Performances, Cookie inspired stories and Planning a Seasonal Meal

Notices: 

Friday (tomorrow) is the last day before the Winter break.

Wilson class party is tomorrow afternoon.  Lots of great party ideas were given and the students are welcome to bring in treats to share.

the grade 5's are having PJ day tomorrow and so we are too
Thanks Parents for those that supported the PAC'S teacher appreciation luncheon
 

Mrs Schneider enjoying the PAC appreciation lunch.

Thursday began with the students working on planning a meal for the family using a calculator and a Safeway flyer.  The activity expanded on the ideas learned making a ledger sheet for their sales for their Trading posts.  The students wrote:  Item / # needed / price per unit / Sub total / Total across the top of their ledger.  The students, working in pairs, tried to figure out how much it would cost to host their whole family for a large seasonal meal.   It was quite challenging, which means it was a great learning opportunity.  The main problems arose because money involves using a decimal point to multiply  as well we had to tackle the concepts of an ongoing subtotal and a total.... after we overcame those basic troubles the activity went very smoothly and was such a focused success that I let it expand until recess.

Sample of one students ledger

After recess the students were given a tree and a circular cookie.  The students had to write a story that incorporated the two cookies.   They had to finish their story before they could eat their cookies... Ideas the students had for what the circular cookie could be were;  a flower, a star, a wreath, a cookie to mention a few.  The stories were very clever involving things like a star falling to earth and helping a Christmas tree get its roots back after it got cut down and dragged into a house.  Great idea E.  After that we went to the computer lab and I introduced them to a very clever music web site.  The site is called incredibox.  Basically the students combine melodies, beats, chorus bits, and rhythms to make songs.  The students had to finish their story before they could get to the computer.  Computers are a great motivator for inspiration, it is amazing how quickly and correctly students write to get some computer time..

Students pick two cookies for their story

In the afternoon we read for 15 minutes then the class dispersed for their various roles and parts in the final production of our Winter concert, "Is Santa smarter than a 5th Grader."

Our presentation of the anti bullying ERASE message x-mas style

Thanks H for the birthday cupcakes.... and Happy Birthday

A delightful surprise visit from Mrs Favell... we miss her this year... hope she enjoys retirement

shark boy and lava girl?

Mrs Awalt with the acting cast

J with his aunties that came to the performance... thanks families for the support

What a great performance and what a great job our class did with our Hawaiian themed presentation.

Concert Dress Rehearsal and Science Stations

This morning students practised handwriting and found as many little words as they could in "celebration." After working by themselves, students shared their findings and some had over 70 words! Fun and also a great spelling and reading activity. Afterwards we played a team math game (subtraction) and marked yesterday's math page.
From recess until lunchtime was the Concert Dress Rehearsal. Everyone ironed out some bugs and tonight's concert was a great success!! Thank you to all who came to support the students and our school. Everyone did a fantastic job singing and the costumes looked amazing.

Science Stations

Science Station: Secret Message

Science Station: Reflection

After lunch and a short choir practise, we visited Mrs. Ireton's grade 2 class where our students asked the grade 2s questions about their animal research and diorama. It was fun to see a project done by another class and for the students to interact.

Science Station: Optical Illusion

Afterwars was Silent Reading and then Science Stations about light. Students loved the hands-on activities (reading and making secret messages decoded with a mirror, 3 stations on optical illusions, and 1 station on reflection). We debriefed afterwards with a class discussion where they shared their findings and discoveries. Hands-on activities with open play (within set guidelines) and group work are rich learning opportunities. Students share what they find out with one another, collaborate, and refine their experimentation to discover new things. When they shared afterwards, students formed additional questions, predictions, interests, and new knowledge about our topic :-)

Mr. Wilson is teaching tomorrow and I will see everyone in the New Year. Have a wonderful break and see you next year!

Reminders: Please return library books and, if you have not already, please come to our 1:30 pm Winter Concert tomorrow.

Mrs. S

Trading Posts

This morning students edited and proofread their winter stories, then worked on winter related math.

Students also drew and wrote about what it feels like when they are calm and learning, what it feels like when they start to get distracted and why, and what their body feels like when they aren't paying attention. We will be working with this topic more in the new year, teaching the students ways to help them be respectful, calm, and pay attention (and hence, learn) even when it is difficult for them, and ways to exert pent up energy without distracting others (like lifting their toes in their shoes repeatedly instead of getting up to go talk to a friend when they should be listening or working quietly). There are parts of the day where they can work cooperatively with a partner or group, or do hands-on activities that involve movement but there are also parts of the day when they need to work quietly and independently, and some students have difficulty with this.

 After recess we continued with our novel study, listening to 2 chapters and writing about the setting. They also made predictions about what will happen next. Students also worked on their trading posts and items to sell before lunchtime. Those who were not finished stayed in at lunch time to complete their projects.

After lunch was silent reading and setting up the trading posts. This was a FABULOUS event and students worked really hard to create beautiful, colourful, and detailed trading posts with creative and amazing arts and crafts to sell. The hand-made items were carefully made and a huge THANK YOU to parents who obviously spent quite a bit of time helping their child create wonderful things to sell. I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the arts and crafts, and so were the 4 primary classes and their teachers who came to buy the items.
Close to 100 grades 1-3 students came to our classroom. Each student was given $11 Wilson Bucks to spend on anything that was for sale. Many will likely give these items as gifts to their families. Our grade 4s were excellent sellers, advertising their wares and posting sold out signs when their alotted amounts for each class ran out. The event ran very smoothly and several students took turns being the banker to give change to students and teachers.

Our grade 4s also kept a proper ledger with their inventory, cost per item, and total amounts sold. Some students made over $80 in Wilson Bucks. Now, what can they use those Wilson Bucks for??? They will have to ask Mr. Wilson!!!
After the classes left, the students were very hyped and excited to check out each others' trading posts. I gave them time to browse and some purchased items from each other.

A sample of arts and crafts made by 6 different students in our class.

This very successful, fun, and relevant Social Studies project was Mr. Wilson's idea. He was working elsewhere in the school this afternoon so I facilitated the event but he did managed to stop in and see everything in action.
This took us to near the end of the day. We cleaned up, rearranged the desks, and cleaned out their mailboxes before leaving for the day.

Reminders:

Please return all library books. The librarian is doing inventory and all books must be returned. Students will sign out new books again in January.

All students must be in their classrooms at 5:15 pm on Wed, Dec. 19 for the Winter Concert, even if their family/guests are not attending.

A 2nd performance for parents/guests is at 1:30 pm on Thurs, Dec 20.

Mrs. S

Cooperative Writing and Winter Concert Rehearsal

This morning students all wrote the same spelling pretest of 20 winter words that start with s, then completed a math crack the code subtraction activity and some winter games (word scramble, word search, etc) with our spelling words.
After recess we brainstormed deep thinking questions, practised asking some in our novel study, and listened to 2 more chapters in Survival while students updated their plot lines.
We completed a cooperative writing activity with winter words. 2 teams brainstormed as many winter things and describing words as they could, racing against each other to come up with more. Each student used their team's bank of words to write a story, using as many of the words as they could. Tomorrow students will edit and proofread them.

After lunch we had silent reading, and some time to work on their stories for LA and their trading posts for Social Studies before their Winter Concert Rehearsal. The grade 4s performance looks and sounds amazing :-) Looking forward to seeing the set (courtesy of Mr. Wilson) and the students in costume.

Notices:

Students are opening their Trading Posts tomorrow afternoon to trade their homemade crafts for Wilson Bucks with grades 1-3 classes. Items for sale need to be finished by tomorrow.

Students need to be in their classrooms by 5:15 pm on Wed., Dec. 19 for the Winter Concert, even if they don't have parents/guests attending this performance. Start time is 5:30 pm.

2nd performance is Thurs., Dec. 20 at 1:30 pm. Parents/guests are invited to attend.

4 more days of school ...

Mrs. S

The number 2, P.E. Reading and Aladdin

We began the day with Calvin and Hobbes and the bedtime story.  Ask your child about it.  From there we talked about the number 2.   We talked about it being the first even number, halving, doubling and lots of other Math vocabulary.  We talked about its history, learned the Greeks and Chinese think of the number 2 as female, that some cultures see it representing opposites, black and white, good and evil, that it represents Taurus the Bull and many other interesting facts.  We talked about terms like two faced, two minded etc. as well as writing 2 in french, Spanish, Italian, Cheyenne and German.  The students then made a 5 step equation that equals two (100 x 3 + 300 - 598 = 2)  Like they have been practicing with Mrs. Schneider then they did a math one page report on things they had learned about the number two. 

Some of the Clever ways of showing the Number 2

After recess we joined Mrs. English's grade 5 class in they gym for a rousing game of Capture the flag (Slimmers Island).  After tomorrow the gym will be taken over by the stage for the Winter concert so this will be our last gym period until after the new year.

After P.E. the students worked on making get well cards for a couple of the students who have been away sick for a week or more, worked on the Math one page report on the number 2.  Those students finished their cards and Math worked on building their trading posts which will open next Tuesday afternoon.

 In the afternoon  we went to the gym to watch a live performance of Aladdin.  It was great to see that live entertainment can still entertain and delight our savvy technology focused youth.  When we returned to class the students wrote about the play and retold the story with a picture in their  M.E. book.

Those students trying to be class chief balance on one foot in another of our chief challenges

Friday's Test:  Three things about the fur trade, spelling and Math 2x tables.  Take care and see you all tomorrow.

Math, Fur Traders and the Naden Band

Students helping students

Students helping students

We began the day with Math multiplication on the 2 x tables.  I showed them tricks using the 2 times table, doubling, halving and even some cool 5x tricks related to halving.   Ask your child to show you how they solve 5 x 8624... most could do it in their heads by the end of the class.  The stronger math students worked to help the other students catch up and understand the concepts in multiplication.

After Math we has Social Studies where we talked about the Fur Trade and its importance to the development of Canada.  Talked about the beaver and the importance of the Hudson Bay as a sea route for the English (Hudson Bay Company) because of the vast area of rivers that drained into it.  See map below.  The area in Yellow is the area of Canada that drains into the Hudson Bay.  As most travel at the time was by boat it was the main route for furs to Europe from N.A.

 After Socials the students worked at making their own Trading Posts then went to Music.  We traded our Music time tomorrow with Mrs. Carlton who had her time today.  It was great as it gave us time to practice with the other grade 4 class who are performing with us at the concert.

 In the afternoon we went to the Royal Theater to watch the Naden Navy Band perform some very exciting and child based music.  It was amazing and we got to sit in the balcony with some of the students sitting in the queen's box. 

Outstanding Day everyone.  See you all tomorrow.

I found out where the oil pastels were being hidden and Mrs. S notice how they are all mixed into one big box.

ERASE

Practising the script

This morning students wrote about what respect means to them, then together we learned more about what it is and what it looks like. After learning more about respect, completed the double journal entry by describing respect based on their new understanding of it. It was an interesting lesson because respect is used a lot by adults in our school but several students in the class were unable to describe what it is until after we learned about it. We did have a calm day after that :-)

After writing, students practised opposite (or inverse) equations in Math (3+4=7; 7-4=3; 7-3=4). They made up their own examples, making the questions as easy or as complicated as they wanted to. It was a fun activity. Some students used 3 digits numbers or multiple numbers in their questions, while others used single or double digit numbers.

After recess we continued with our novel study by reading 1.5 chapters and responding with writing and a picture. They also finished their Snowmen at Night assignment (artistic response to the beautiful picture book Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Bueher).
After lunch was Silent Reading, Music, and the monthly recognition Assembly. Today Mr. W and I recognized 4 students: T for his love of reading, E for producing good quality work, T for her spelling and handwriting, and R for his helpfulness. Congratulations on your awards. You've earned them.

Thank you to our photographer R. from our class :-)

5 students in our class also performed a dialogue about ERASE (Expect Respect and A Safe Education), using Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as an example. M, E, E, S, and A projected their voices clearly and presented very well. Awesome job! The performance was very well received. Everyone especially enjoyed singing Rudolph's song after sitting quietly throughout the assembly :-) Thank you to Mr. W and TOC Ms. Morteson for collaborating on the entertaining script!!
We had 10 minutes at the end of the day to play silent ball and pack up before the bell rang.
See you next week!
Mrs. S