Spirit Week

What an exciting week we have going on! Celebrate Canada and Winter! Today we had our Gospel Value's assembly celebrating our new value 'LOVE', as well as wacky Hair and Sock day. Wednesday is PJ day, Thursday is Canada Spirit Day, and Friday is our Winter Play Day!

In Math, we are beginning out unit on Measurement! We will be focusing on Time. With this, we will be focusing on telling time to the second, elapsed time (e.g. You started watching T.V. at 7:30. You watched for 45 minutes. What time is it now?), and converting 12 hour time to 24. At home, practice reading the clock, and solving elapsed time problems for your activities!

In reading, we are working on reading various types of text, and using proof (examples, quotes, specific parts) from the story to prove our thinking. This week we are talking about Point of View, and how reading from different perspectives, change what we are reading. What point of view is your home novel written from?

In writing, we are finishing up our Narratives. Students have been working hard to use descriptive language to develop their plot and characters. Lots of authors in the making. Stay tuned for our finished copies!

Keep up your weekly Prodigy activities, and daily reading! Also, don't forget to try this week's Brain Challenge. Looking for more challenges, check out the Blog!

We have also been cheering on Canada at the Olympics, as well as graphing some of the top countries, and their medals. We have been looking at different Olympic facts, and numbers. GO CANADA GO!

Happy New Years! Wishing you a wonderful year of happiness and good health!

Welcome back! I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing holidays, full of family and fun!

Thank you all for your hard work and participation in all that you do! I can't wait to see what this half of the school year holds. We have an exciting month ahead, despite the snowy start. This month in language we will be focusing on summarizing various texts, as well as comparing and contrasting fiction narratives read. As always, keep reading at night and discussing those books! In writing, we will be composing our own narratives, with catchy starts, organized paragraphs, dialogue and convincing endings.
In math, we will be concluding our Geometry unit, focusing on 3D shapes - classifying and naming the shapes, as well as building and matching 3D nets to their shape.
We are continuing to develop our communication skills, and will be completing a Current Events project at home, and presenting it to the class.

Happy New Year's! What is your goal to become a better YOU?

December is here!

What a bus, but exciting month ahead! We are recognizing the month of Advent in our class by lighting our candle each week, participating in Advent prayers, and completing acts of service with our Advent Calendar. This month is also especially a great time to think of others and give back! St.Cecilia is having their White Elephant sale Friday December 14th, so if you have not done so already, don't forget to bring in gently used decorations, household items, toys, books, or accessories to donate! (Please no stuffies, clothes or earrings!). On Friday Dec, 14th, students can purchase items for 25, 50, 75 cents and a dollar - a great way to do some Christmas shopping!

Our class is also putting together a Christmas Hamper for a family who needs a little bit of love and help this holiday season! Our family consists of a mom, dad, and 3 boys (aged 8, 5, and 2). Along with Ms. Moore's class, each student has chosen an item or two that if able, have chosen to bring in! This Friday is also a Christmas-themed spirit day, where students can dress in their favourite spirit-wear for a small donation! The Grade 5's are helping to run this initiative along with our Advent Mass next Tuesday!

In Language, we are continuing to read The Wild Robot -- focusing on theme and character traits. Our reading goal will be moving on to summarising. In writing, we have been learning about lots of inspirational people and their influence on the world, in the form of writing biographies. We also have been practicing writing powerful descriptions and 'million dollar sentences' to use in narratives.

In Math, we have been working hard on multiplication and now division! Don't forget to check out the games in the Math Section to practice!

SNOW!

It's back! That playable, frosty, white stuff! Our vote this morning, said that double the number of students were excited to see snow, than not!

We worked hard to spot, extend and communicate number patterns  in all sorts of situations, such as ordering toppings on sundaes, reading pages of books, and raising money! We finished off our unit by planning our Charity Fundraiser.

We have now started MULTIPLICATION! We will be multiplying 2 and 3-digit numbers, by 2-digit numbers. We have been practicing our basic 12 x 12  facts with strategies, tricks and memorization. Students are encouraged to practice at home with games, and online links (found on the math page) to help them build fluency for our bigger numbers and word problems.

In Language, we are focusing on Character Traits - what traits describe a character, and what proof tells us this. We are continuing to read The Wild Robot! We are also writing Biography paragraphs on a person of inspiration!

We are continuing to work on Communication - how we can be a great oral, visual and written communicator!

*I look forward to meeting with those who have signed up for Parent-Teacher Interviews this Thursday evening. If you would like to discuss your child's progress, but are unable to make this day/time, please send a note in the Agenda and we can set up a phone or meeting at a time that works better!

Happy November!

What an exciting Halloween week we had, full of pumpkin carving, dance-a-thons and costumes! Thank you all for your support for the Barrhaven Food Drive with your raffle tickets, and non-perishable food items - what a community!

This week:
Math: Tuesday we will be having a Patterning quiz. Students were given a review, but also check out the games under the 'Math' section on our blog. We have also been working on a Fundraising project, to plan our own event for a charity important to us. We will be starting multiplication this week. Students are encouraged to keep practicing those basic skills at home and through games! (e.g. 5 x 2)

Language: We are continuing to read The Wild Robot, curious about how Roz is going to adapt to her new surroundings, working on communicating our ideas and thoughts clearly through group discussions and technology. We are finishing up our Book Review presentations this week to share with the class - we have movie trailers, posters, slideshows - we can't wait!
In writing, students are working on forming clear paragraphs with topic sentences, and million dollar sentences!

What else!? Don't forget to bring in those used batteries to recycle! Check out the newsletter for some of our Battery Bosses!

Students are selling poppies all this week during fourth block! *ALSO, if you have any family members who have serve, or have served, we would love if you could bring in a picture to share for our Wall of Honour!

6 days until Halloween! This last week our class has been busily trying to bring in non-perishable food items for The Barrhaven Foodbank, and stick to our goal of 12 cans per day (Day number (x 12) = Class Goal). We have also been busily working on number patterns, and have discovered patterns in nature, restaurant seating arrangements, the way birds migrate, music and many more. In reading, we have been engaged in The Wild Robot, and how Roz is adapting to her new environment. We even had a chance to skype with another junior class who is reading the same book. Through answering clues and asking questions, we discovered they are in New Jersey. We have been working on clearly communicating our thinking by giving proof from the text, and have done so through Padlets, Flipgrids and Google Slides. We are also working on creating commercials for our own favourite book of the month. In writing we have been building solid paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting details. We have been using these, along with powerful adjectives in our Personal Recounts.

*Personal Recounts are due Friday October 26th.
*Dance-a-thon pledge dues Thursday October 25th.

We will be carving our class pumpkin on Thursday for our St.Cecilia raffle on Friday. All raffle tickets are 25 cents each, with all proceeds going towards the Barrhaven Food Bank.

Don't forget to do your brain challenge this week and get it in by Friday!

This week! The weather has finally cooled off, and it is starting to look and feel like fall!

Some updates for this week:
Math - we have been working on choosing new bedroom furniture from IKEA, while staying within a specific budget, as well as planning road-trips around Canada using the distances in kilometers between various cities. Through all of this, we have been practicing skills of addition and subtraction of 4-digit numbers using various paper and mental math strategies.
*On Thursday October 5th, we have a Number Sense quiz. Review information can be found on the 'Math' tab of this blog, as well as in your Math Google Doc folder.

Writing - we have been writing personal recounts using proper organization and voice. We specifically have been focusing on using topic sentences to organize our paragraphs, as well as using compound sentences in our writing (main idea, comma, conjunction, second main idea - e.g. Next weekend is Thanksgiving, but I am sad to miss school for 4 days.)

Reading - We have excitedly been reading our library books as well as our new class books (YAY!), and discussing our reading using RAP - restate the question, answer it with details, prove our answer with information from the text.

Other important information:
We have been continuing our cross-country tryouts during the morning. Keep your eyes peeled for the Cross-country team list.
This Thursday is Picture Day.
Don't forget to bring in your cans for our WE SCARE HUNGER initiative.