Earlier this week our movement break room was reorganized. Our amazing PT and OT work hard to provide our students with exciting ways to develop their gross motor and self regulation skills. Ask your student about their favourite part of the small gym.
We worked on our problem solving strategy today by watching a video of an egg carton falling out a fridge. Students had to estimate how many eggs they thought broke in the carton. Next, we got information that there were 9 eggs total in the carton, and 5 of them did not break. Students used strategies like using manipulatives or drawing in their visual journals. Most students came to the conclusion that 4 eggs broke in the carton. While this is great, I am trying to see their thinking process and for them to tell me how they came to their solution. In literacy we played word games to develop their vocabulary, word recognition, and spelling. We tried a new game today that is similar to scattergories. I gave students different categories like food or animals, paired with a specific set of letters, and they had to come up with as many words as they could. This afternoon we did guided reading on Raz Kids. I sent login information for Raz Kids a few weeks ago. Please spend some time looking at this website and reading some books with your child. Our focus is reading comprehension. After you are done reading, ask them some questions about what happened in the story, or who the characters were.
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This morning we spent time in the library exchanging our books and exploring new ones. Students always like having time to browse topics that they are interested in, from diamonds and foreign countries, to princesses and cats.
We started talking about making connections with what we're reading to understand it better. We reread "Leo the Lightning Bug" and students were asked to make a connection with the story. Many students connected something from their personal lives. Some went beyond this and connected the moral of the story with something similar that they've experienced. We will continue to work on making connections to stories as well as all other texts we discuss. In math we worked on addition, number sense, and subitizing by rotating through centers. Subitizing is the skill of recognizing a number without having to count it (knowing a five on a dice). Students competed against each other to try and say it the quickest. We also worked on number sense by talking about 1 more, 1 less, 10 more, and 10 less than a specified number. We started a new sort in Words Their Way. Students are getting really familiar with sorting different sounds into different categories. On Friday we will continue with this sort and start writing sentences with them. After the three day weekend I was very curious what the students of Room 8 got up to! We started the day with weekend writing to tell each other what we did. Students thought of their weekends and were encouraged to sound out unfamiliar words to work on their spelling.
Today was the 2nd day of building our robots! They are coming together so nicely. Each robot is so unique as students used their creativity to make interesting designs! We will finish building our robots tomorrow and start making a "how to" guide on how to build a robot. Students will learn about sequencing and what information is the most important to include in their guides. We continued learning about money today. We played a board game called "money cents" which helped us learn basic money skills like how much each coin is worth. Students also worked on making different amounts of money with fake coins, ex. show me 30 cents. We are excited to announce that we are having our fourth annual Community Outreach Family Evening on December 12 from 5:30-7:30. Each grade team has come up with a holiday activity inspired by their inquiry to support a valued cause. The night will begin with a performance by our grade ¾ and grade 5/6s, followed by community outreach activities, and refreshments. Please see the attached images for further details. If you are able to volunteer to help organize the evening, please contact your child’s teacher. North Haven’s Parent Council will also have a table set up at the entry way of our building as their Christmas fundraiser to enhance educational opportunities at our school. Also stop by the hear about further events and upcoming fundraising initiative. Thank you for supporting our efforts to consider others during this season of giving! If you have questions please feel free to call the school. Here is a list of the request items… Kindergarten - wild bird seeds, lard, string or twine, natural pinecones Grade 1/2 – old Christmas cards to be cut up as decals and designs Grade 3/4 –white liquid glue, grey felt, black felt, white felt, brown Felt, black sharpies, and green cardstock Grade 5/6 –Pom Poms (small or medium), large candy canes, googly eyes (small or medium), brown paper bags, pipe cleaners, old holiday cards and felt Bridges & PLP –food bank donations, Chupa Chup lollipops (or other round lollipops), goggly eyes, brown paper EDC –large print puzzle books (word Search), teas/hot chocolate, colouring books, pencil crayons/felts/crayons, bath/body bash, shampoo (2in1), oral care items, Polident, unscented Lotions/glaxal base, calendars, nail care/polish, playing cards, gift bags and issue paper We are working on perseverance in Room 8. Today I told the students what the definition of perseverance is according to the dictionary. Then, they came up with their own words to describe it like "brave", "never give up", "keep trying", and "strong". Next, we read the book "Leo the Lightning Bug" by Eric Drachman. The story is about a little lightning bug who can't get his light to shine. He is made fun of by his peers and his feelings get hurt. Even though he is going through a hard time he perseveres and keeps practicing turning on his light and through this achieves his goal. Over the next few days we will reflect on things that have been challenging for us and find ways to keep trying and show perseverance even when things get hard.
We continued learning about time in math. Looking at analog clocks, students read the time on the hour and half hour. Next we will be working on counting by 1/4s and halves. We did guided reading today, focusing on comprehension. Students are developing their ability to retell a story. We will reread the same books on Thursday and use graphic organizers to show what happened in the story. We also played word games to develop our literacy skills. One class favorite is a sight word game called Pop! I noticed that the words were becoming too simple for the students, so we decided to make our own game! We thought up more challenging words and wrote them down on colorful pieces of paper. We will try this new game tomorrow. A reminder to bring in materials to build a robot (cardboard, cereal box, tinfoil, egg cartons, cans, etc.). We will start building our robots on Thursday. Today we had a very special presentation by Jeff Stockton. He is an incredible storyteller who captivates his audience by telling a story accompanied by him playing the harp. Students were swept away by his story and visualized all the exciting details. Jeff will be at North Haven all week for a residency and we will be working on storytelling with him.
We also started learning about light and shadows today. Students searched online to find images of light waves and replicated them in their visual journals. This was a small introduction to discovering and experimenting with light and shadows. In math we talked about a hundreds chart - noticing patterns. Students were asked to each fill out their personal hundreds chart to gain a better understanding of numbers and number sense. This will be something we revisit occasionally to see their growth with numbers. We will be starting a robot building project which will connect a few different units: our ELA novel study "The Wild Robot" and science. Please send materials for your child to build a robot with such as cardboard, paper tubes, tin foil, cans, etc. At North Haven we have been working on ways to positively impact our school community. We noticed that many of the lunchroom bins for recycling are full of items that cannot be recycled. What ends up happening is that the recycling and the recycling bag have to be thrown in the regular garbage -every single day! This uses an expensive recycling bag. The same thing happens with compost and compost bags. That's a lot of bags being wasted! All students can help by taking home all of their lunch containers and peels to try to have garbage-less lunches at North Haven. Thank you for working to positively impact our school community! Don't miss out on your child's Healthy Hunger Fun Lunches/Snacks! Your Parent Association is pleased to offer parents the opportunity to purchase a lunch or snack for their students.. The funds raised go to supporting your school through Parent Association initiatives. Please log into www.healthyhunger.ca If you do not already have an account, please register. ff you do, log in and add a lunch or snack. Payment is required at time of ordering. Any questions, please use the help button on the healthy hunger website. Friday snacks are available to all students in the school, including kindergarten. The lunch option is only available to those students at school over the lunch hour, including kindergarten students at Topp Kids. Friday December 13th KERNELS popcorn snack at recess Thursday December 19th SUBWAY lunch Today we reflected on the social and academic goals we set for ourselves about a month ago. Students thought about how they have made improvements in their goals and how their strategies have helped them. Most students have seen some progress, but realized that they still have some work to do to achieve their goals. Their goals will go home with them tomorrow to be reviewed by parents/guardians to see what your input is and figure out ways for you to help your child.
We started learning about the setting of stories a few days ago and continued working on that today with The Wild Robot. Students visualized a scene from the book and drew it, then described what they would see, hear, and smell. This will help them gain a better understanding of what they are reading by visualizing and going deeper into the text. In math we worked on another 3 act problem solving activity. Students made estimates of how many m&ms are in a package and if there are 2 people sharing them how many they would each get. We then learned that there were 19 m&ms in the bag and figured out a strategy to see how many each person got. Students drew and labelled their solutions and figured out that each person would get 8 m&ms with 1 left over. I hope everyone had a relaxing and well rested weekend!
We had a busy day after the long weekend. We continued showing our learning about plants by finishing independent work on what plants need and how they grow. In math we continued to learn about time. Students learned that there are 24 hours in 1 day, and that 60 minutes are in 1 hour. We talked about some activities that take about an hour for reference, such as our lunchtime at school or our morning routine. We looked at clocks and learned that the small hand points to what hour it is, and the large hand points to the minutes. Today we focused on what it means when the minute hand is at the 12 and 6. We practiced showing different times on analog clocks, and also reading various times. We continued with guided reading today. We reread a book that we read during guided reading last week and students each used a graphic organizer to help them retell the story. After reading, students drew pictures of the beginning, middle, and end of the book, then they wrote about what happened. We read a few more chapters of The Wild Robot today. We talked about what the setting of a book is, and I asked students to visualize the setting as we read. Tomorrow we will expand our thinking about the setting by describing it and coming up with adjectives to help us understand and visualize the setting in a deeper way. Today we started our read aloud book study: The Wild Robot by Peter Brown. Students listened to the start of the adventure while they each colored a piece of a poster of the book. We will combine all our pieces together to make 1 large cohesive picture of the robot.
We worked on a new problem solving question in math today involving increasing patterns. Students worked to find out how many dots were at the end of a sequence. We watched a video of an increasing pattern and students figured out what was changing as time went on. They drew their solutions in their visual journals and explained how they came to their answer. North Haven has a lot of exciting adventures planned this year in support of our year-long inquiries. Here are the dates of the field trips that we will be inviting our parent volunteers to join. It is because of your support and time that these adventures are made possible. We would like to thank our parent community in advance. Please email the teacher if you are able to come along. September 18 - Grade 5/6 - Beakerhead - Prince's Island Park October 16 - Grade 5/6 - Telus Spark (Robb/Hastie) October 17- Grade 5/6 - Telus Spark – (O’Brien) December 9 - Grade 3/4- Glenbow Museum (Dunwoody/Collinge) December 10 – Grade 3/4 -Glenbow Museum (Henry) May 6 – Grade 1/2 - Telus Spark (Petrie/Million) May 7 – Grade 1/2 – Telus Spark (Patterson) June 8 - Grade 1/2 – Teachers Pet (Petrie/Million) June 9 - Grade 1/2 – Teachers Pet (Patterson) January 13 - Grade 5/6 - Youthlink: Calgary Police Interpretive Centre (Robb/Hastie) January 14 - Grade 5/6 - Youthlink: Calgary Police Interpretive Centre (O’Brien) April 28 - Grade 5/6 - Weaselhead April 29 - Grade 3/4 - Making Treaty 7 Philharmonic presentation Classes will also be visiting Nose Hill regularly. Please check teacher blogs for upcoming dates. Thanks again! Today we continued developing our problem solving skills using our SOLVE strategy. We started our problem today by estimating how many red and yellow blocks are in the following picture: Next we watched a video of someone stacking the blocks into a partial pyramid formation Students then had to complete the patterns and figure out the actual number of red and yellow blocks. We worked in our visual journals to draw out the solution.
In Social Studies we watched a short video about the poppy and why it is the symbol to remember and recognize the soldiers that fought for our freedom. Students were very curious about the war and we had a great discussion surrounding the poppy, remembering, and being thankful for the service of veterans. We also made Remembrance Day art by making tissue paper poppies in a field. There will be a Remembrance Day assembly Friday. If you are in Brownies, Girl Guides, Scouts, Cadets, or any other similar organization, please wear your uniform on Friday. We had a very exciting Halloween last Thursday! In the morning we watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, then compared what was different and the same in the movie and the book. Student's noticed there were a lot more silly scenes of Snoopy in the movie and that there were many similarities between the two like the same characters and same costumes. We dressed up in the afternoon and made some pumpkin art using shapes and symmetry.
This morning we did some reflecting on if we had filled or dipped into someone's bucket. Students thought about the kind or helpful things they had done for others, as well as if they had done anything that might have hurt someone's feelings. Finally, they reflected on how they would like the day to go tomorrow and what they could do to make sure it goes that way. In math we continued learning about money. We are learning about the different coins: their names, what they look like, and how much they are worth. We will continue money work every Monday, helping students gain basic skills for handling and using money. This afternoon we continued our research on plants. We watched a video about the things plants need to grow and thrive. Students learned that plants make their own food from converting light, water, and CO2 into sugar. Tomorrow we will be applying what we learned about plants to our own individual plant we chose from Nose Hill. |
AuthorI am originally from Saskatchewan but now call Calgary home. My background is in inclusive education and I am passionate about supporting students who are exceptionally abled. I love getting out to the mountains, hiking, and taking in all the beautiful sights. I also love traveling which took me to Vietnam last fall to teach English for 3 months. Archives
March 2020
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