November 30

Well the last day of November is almost finished- I can't believe we will be starting the month of December tomorrow!! Please remember to return your learning commons books tomorrow- every Thursday is library exchange day. The books should be kept safe in the large ziploc bag that was provided. Also there is not school on Friday as it is a teacher professional development day.

Today in Science we learned more about liquids. The class was so excited to do an experiment that explored the concept of surface tension. We filled a cup of water up to the very brim (I used food colouring so the students could see better). They thought it was so interesting how the water hovered in a rounded way over the edge without falling over. Next we wanted to know how many paper clips we could drop into the cup without it spilling. We spent a long time counting and ended up with 133 paper clips in our cup!! Then the discussion moved on to talk about variables that would have changed our findings or outcome. Students listed things like the size of the paperclips, the size of the cup (good thing I didn't use a bigger cup!) and how we dropped the paperclips in (like how high or fast we moved our hand in). The class had to document their hypothesis, their observations during the experiment, and the resulting conclusion. Here are some pictures of our science lab.

Before we started- just hovering over the edge a bit 

25 paper clips in- little did we know!

134 paperclips made it spill over- Look there wasn't much room left for the paperclips to go!!

November 29

Popcorn day will be happening again tomorrow!

Also just a reminder that Friday is a PD day so there will be no school. 

Today we spent a good chunk of time talking about recycling, composting, and garbage in general. It was supposed to be a few minutes of review to discuss what items go in our classroom blue, yellow, green, and black bins. However, it turned into a really rich conversation about the effect that our waste etc. has on the environment. Some students were really interested in understanding more about composting- but we couldn't spend any more time digging deeper into that today. I suggested that the students could explore the concept more outside of school by doing some research or finding books on the topic. If you use recycling at home have your son or daughter help you sort between recyclable and refundable items as well as what has to be put in the garbage. At the school we use green bins for organics and the students were fascinated to discover that paper towels and pizza boxes and coffee grinds could be put in the organics bin. Here's a link that could help differentiate what can and can't be recycled. 

http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/WRS/Pages/Recycling-information/Residential-services/Blue-cart-recycling/What-Can-You-Recycle.aspx

 Although it wasn't planned to happen as it did, the discussion also linked nicely back to how citizens needs are met through community. The city of Calgary is responsible for managing the waste of the city and its members help make the decisions as to what should happen with landfills and neighbourhood pick ups (and of course pay for the service through taxes!) We will continue to talk about how different communities such as neighbourhood, municipal (city), provincial, and federal (country) work together to support it's members of that community. 

November 28

Tomorrow November 29 and Wednesday November 30 are POPCORN DAYS!! Bring a toonie and get a bag of yummy popcorn! The money raised will go back into funds for the school playground and other important items needed.

There was also a notice that went home today about the Christmas Market at the school this Saturday. It will include fun for the whole family and opportunities to get a lot of shopping done. Best part is that it supports the school! It runs from 10-3.

To celebrate the month of December and a time that many people are thinking about giving- we started talking today about random acts of kindness. We brainstormed things that we could do here in the classroom and around the school to help our school community- the students came up with ideas such as smiling at others, giving kind compliments, helping someone that is having a tough time with something, holding the door for others, etc. This conversation and learning will continue throughout the month and we will broaden our scope of who we could be kind to and think of other ways to make a positive difference in the lives of others. They were asked to continue to think about things that they could do and also start to focus on how others are being kind to them. We will have a tracking system set up in the classroom so that students can recognize and celebrate their positive effect. Many students are regularly so helpful and friendly that they don't realize how much they do to make others feel good :)

November 23

In Social Studies we have been working on learning about different communities that we are members of. Students were asked to do a quick review and identify what communities they belong to. Most were able to list that they are part of the Kenneth D. Taylor school community and the neighbourhood of Evanston. However, many of us forgot and struggled to name the other community groups that are larger than our home community. We will continue to work on the vocabulary of city, province, and country and go through examples of how smaller communities are joined together to make larger ones. It's a tricky concept because students are very good at naming places that they know or have heard of but they don't yet understand where they are or the size of them. We will continue to explore these ideas before we narrow our focus on the 3 specific communities in Canada. 

In Science, we discussed different states of matter and tried to figure out how to define solids, liquids, and gases. Students had pretty good background knowledge and could describe some characteristics of each. We used these poems to help us: 

Then we worked in groups to sort pictures of various gases, liquids, and solids into their appropriate categories. Some were really difficult to decide and it was great to hear the discussions that students were having to figure them out. Here are some examples of the lists that they came up with. Once we all had a chance to talk in small groups we joined together as a class and decided what pictures we would include on each poster and why. It was a great introduction to this topic. 

November 22

Tomorrow is Spirit Day! Today we heard a story read by Mr. Dyck called Harold and the Purple Crayon. We learned that Mr. Dyck loves the colour purple because it reminds him of Harold who demonstrates creativity, imagination, and problem solving in this story. We brainstormed as a class what characteristics and virtues we would like to develop in ourselves. Tomorrow they should wear their favourite colour and be ready to describe what that colour represents to them.  For instance, Scotty loves the colour blue and to him it represents dreaming big and following your dreams. Others like the colour blue as well but the colour symbolizes different virtues. We will be reading books and discussing these characteristics over the next few weeks across the school. Here is an example of words that we came up with in our initial brainstorming session.

I can't wait to see the rainbow of colours tomorrow and hear about how the colours make the kids feel. It is also Healthy Hunger Fun Lunch day so those who ordered before Saturday Nov. 19 don't need to bring a lunch tomorrow. There will be another one upcoming in December, Head to the Healthy Hunger website to register for the next date!

Upcoming Info

Important Dates:
Monday- Nov.  21- pointsetta order forms due
Tuesday-Nov.  22- there will be special guests from the Calgary Board of Education throughout the school in the morning taking pictures for the CBE website. Please ensure the purple CBE consent forms are sent back to the school before Tuesday so that they can take pictures of all of our students.
Wednesday-Nov. 23- Spirit Day and Fun Lunch. We will be talking about spirit day tomorrow- students are to wear their favourite colour to school on Wednesday.
Thursday- Nov.  24- Learning Commons books due
Friday- Nov.  25- PD Day, no school

Students have been practicing their decoding skills (being able to read the words) because as we know, if they read the word wrong then it can really impact the meaning of the text and also their understanding. High frequency sight words are words that appear often in books and that students should be able to recognize at first "sight" without having to sound them out or use other word solving strategies. This will greatly enhance their reading experience as they won't have to problem solve each word.  I will be sending home a list this week with the first 200 words, the words your child knows will be highlighted. We are practicing our sight words daily in class using a variety of hands on activities to help solidify them in our memory! However, as we always say "practice makes us better" so students can also work on these words at home if they can.

November 15

In Social Studies we have discussed different communities that we are a part of. We started with their neighbourhood of Evanston, then moved onto their city of Calgary. Now we are exploring the next larger community that we are apart of- Alberta. Students are trying to understand the vocabulary of city, province, country and continent- as they are easily confused. For the next little while we will examine Canada as a whole and then move into specific communities within other provinces. If you could have a conversation with your child about places you have been together around Canada or even just Alberta. It would help if you talk about what those places are like physically (landforms and geography) and what types of activities you did there. This will help refresh their memories and understanding of different places and support them in communicating their experiences with the class.

Picture retakes are tomorrow as well. Hopefully we will be called earlier in the morning before recess so that students who are having their pictures redone will still be in top form for their pictures! :)

November 14

We started our day today with a "Pep Talk" from kid president on youtube. This little guy is a funny, charismatic boy who has had to overcome some significant challenges in his own life. He makes youtube videos about making the world a more positive place and about self improvement. His messages are inspiring and the kids enjoy listening to him speak and can relate to him in a different way than myself :) We discussed his ideas and this led us into setting some personal individual goals for ourselves on what we would like to get better at in the next few weeks (in school!). All of us were able to identify an area that we want to work on until Winter Break. I encouraged the students to narrow their focus and to be really specific so that they can see results and know exactly what they want to change. For example, a goal like improving in reading is too broad and students needed to articulate what specific area in reading they would like to develop. Tomorrow we will start to identify the strategies that will be applied in order to meet those goals. After all, just creating a goal isn't enough if we are not working towards meeting it. Here are a few examples of goals that students came up with:
"My goal is to get better at writing by not putting capitals in the middle of my words"
"My goal is to write more sentences and add details"
"I would like to improve on my spelling by sounding out the words as I go"
"A goal I have for November and December is to get better at using mental math to add numbers"

There was also a purple form that went home today. It is a consent form for pictures and work to be published. We will have having a photographer come to our school to take some pictures for the CBE photo bank.  These pictures may be used for CBE website along with other CBE documents. 

The difference between this form and the blue ones which were sent home at the beginning of the year is this form is good for 5 years where as the blue form is only valid for the current school year. Please return them with your child as soon as possible. Also if you do not consent can you clearly mark that on the form and send it back in so that I can track who does not want this. Thanks so much!

Upcoming Dates:
Tues. Nov. 15- photo orders are due either online or
Wed. Nov. 16- picture retakes- please send the order sheet back with retakes box checked off or a note letting me know you want your child to get retakes.
Thur. Nov. 17- Learning Commons books back to school

November 10 (posted on Nov. 12)

Our students did such an amazing job both performing their song and as respectful citizens during our first Remembrance Day ceremony. Thank you to those of you who were able to attend. Before our ceremony we took a look at some pictures that were captured during the first and second world wars of soldiers in their trenches and talked about how difficult it must have been for those men and women to be in the middle of that battle. What really seemed to impact students was the pictures of the soldiers saying goodbye to their loved ones and children. I believe it helped remind the class that they were normal people like us that had families and were loved, as it can be easy to hear the numbers of lives lost and lose that perspective. Everyone received a poppy today for the ceremony and to wear throughout the day to show our respect. It was very difficult for us to all keep our poppies on our shirts but students made every effort and attempt to ensure their poppy was on and kept in good condition.

If students forgot to bring their learning commons books back they can bring them on Monday and they will have a chance to go to the library to get a new one. If they sign out a book on Monday or Tuesday they can have out until Thursday November 17 or the following Thursday.

Other important upcoming dates:
November 15- deadline for photo orders or sheets letting us know about retakes
November 16- picture retake day
November 18- early Friday dismissal -11:30 am
November 21- pointsetta orders due
November 23- Subway fun lunch- order online Healthy Hunger by Nov. 19

Just a reminder that tomorrow is the last day for the Veterans Food Drive collection. If you have any non-perishable food items that you could donate please send them with your child.

We will also have a Remembrance Day ceremony tomorrow at 9:30 am. We have talked to the students about this being a serious and important ceremony that honours those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep Canada a democratic and safe place to live. There will be no school on Friday, November 11.

In Math this week we have been focusing on developing our number sense. At the beginning of every math session we start with a number talk. This is a short 5-10 minute routine that we will continue to do all year. The number talk helps us improve our ability to communicate what we are thinking as well as develop our mental math strategies. The students have enjoyed it so far and have engaged successfully in looking at ten frames. They examined dot patterns on a ten frame and had to quickly subitize (see the number as a group quickly without having to count one by one). When the dot's are not all clumped together it naturally leads into addition of the two sections. Some students were able to identify concepts such as doubles (the same number added to itself) when they noticed the patterns on the frame were the same on both sides.

We will continue to work with ten frames tomorrow and a bit next week as they start to represent numbers up to 20 with them. These tools are great for representing numbers as well because they allow students to recognize the "ten-ness" in numbers and can support their knowledge of place value, addition, and spatial awareness.

November 7

This week we are learning about the importance of recognizing Remembrance Day. It is often a difficult concept for students to grasp as World War I took place more than 100 years ago and the number 65 000 (number of lives lost) is hard for them to fully understand. Many questions came out of our discussion today and I was impressed by the maturity that students demonstrated when talking about such a serious topic. Some of the students' questions will be explored further this week such as "where did World War 1 and World War II happen?" and "What countries are Canadian troops working in/helping right now?" The class asked other deep questions that show their curiosity and desire to understand more about Canada's role in military and peacekeeping operations throughout history. However, these questions are not easily answered and cover complex issues. Students asked "Why do wars start?", "What does freedom mean?" and "Why does Canada go to other countries to fight in wars there?". We will continue to work through some of these ideas this week before our ceremony on Thursday.

Ask your child "Why does a Poppy symbolize Remembrance Day?"

November 4

Hello there! I apologize that I have not been blogging much this week! I unfortunately caught a bug of some sort and was too ill to be at the school Wednesday and Thursday. Thankfully I was feeling much better this morning and was happy to be back at school with everyone! Today we did some catch up to complete a few tasks such as their Evanston neighbourhood community work and their One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab animal combinations up to 20 legs. The students really enjoyed working on our Playground project this afternoon. They worked in small groups to explore playground catalogues and find different examples of equipment that would fit under a variety of categories. The types of activities that they were trying to find equipment for were: swinging, climbing, spinning, sliding, and imagination. Our next steps will be to figure out the benefits and negatives of each type of equipment from the perspective of safety and interest of key users.

School pictures went home in students' backpacks today. They can be ordered online by using the specific student codes or you can return payment and order form in the attached envelope. The due date is November 15th to get them sent to the school, otherwise there is a charge for shipping after that date. If you would like your child to have retakes please send the form back with the "retakes" box checked off so that I can ensure they are sent for their picture retakes on that day.

We are collecting non-perishable food items that will be donated to Veterans from November 7-10. If you have any unopened food that you wish to be given to the Veterans Food Drive please send them to the school with your child next week. There will be no school on Friday, November 11 in honour of Remembrance Day. We will be recognizing and paying tribute to veterans on Thursday, November 10 with a special ceremony in the gym. Students will all receive poppies to wear on this day.

November 1

Well it was a very long day for all of us but we survived! Everyone did a really good job today considering how tired some of them were after all of their exciting Halloween activities on a Monday!

In Math we have been using a book called One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab to explore representing numbers and our math thinking in different ways. It's also a good entry into using pictures, words, and numbers to solve problems.  In this book we use animals with different amounts of feet/legs and combine them together to find out how many feet are on the beach.

We started off by creating combinations of feet up to 10. Students were required to complete a chart in their visual journals with a column for the animal combinations, a column for the number sentence/equation that matches their pictures, and the total number of legs. Students had to be careful to make sure their equation matched their animal pictures/names. For instance somebody had a spider (8 feet) and a person (2 feet) but their number equation was 1+9=10 which doesn't match. We also found that we had to go back and actually count the feet on our animals because we were sometimes off with our calculations. We had some smaller cut out pictures of the animals that we could utilize as manipulatives to help ensure we counted correctly.

Tomorrow some of us will move onto creating combinations that have 20 feet and others will continue to build our understanding and comfort with 10. I also plan to modify the chart that they create to make it easier for the students to document their work. One column will be for "Words/Names", one column for "Pictures", and one for "Number Sentences"