Monday, October 30th

**REMINDER** 
        -  Don't forget to wear Orange and Black tomorrow for Halloween!

        -  Homework for the week has been posted!

Today we had a fun day getting ready for Halloween! We finally carved our class pumpkin, which we voted on two weeks ago. Before we began, we talked about our next theme in Language: Procedural writing ("How To" writing). We then orally went through the steps we would write to describe to somebody how to carve a pumpkin as we went along. Everyone had a chance to scoop out some of the seeds and have a chance to get messy (if they wanted to). So much fun!
 

   Mrs. Miller 

Wednesday Oct 25th

Please Note: This Friday, October 27th we will be having our Halloween Parade at 1:30 pm. Please send costumes with your child in a bag (not to be worn to school) and they will have a chance to change into their costumes after lunch!


        Today we completed another STEAM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) challenge! Students worked in groups of 4 and tried to make the tallest freestanding tower using 44 cups. They had about 30 minutes to collaborate and try different designs! We had a lot of fun and not only learned a lot about how to build stable structures, but also about how to work together. Here are some pictures of their hard work!
     

                                       51cm tall                                                      56 cm tall                                   

                                                                                      Carefully placing the last cup! 81cm!

                                 55cm tall!

    In Math today we continued our unit in graphing and students had an opportunity to conduct their first survey in the classroom. They came up with a question and some response choices, and asked 15 of their friends to answer their question and recorded their answer with tally marks. Afterwards they graphed their results onto a table provided.

    Mrs. Miller

I hope that everyone enjoyed the beautiful weekend!

   **Homework for the week is posted under the Homework section

   Students worked very hard today and were busy! Students spent the morning doing math and language activities with Mrs. Whiting. They played some math games to reinforce number sense and counting skills, and worked on another graphing activity using tally marks and a bar graph. In Language Arts, students started with the usual Daily 5 rotations and then worked on writing a retell of their weekends (our weekly Monday ritual!). Students are getting very good at adding lots of detail to their retells!

  In the afternoon, Mrs. Miller worked one-on-one with some students while the whole class completed the very first of my "Holiday" traditions: a fun holiday-themed activity package! For each major holiday I give students a chance to be creative, have some fun, and reinforce some math and language skills using a themed work package. Students worked great together and had lots of fun doing this!

  What a busy day!! 

       Mrs. Miller

   ** On Friday last week, students worked on the writing task to their pumpkin art activity. I just wanted to share a few examples of the lovely work they did! Enjoy!

Thursday

We had a very busy day today!

   In Math we started talking about our new Unit: Graphing! Students will learn to conduct surveys, build graphs, and interpret the results. We built our own graph together to answer the question: What design should we use to carve our class pumpkin?? Students voted on a design and we graphed the results. I am excited to see how our pumpkin turns out!

  Students also had a chance to be creative building their own pumpkins today in art! They had only a few guidelines, but otherwise had a chance to create a pumpkin of their choice. Next week we will do a writing activity to accompany this craft.

   We had Library time today and most students were able to pick a new book. I will start sending home reminders for students who were not able to pick new books as they had not returned their old books. Please remember to bring books back every TUESDAY, thanks!

    In gym we had a chance to practice some volleyball skills with Mrs. Smith's class and students had a lot of fun :)

    See you all tomorrow!

      Mrs. Miller

Daily 5 and Thanksgiving Mass

Daily 5

      Since the beginning of the school year in September, students have been working hard at learning the 5 different stations of the Daily 5 program: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Word Work, Work on Writing, and Listen to Reading. They have practice really hard at mastering some of the important skills needed to be successful during Daily 5 rotations. This week, students have been able to finally experience how Daily 5 is run every day! Students now get a choice of any 3 of the Daily 5 centers EVERY day, and I have already seen some amazing, independent work coming out of our Daily 5 time. I am SO excited to see what else students have to offer during Daily 5! Here is just a sample of some of the great work I have been seeing!

Work on Writing: One of the many options is to write a note to somebody of their choice.

Word Work: Here is an example of a student extending what is expected of them and thus extending their learning. Expectation: Practice writing this week's Word Wall Words on the dry erase boards. Student work: He wrote sentences using the Word Wall Words, and even colour coded the Word Wall Words! Great job!

I will be sure to take many more pictures to showcase what our students are doing during our Daily 5 centers.

Thanksgiving Mass

     Tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct 18th) is our Thanksgiving Mass celebration. Parents are invited to come and celebrate with us! The celebration begins at 9:30am.

    We had our first mass practice today to make sure that everyone remembers how to act and behave during a mass celebration, and to practice all of the songs we may have forgotten over the summer. Our class did a fantastic job listening and participating in the crowd, and we even had a few class members sing in the choir! Tomorrow's mass should be wonderful :)

 Library

   Just a reminder that our Library Day is on THURSDAY, so please return all books before then! It would be great if students could return the books every TUESDAY to help with the checking in and checking out of the books. Thanks!

      Keep checking back for more updates!

  Mrs. Miller

Weekly Homework

Weekly homework is now here! Please look under the "homework" tab to find this week's homework. Homework will be posted on Monday's.

   Now that the hectic beginning of the school year is winding down, you will see this blog and/or my twitter account (which you can see on the right hand side of this blog page) updated daily so you can see all of the fantastic work your child is doing in class! We have come a long way since the beginning of the year in learning our rules and routines, and are now delving deeper into our learning.

   Mrs. Miller