Painting, Spelling, Music and Terry Fox

Notices:

Tomorrow Michael Mitchell the Canadian Singer and Song Writer is coming to perform at Tillicum.  Please come out and take part in seeing and hearing this unique Canadian singer beginning at 1:30.

 Wear Red or White and those few who have not done so, please bring in your permission form

The students began the day with Mrs. Schneider.  She said she was very impressed with the class behavior and the way they are working.  Well done class.  Mrs. Schneider gave the class two large evaluation tests.  One in math and one in spelling.  In between she had the students completed self portraits.

We began the afternoon with silent reading followed by music with Mrs. Awalt.  After Music we watched a video and took notes on Terry Fox. The students will be working on a report on Terry Fox on why he is a hero.  Next week is the Terry Fox run, each student runs in the afternoon and we will be collecting nickles, dimes, quarters, loonies and toonies for Cancer.  I have the greatest respect and love for Terry Fox and hope the students can gain a small appreciation for this great Canadian.

See you tomorrow.



Spelling, Questions, and Self-Portraits

Today was my first full day with the class and it is a pleasure getting to know all 25 of them. I have met a few families already and look forward to meeting more. If you have any questions, please email or stop in before or after school. I’m teaching the class on Mondays (all day) and Tuesday mornings.

This morning the students wrote about their skills and talents, to help me get to know them better and to assess how to help them improve their writing. After writing, they took a spelling test where the words increased in difficulty. Students stopped whenever they felt they could not attempt to spell the words anymore. The results help us place the students in spelling groups that are appropriate for their level of spelling so that their weekly list words are neither too easy nor much too difficult for them.

On Mondays and Tuesdays I will read aloud from a novel that ties in with one of our units. Students may draw while listening if they want to. Today we started Gordon Korman’s Island trilogy. The first book Shipwreck ties in with the Science unit on Weather that we started today. 

Everyone who asks questions is a scientist because we want to find answers. Today we practiced being scientists by asking questions about natural items within a group of 4-5, and then brainstormed and wrote questions about our Weather unit. Hopefully the students will be able to answer their classmates’ questions by the end of our unit.

After lunch was silent reading, then the students made self-portrait magnets for our white board. Despite some students’ nervousness about their ability to draw, with encouragement and a little instruction, their portraits look fantastic. Here is a picture of the ones that are finished.

We ended the day with Benchball in the Gym, which appears to already be a favourite game.

Mrs. Schneider

 Notice:  

The school did receive a extra teacher which took pressure off the grade 3 and 4 classes.  Two students were moved out of my class, so the class should not be set with no more students leaving.

We started the day with a money unit in math.  The first activity was to research the Canadian coins and do a research report on each of the coins.  The students had to draw the coin and list facts about the coin.  The facts were about the metals in the coin, how it was made as well as why the symbols shown on the coin are a symbol of Canada.

After recess we had a whole school assembly to greet the students and introduce them to the school staff.  The Kinders joined us and

After the assembly the students continued to work on their Canadian coin project.  I am pushing the students in both the quality and the quantity of their work so it took longer than I expected, however, they seem to be arising to the challenge.  I forget they are still basically grade 3 students and handling multiple directions at once while producing quality work will take a bit of time.  

After lunch we had buddies with Mrs. Dagg's class.  It was great to watch the students working so well with the smaller buddies.  They did a writing assignment, a drawing assignment and then worked with laces and shoe templates to teach the children how to tie a shoe.  Shoe tying is becoming a bit of a lost art along with telling time on an analog clock.

We ended the day with a rousing game with and against Mrs. Carlton's class.  It was lots of fun. 

Mrs. Schneider is looking forward to working with the students on Monday.  Take care all and have a great weekend.

Mr. W

Getting going

Notices:

Today a notice for Michael Mitchell's performance went home. Please sign and return ASAP

We began the day working on finishing our writing assignment from yesterday on 'our summer' as well as their name tags.    The finished name tags tell loads about the students interests and abilities.

After recess we had a computer period where the students worked on getting information on the symbols on our Canadian money.

After lunch we did some math evaluation to see where the students are in their computation skills so I can set up math groups. 

We also spent time looking at patterns and riddles as ways developing a math brain.
 We ended the day with a rousing game in the Gym.

Great Job today everyone.

First day: Group work and expectations

 Notices:

•Please send proper gym shoes to school as soon as possible.

•Sign the permission form for your child to have their pictures and work shown on the blog which will be sent home soon (then you will be able to see your child at work in the classroom) 

We began the first full day in class by putting our supplies into our desk. We are not going to label or separate them until the actual class is set.  We should know about what the school is going to look like after tomorrow when we have our first day of kindergarten when we will have the accurate count of students registered at Tillicum.  So by Friday we will know if there is going to be a need for another teacher and another division which will impact each intermediate grade 3 and 4 class by 3 to 5 students per class.

After we put our books away the students worked on a simple writing assignment complicated with my expectations for how an assignment should look.  Each page has to have a picture, a border, information, be colored, the name in the upper right corner, the date in the left, the title (underlined) has to be on the third line from the top, the students are not to write to the edge of the paper but their writing within the red lines on both sides of the paper...... and the directions go on and on.... The students managed  to get most of the directions down and complete a large part of the assignment by recess.  This project is not homework, although some students were going to take it home.

After recess the students were given about 40 minutes to work on their 'Summer Holiday' project and complete their name tags started yesterday.  This was followed by a P.E. period with another grade 3/4 class.  We played a group game class against class.  Our class lost by one point but worked out a lot of energy.  Please be sure and send proper gym shoes to school as soon as possible.

After lunch the students were divided into groups of 4 to 5 students to work on a group project on "How do Polar Bears stay warm."  The group were given a single small booklet on the polar bear and were given simple directions.  They were to divide the work up as a group using every students skill (writing, drawing, coloring).  They had to produce one information page per student in the group, a web to show their ideas and a title page.  The rest was up to the group to work out.  The intent is for me to observe the students working together as well as to see what they would produce with a minimum of direction from me.  This gave me an idea of what they know, how they work and most importantly what I have to teach them. 

We ended the day with a short trip to the computer lab.

Great Day everyone.... see you all tomorrow.

Day 1 or actually day 1/2

Welcome back.  We are fortunate to have Mrs. Schneider who has a wide range of teaching experience to join us on Mondays and Tuesday mornings.  Welcome Mrs. Schneider. 

At present the school is in the process of trying to get an extra classroom which will mean we will probably be moving up to 5 students to another straight grade 4 class.   We will keep you updated.

School Supplies

GRADE FOUR STUDENT SUPPLIES

TILLICUM COMMUNITY SCHOOL GRADE FOUR STUDENT SUPPLIES
2011/2012
(suggested)

30 lead pencils, (H.B. with erasers)
6 white erasers, jumbo size (pencil)
6 exercise books, ink paper, 8 mm regular ruling with margin, not ½ page or
interlined (23cm x 18cm)
2 blank exercise book for sketching (23cm x 18cm)
1 plastic ruler, 30 cm - 1 mm graduations (not flexible or fancy)
1 box pencil crayons, 12 assorted colours
2 ball point pens, medium tip, blue or black (erasable pens are available)
2 red pens
1 white glue
2 glue sticks (40 g)
1 wax crayons, 16 assorted colours
3 packs of 200 sheets of lined paper
5-7 Duo-Tang covers (multi-colours, for core subjects Blue science, Green Social Studies, Red Writing, Yellow Math) 2 Other colours are needed for the non core subjects, projects etc. [Note: black ones are hard to write on and see name]
(no plastic covers -please do not pre-label as we will )
1 Package of 10 water based felt pens

Additional Supplies (optional)
1 box, case, cloth holder to keep pencils, crayons, etc.
1 metal pencil sharpener with catcher
1 pair of good scissors, 6” - 8” sharp
1 calculator (inexpensive)
1 highlighter (yellow or green)

Students are requested not to bring binders or white-out to school.