Ask me about...- We finished reading The List and have started a new science fiction novel, Under Their Skin by Margaret Peterson Haddix, - We have been working to finish our First Nations Cultural Group museum displays where we are representing their relationship to the land where they lived. Next week, we will be writing the description of how they use their environment to meet their social, physical, and psychological needs. - We started Chemistry Thursdays with a focus on safely working with chemicals, recognizing different states of matter, learning the difference between mixtures and solutions, and are creating salt and vinegar crystals. Next week, we will be observing and recording the changes of matter in our solutions. - We also had a Sky Science quiz. Our "To Boldly Go... Star Log" final project will start next week. - We continued to explore 2 digit by 2 digit multiplication using arrays and began a low floor high ceiling problem where we are determining whether or not submarine sandwiches were shared fairly. Our learning intentions are to be able to compare fractions in terms of size. - We are almost finished our newspaper articles about Outdoor School. We will be editing and peer editing these next week. We will also reflect upon the goals we set after our Meteor Sighting article. - In gym, we have been developing our physical fitness and learning about the game of volleyball. We have learned skills of bumping and setting and when to use each of those skills. We have developed our serves and are learning to rotate positions as we play games. - Our girls started to learn about friendships and how we can be friends with many people. We thought about how we may not like everyone, but we MUST be respectful of all others. We will continue to explore ways we can navigate our adolescent years including a focus on developing positive vs toxic friendships. Upcoming dates:Tuesday - Math night for parents
- IRIS reflection of Sky Science Lab due. Wednesday - last day to work on First Nations diorama in class Thursday - The List reflection is due Friday - our whole group rehearsals will start (grade 3-6) Ask me about ...- We checked that we had met the criteria for our research about how our Indigenous Cultural group met their needs based upon the environment in which they lived. - We looked at other student's work to developed success criteria for our displays and some students have begun to create. - We have started writing our Science Fiction stories. We began by developing a character, identifying their traits, and determining their problem. Many students have been applying the literary strategies that we have been exploring through our read-aloud novel, The List. - We checked our understanding of the Sky Science Unit content through a "Choose Your Own Adventure" Quiz where partners selected the questions that they would answer. Each question was worth 1, 2 or 3 stars. grade 5 students were aiming for 20 points and grade 6 students were try to earn 35 points. Many students challenged themselves to complete the whole quiz. Afterward, students looked at the unit "I Can" statements and self evaluated their understanding on a "Got It", "Almost" and "Not Yet" scale. They were amazingly accurate in their self perceptions! - Most of us know the phases of the moon based upon our Thursday quiz. - We started volleyball in gym. - We read the picture book "What Does It Mean to Be Present" by Rana DiOrio and used her ideas make a plan for how we would focus on our learning and work together to support every person in our classroom - We are writing newspaper articles about Outdoor School using the understandings from the continuum of newspaper article exemplars that we co-developed. - We are exploring ways to show 2 digit by 2 digit multiplication visually. This will lead us into developing an understanding of more abstracts strategies such as the algorithm. Next week ..- we will be working creating on our museum displays and the writing connected to them - we will begin sky science assessment task where we will create a ship's log for a journey to another planet. Students will demonstrate their understanding of most of the skills and content of the unit through this activity. - we will continue to work on multiplication strategies and also begin to explore fraction concepts. - we will be completing, evaluating, and editing our Outdoor School newspaper articles and our science fiction drafts. Parent Math Night - Tuesday. November 28On Tuesday November 28, from 6:00 - 7:30, we would like to take you, our parents, through three rotations of math information, math mindset building and fun! This is an opportunity to love math again, and find new easy ways to help your child in math.
This is an evening for parents, so childcare will be available at this event. Please RSVP at the attached link. We hope to see you there! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSchN1E6m0TQeIco7zj97uJrxx3g1FrhHl5owuu_uMpu4LJZdw/viewform Ask Me About....- We went on a field trip to Fort Calgary. Elder Randy Bottle told us about how the Blackfoot lived off the land. We saw a really good replica of Treaty 7. Did you know that the First Nations people who signed it didn't read or write so they signed with x's? The people who wrote the names beside the signatures also didn't get the pronunciation right for their names. Randy also suggested that a way to move forward would be to learn about their history and to recognize their successes today. - We presented our science labs to the class and have started a reflection (on IRIS) of what we learned in the process. - At our Remembrance Day assembly, photos of Belfasty family members who had served were shared. Room 11 recited Flanders Fields and Room 2 sang. - Some of us have completed our research and are ready to build our social studies museum displays. They will represent our research of how a specific First Nations cultural group relied on the land to meet their physical, social, psychological needs. - We painted poppies to put on wreaths for the Remembrance Day Assembly. - Science Fair Club began this week - We did a math computation baseline assessment to help us to set learning goals. - We learned two new math games: "Guess My Number" which helps us practice reading numbers into the thousands and some have even been challenged to work with millions and billions and Bye Bye Dominoes, a multiplication facts strategy game. - In our novel, The List, by Patricia Forde, We finally found out that Benjamin really was alive but then soon after he really did die. We have been discussing author's techniques, especially foreshadowing, as Patricia Forde continually adds twists and turns to keep us wondering what will happen next. - we have been examining examples of newspaper articles written by students and determining the order from basic to excellent. Upcoming...- We will be looking at our own newspaper articles, that we wrote about the meteor sighting over Alberta and BC to determine areas of growth.
- we will continue to develop visual strategies for multiplying numbers as we finally find out the total of Ms. El's beads. - As we move into an exploration of fractions and decimals, we will be conducting some class surveys and graphing our results. - Our social studies work will focus on creating visual representations of First Nations connections to the land and writing informational texts to support our visuals. Ask me about...- we began our research about how the environment affected our Indigenous peoples' way of meeting their needs before immigrants came to Canada. We used a student's work as an exemplar to determine what our research should look like. - we read more of The List. Now we know that Benjamin is not dead!!! As we read, we thought about how author's use techniques like foreshadowing to give us a hint of what is to come. We have some ideas of how the characters are connected in the past. We thought about different types of governments make rules and learned that some countries are run by one person who gets to decide all the rules. - we have been working on learning to estimate quantities of objects and are starting to learn about representing multiplication using drawings and manipulatives. - we determined the purpose and criteria for our Sky Science lab presentations - so that we know what we are to be presenting next week. - some of our class went to We Day. It is about helping people in the world. Many presenters sang, gave us positive messages about people helping others. - we made spider webs and insects during our Halloween Belfasty Activity. And we paraded in our costumes. - we looked at some newspaper articles and are thinking about which ones are fact and which are opinions. We also learned to annotate text to help us better understand what we are reading. - we read to our buddies. - we are practicing our songs for the musical in fine arts. Upcoming- we will be examining newspaper article exemplars, and using them to set criteria for our own articles - we will be writing a newspaper article about our Outdoor School experience - students who have finished their Indigneous culture research will begin making their museum display - we will be conducting a computation baseline sample. This will help us to know what students need support with. - after presenting our Sky Science labs to our classmates we will start working on our unit culminating project "To Boldly Go..", in which students will determine a reason for leaving Earth and decide on how they will build a new life on another planet. This will be an assessment task where students will be represent their understanding of our Sky Science concepts. We will also have students write a quiz. Through this quiz, we will be working to develop our test taking skills. - we will continue to explore Author's techniques through our read-aloud novel, The List. Dates to remember...Sunday -set our clocks back an hour
Monday - field trip forms are due Tuesday - Treaty 7 field trip to Fort Calgary Wednesday- Science Fair Club starts Wednesday - we will be presenting our Sky Science Labs Thursday - book orders are due Thursday. You may pay online through Scholastic's Parent Pay or by cheque. Friday - Remembrance Day Assembly at 10:30 |
Laurel Austman's Grade 5/6 Classroom Website
Archives
June 2018
Categories |