went to our various Wonder Time spots and enjoyed our discoveries and learning. Next week we have a number of special activities planned including: Monday Peace Ambassadors only - Clay for Kids Tuesday - Chinese New Year Lion Dancers Wednesday - Winter Sports Day Winter Sports Day - Wednesday February 14th Eric Harvie will be hosting our first ever Winter Sports Day. Sports Day will be Wednesday February 14th from 12:15-3:00 pm. Students will be participating in a variety of winter and Olympic activities for this special afternoon. Please ensure your child is dressed to be outside for the afternoon to participate in the fun. Eric Harvie families we need your help! Please help us by freezing water in 2L milk/juice containers that we can use to make ice sculptures for our afternoon. If you want to add color to your water before you freeze it, please feel free. We know the kids would love colored blocks! Please bring any 2L ice blocks to school with you on Wednesday February 14th and drop them off at the front of the school. Please help us by taking the ice block out of the milk/juice container before dropping it off at school. Please do not bring ice blocks prior to the 14th as we have no way to store the ice. Thank you for your help with this project! We are looking for volunteers to help run our sports day activities. Please use the sign up genius to sign up to help out. We appreciate all your help! https://m.signupgenius.com/#!/showSignUp/5080d44afab28abf94-ehswinter/43127345 |
AuthorMr. Kelly Archives
June 2018
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