The Week is Just Flying By....

With the rush of our busy daily routines, I was so pleased that so many parents were able to pop in last evening and visit our classroom and meet me.  I feel so fortunate to have such a lovely young bunch of students with such interested and supportive parents.  So many of my students were such wonderful hosts, showing their parents around, explaining our procedures and job wall etc., proud to show off their art and writing.

As always, yesterday was a busy day for us.  We continue to play games and sing songs to acquired and strengthen our French vocabulary base.  Then students wrote another journal entry that I look forward to reading!

Most did quite well on their first sciences sociales quiz and were happy to show their parents their success on the first evaluation written in French.

In Math, we continued to forward our knowledge of decimals through a Visit and Record activity. Students had to first select a key base ten block to represent 1.  From there they used the base ten manipulatives to construct a decimal number.  Thereafter, they visited the decimal models of classmates and recorded the decimal number with several representations: standard form, expanded form, graphic form and in words.  Once they completed their chart, they compared their representations to the solution sheet provided with each model.  If they disagreed with the solution, they had to find the author and have a discussion until they came to an agreement.  This helped correct any misconceptions.  During consolidation, we shared and discussed misconceptions to ensure that all were resolved.

Our Visit and Record tracking sheet with sample

I love how willingly students work together to construct understanding.

Marla's decimal number (1.23)

Owen's model (3.45)

See how well EVERYONE  is working without prompting!

Today in Math, Ms. Stormes lead the class in a hands-on Super Source activity that helped students with adding 10th and 100th to an existing decimal.  I am confident that the activity went well - thank you Ms. Stormes!

I have finally begun hanging artwork in the classroom.  Our first experimentation with chalk pastels. Some have really gotten the hand of blending colours and different techniques with the pastels.

More to come...

Don't forget to dress in house colours for our Spirit assembly and for our Terry Fox Run.

For Emma

Please meet Emma.  

Before the Terry Fox Run this week, I will "introduce" Emma, a courageous little girl from the East coast, to our class. Please read this post to learn about a wonderful initiative called WORDS OF HOPE and to learn more about Emma.

 Last year, my class participated in the newly launched and amazing character education program called "Words Of Hope". This program pairs classrooms across Canada with children facing life threatening illnesses and allows them to show their support by writing get well cards and letters. The programme started with a little five year old girl named Sarah who was fighting Leukemia and had two schools write close to 300 cards for her. Since then, Words of Hope, started by Matthew Shchukovsky from the Peel District School Board, helped two other children fighting for their lives, and brought over 20 schools and close to 900 students together as a community.

Our class will take a some time over to show our support for a little girl who's fighting for her life. This is an amazing way for students to learn character and empathy. Last school year Words of Hope got a tremendous response and they are hoping for the same result. 

This time, we're looking to help another young girl named Emma Macrae out of Halifax, NS. Emma is five years old and was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in October 2011. Emma continues to be treated for the disease and is presently undergoing chemotherapy. She is a patient at both the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Sydney and the IWK in Halifax. She is five years old now and is starting school next week. She has a seven year old brother, Landon. Her journey so far has been full of ups and downs but she is a fighter.

Our Fun Filled Week Ahead!

Wow!  What an exciting week ahead!

I look forward to meeting parents and families on Wednesday evening.  Come join us for pizza and visit our classroom!

Our new teacher librarian, Mme Thomas, will be hosting her first book fair from Wednesday-Monday in the Admiral library! Ensure that you stop in during our Meet the Teacher night to peruse the assortment of book titles available.  On display, there is a wide range of titles and books from every reading level.

More than just books!

Posters too!

Our class loves to read.  Almost every student in the class has expressed their joy for reading and was ready to share their favourite book title.  Almost ALL are currently reading a book for pleasure without my prompting!  Our outstanding daily homework is : READ FOR 20 MINUTES EVERY DAY!

A colleague, Zach Ambridge, shared the following to encourage his students to read for twenty minutes every night.

Why Can't I Skip My Twenty Minutes of Reading Tonight?

Let's figure it out -- mathematically!

Student A reads 20 minutes five nights of every week; Student B reads only 4 minutes a night...or not at all!

Step 1: Multiply minutes a night x 5 times each week. Student A reads 20 min. x 5 times a week = 100
mins./week

Student B reads 4 minutes x 5 times a week = 20 minutes 

Step 2: Multiply minutes a week x 4 weeks each month.
Student A reads 400 minutes a month. 
Student B reads 80 minutes a month.

Step 3: Multiply minutes a month x 9 months/school year.
Student A reads 3600 min. in a school year. 
Student B reads 720 min. in a school year.

Student A practices reading the equivalent of ten whole school days a year.
Student B gets the equivalent of only two school days of reading practice.

By the end of 5th grade if Student A and Student B maintain these same reading habits, Student A will have read the equivalent of 60 whole school days. Student B will have read the equivalent of only 12 school days.

One would expect the gap of information retained will have widened considerably and so, undoubtedly, will school performance. How do you think Student B will feel about him/herself as a student?

Some questions to ponder:

Which student would you expect to read better?
Which student would you expect to know more?
Which student would you expect to write better?
Which student would you expect to have a better vocabulary?
Which student would you expect to be more successful in school....and in life?

Terry Fox Day

On Friday, September 27th Admiral is hosting our annual Terry Fox Run.  Please fill free to make a donation by sending in a loonie or a toonie with your child.  On that same day, we will be voting for this year's house captains, coming up with our house cheer and adding all the points collected during the Terry Fox Run for our house.

Today, in Math we worked on decimals.  Students can continue to practise at home on mathfrog.ca (click on Welcome, KIDZ, Grade 5, scroll down to Number Sense chose play game Naming Decimals).

This afternoon students wrote a CASI evaluation to give me a better idea of their strengths and weaknesses in reading.  The results from CASI will help to group students for Guided Reading.

As a nice surprise, I came back from lunch to find an apple for the teacher on my desk - thank you Julia and Shaelyn!  It is delicious!