Thankfulness

I just want to say thank you to all those families who I have met with in the last two days to set goals. Thank you for caring for your child. Thank you for entrusting me to teach them. I am looking forward to a great year.

In follow up to goal-setting, we will be making a desk reminder to help students recall and work towards their goal(s). You can look for ideas for good books on the Book List page on this website. Or you can visit our school library and ask Ms Cameron for recommendations. Vancouver Kidsbooks is also a great resource for purchasing books for your own library. The staff are very knowledgeable about books appropriate for different ages and interests.

Here are some updates and reminders for the weeks ahead:

Social studies - students have almost completed their family coat of arms. These are due on Tuesday, October 15. We will be sharing their work by having a gallery walk around with students' work on their desks for others to see. 

Writing - we are continuing to focus on using facts and details in our writing. This week, our writing assignment was to choose an idea from our memory pocket with a feeling connected to the memory. Good writers invite the reader to make connections.

Math - we are having a lot of fun with our Patterns & Algebra unit. This week we learned about attributes of shapes. Ask students about the activity we did with attribute blocks where we had to find another person in the room with a shape that had one attribute different from our own. 

Gym - we began Volleyball this week. First, students will be learning how to set the ball. Next we will learn the bump pass and how to serve. 

Word work - this is what we call our spelling program. We learned about ten of the Nifty Thrifty Fifty this week. These words contain 50 prefixes or suffixes which we can use in our writing and understand their meaning when reading! Words that we study go up on the Word Wall and students are expected to be accountable for learning them.

Science - the digestive is a hit with students! We enjoyed watching a three-minute video on how this system works. Our science experiment using crackers, water and orange juice helped us better understand how our food is broken down in our bodies.

Music - the students have been enjoying their Friday music lesson with Mr Matthewson. He is focusing on Brain Dance which incorporates movement and music to help build brain connections. Something to look forward to? Students will have opportunity to work with marimbas this year in music class!