Day 16 and 17 & 18

We've had a busy past few days!  We completed and shared our PSA's with the class.  All groups worked very hard on them and I was so impressed with their final videos!

 On Thursday we had the Terry Fox Walk.  The kids look forward to this every year.  We started with a pep rally in the gym where we met "Lenny" the fox…he looked a lot like Benny the Bengal our school mascot…hmmmmm

 Then we got ready to head outside for our walk. We walked all around our neighbourhood and enjoyed the sunshine!

 Walking the neighbourhood on a beautiful sunny day!

 We had a great time.  I have challenged the students to raise a minimun of 135 dollars as a class (5 dollars a student) towards cancer research.  If they reach that goal I have offered a movie and popcorn as a thank you. Let's see if we can reach our class goal!

In Social Studies we are starting to discuss some "Pressing Problems" in Canada.  Students were looking at some pictures and making some inferences about the issues

We found 5 "Pressing Problems" that we are going to be inquiring about further over the next few weeks.  They are:
Pollution from Transportation
Pollution in the Great Lakes
Unsafe Drinking Water on First Nations Reserves
Homelessness and Inadequate Housing
Poverty and Hunger
Students are going to decide which one they are most interested in and start to find facts about this issue and what the government's involvement is in the issues and how the government is helping solve this pressing problem.
     Today I introduced Genius Hour to the students.  Students watched a few videos for inspiration and then we had a disucssion about Genius Hour, what it is and how it is going to work in our classroom.  Here are the links to those videos.  Click to watch them.

Kid President "pep talk"

What is Genius Hour?

Students are challenged to come up with 2 different possible genius hour topics for next Friday. They need to think about what they are passionate about.  What do they love? What would they do if they could at school?  They are to develop their genius hour projects or "Passion Projects" around this idea.   The criteria for our Genius Hour is the same as that mentioned in the video above.  

1.  Students must have a driving question behind their project 

2.  It must involve research (if I can google the answer it is not a good question)

3.  It must be able to be "shared with the world" if necessary (they will not be required to post it online for privacy reasons but it must be able to be shared if they needed to- this can be done through video, websites, pictures, slideshows, prezis etc)

Genius Hour will last 12 weeks.  Every Friday will be genius Hour for the last 2 periods of the day.  We hope to get through at least 2 genius hour projects this year, possibly 3.  Some of it may be done at home but the main research and work should be done at school. 

This is an excellent way for students to show their abilities. Often students who have trouble academically create some amazing genius hour projects.  Last year I had students create remote control heli-dromes, make perfume, bake elaborate cakes, develop websites and even learn to code and create simple video games!  The students are excited to begin and I am excited to let them show their genius!  As the video says…

CREATE SOMETHING THAT WILL MAKE THE WORLD AWESOME!

Have a wonderful weekend.  Enjoy this amazing weather we are having! Look forward to seeing you all next Tuesday at Open House!

Day 15

What a great day today was!  The students were very sweet and surprised me after first break with a Happy Birthday Crown and many birthday cards and wishes! Such a wonderful class of students I am lucky to have!

We started a new 100 word chalenge today.  This week the students have to create a piece of writing the contains 5 words.  

//100wc.net/

This weeks words are pepper crocodile, orange, soft and forgot.  I can't wait to read the stories the students come up with this week.  We are going to attempt to post them to the site this week and comment on other students writing from around the world.  

We started our social studies unit on government today as well.  Students were given a picture to ponder. Many students inferred that this was a homeless person and we discussed reasons why they believe that. 

In groups we brainstormed with our "Grade 5 knowledge of the world so far" and we came up with possible solutions to homelessness which are listed above.  We discussed further and realized that we need more information or background knowledge about homelessness before we can discuss possible solutions.  We will continue to learn about 5 "pressing problems" in Canada and how the government addresses these issues.  

That's all for now.  I hope you are all enjoying the P.D. day together today.  Students were asked to work on their 100 word challenge at home today in their notebooks.  

Day 12, 13 & 14

Hello Parents!
     I apologize for being a bit behind on the blog. It has been a busy time this past week.
We ended our week off by completing our P.S.A.'s  We will be presenting them tomorrow (Wednesday) and I am so excited to see the results! The students were busy adding music, pictures and text to their videos.  I hope to have them availbale for you to see at open house.
     We had our first reading buddies on Thursday.  We are buddies with Mr. MacAlpines Kindergarten class and will meet them once a 10 day cycle. The students showed great leadership while reading with our little friends :)

In math we continue to examine place value through various problems such as this one.

   The students continue to learn what makes a complete answer when solving a problem and how to show their thinking.  We discussed creating drawings or charts, finding patterns in our answers and explaining our thinking in words.  

   We continued reading our novel "Loser" and learning more about the life of Donald Zinkoff.  Students worked on some questions about point of view of the story and summarized a main scene. 

  

Day 10 & 11

We have had a great start to the week. We completed our math discussion on place value by doing a gallery walk and sharing our answers with our classmates.

     Today we had  "bansho".  We discussed various ways to answer our question and some groups showed their work to the class.  From there we noticed a neat relationship between the minimum number of pattern blocks it takes to represent a number and the number itself.  Ask you child to explain what this relationship is.  Students then were given their own similar question on place value to answer independently.  Some students have this for homework tonight. We will continue our place value discussions the rest of the week.  

   We started reading a novel together as a class.  The novel is called "Loser" and is by Jerry Spinelli

 It is a great book about school and friendships.  We will continue to be reading this novel and build our comprehension skills as well as our responses to a text.  

    Last night for the 100 word challenge students were asked to post their responses on Kidblog for homework.  Tonight students have to respond to 2 of their classmates stories by providing feedback.  They need to respond with "2 stars and a wish". 2 stars are 2 things they like and a wish is something they would change or they think needs to be improved.  

    Student will be finishing their PSAs tomorrow.  They've continued to film them for the past 2 days and are importing them into imovie to create their commercials.  They have worked well in their groups and are showing excellent cooperative skills :) 

The milk forms went home today and are due next thursday.  Also, I hope you all received my parent questionnaire yesterday.  Thank you for taking the time to fill them out for me to help me get to know your child better.  

Have a great night! 

Day 7, 8 & 9

Happy Sunday to everyone.  Well we made it through our second week! All the students are working hard to finish up the many "all about me" activites they have started.  Their poems and art work and "mini me's" are coming along nicely and I can't wait for the students to show you all their hard work on Open House.  On Thursday we began our math unit on Place Value.  Our math program is designed around open ended problem solving.  The students are placed with a Math Partner that has a like ability level in Math.  Together they work through many problems surrounding Math topics.  They were given their first problem on Thursday.  The problem was "How many numbers can you represent using only 16 base ten blocks. If you are unsure what base ten blocks are please have your child explain them to you.  Students then worked together to come up with answers.

On Friday we continued our work on this question and students started to see patterns developing in their answers.  Monday we will be doing a "gallery walk" where we look at our peers answers and then we will have a class discussion about these patterns and start to develop conclusions about how we can know if we have found all possible answers to the question. We will continue to build on our knowledge of numbers up to 100 000 over the next few weeks and use it to help us add and subtract large numbers.

In our Language program students learned about P.S.A (Public Service Announcements).  They watched videos and had discussions around what they are and why we have them.  Students built groups of 3 and are now creating their own P.S.A's about our classroom expectations.  Each group has a different expectation they are working on.  Students had to create a storyboard and script for their P.S.A's over the week and some begin filming on Friday.  

The boys are drawing their storyboard pictures to lay out their scenes

This group began filming using their ipod on their P.S.A about keeping the room tidy.

I hope to have the P.S.A's running for you all to see on Open House.  Students are loving using the technology to enhance their P.S.As.  Ask you child what class expectation their group has chosen.

I like ot end Friday's with Friday Art.  This may be visual art or drama or dance depending on the term. Students need somewhere to store this beautiful art throughout the year so we created Art Folders on Friday.  Students used letter cut outs to create overlapping letters of their name.  They had to create various line designs within each letter of their name. They are turning out quite well!

As you can see we had a great week.  Some students had homework this weekend to finish up their poems or "I am" art.  Please take a moment to ask them if they have completed everything for the week.  Also students are working to post their 100 word challenge on Kidblog as well.  If your child has not shown you Kidblog take a moment to go on with them and check it out.  At this point the students are able to post what they wish as well as the 100 word challenge.  However we will be discussing next week what we think is appropriate content to post on the site (for example it should be school related and not a place to "chat" with a friend)  

That's all for now.  Take Care and I hope you all had a great weekend. Looks like "sock weather" is here to stay :(  

Day 6

I hope that everyone has started to settle into routines both at home and school.  The students seem to be settling in well in the class and are getting along with one another quite well.  As always if you have any questions or concerns please contact me via email or by calling the school.  
Today was another great day.  Students learned and played a new math game called "Add to 15" in class.  We played two different versions and then had a discussion about how to win this game and the strategies that they used.  It turned out to be harder then they originally thought it would be.  Some great learning about number sense.

We will continue to play some math games this week to build our cooperative skills while learning about number sense.  We will be beginning our first unit on place value next week.  Students will be learning to read, write and represent numbers to 100000.  They will also be adding and subtracting 4 digit numbers with regrouping as well as columns of numbers. Feel free to encourage your child to practice these strategies at home using various websites such as these:

http://www.mathisfun.com/ 

http://cemc2.math.uwaterloo.ca/mathfrog/english/kidz/Games5.shtml

Students have homework this evening to go onto www.kidblog.org and sign into our class using the secret code they have written down in their agendas.  They should create a name and password and if they wish to change their avatar they may do that as well.  We will be using Kidblog in the near future to participate in the "100 word challenge" each week.  They are given a short prompt and must create a 100 word piece of writing that contains this prompt. We have teamed up with Mr.Wigmore's class and will be reading each other's writing pieces and providing constructive feedback for improvements to the writing.  100 words exactly! Whew! That is going to be a challenge! I think we can do it!  Here is the link to the website if you want to check it out. 

100 word challenge

The student prompt for this week is 

…but it is yellow….

Hmm I wonder what interesting writing pieces will come from this prompt! 

On days when students do not have gym, we will be having our DPA time (Daily Physical Activity)  Each week we have 4 new students who are in charge of running our D.P.A for the day.  This is just 15 to 20 mins of some sort of activity to get our heart rates up and burn some energy. Usually it will happen in class.  Today our helpers Fardeen, Hailey, Alex and Rodrik led us in some warm up exercises followed by some Just Dance! Kids had a great time getting their groove on! :) 

Students had a great day.  Ask your child if they are planning to sign up to be a bus monitor or a student announcer.  There are many opportunities coming our way as the oldest kids in the school.  A great time for them to show their leadership skills! 

Have a good night everyone.  I wonder if we will get that storm they're talking about?

Day 4 & 5

Our Friday was very very hot! We managed to still have a great day despite the hot weather.  We had our first Friday Art class.  Students are creating a line art painting activity that displays some character traits that the students have.

Students also continued to work on their mini me's today.  They are looking pretty great so far!

You will get to see both finished products on the open house on September 30th :)
MONDAY
We are continuing to get to know one another. Our Tribes activities are helping us learn our 4 tribes agreements.  Last week we talked about Attentive Listening and today we talked about "No Put-Downs".  We had a discussion about how put downs make us feel.  We then had a chance to write the worst put-down we have ever received on a piece of paper.  No one saw what was written except the student.  They kept them private.  We then went around the circle and the students ripped up their put down and said "I will not allow anyone to put me down anymore".  It was a great therapeutic activity for the students and they seemed to really take it seriously.  I kept the ripped up pieces and have placed them in a "No Put-Downs" sign.

 

This sign will hang in our room this year and remind us to never make other people feel the way we felt when we were put down.  We also began our first writing piece today.  It is a piece of poetry that tells us more about each student.  They will also be happy to share these with you on Open House on the 30th :)   Students had their first Computer class with Mr. Holmstrom today as well.  If you can, take some time to ask your child what their favourite part of their school day is so far.  You could also ask them how full their bucket is right now.  If they say it's feeling empty ask them why.  If they say it's feeling pretty full ask them why as well.  That's all for now!  I hope all the students have nice full buckets today! :) 

Day 3

Wow! A very hot and humid day today..especially in our class.  We all survived but it sure was hot.  Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter so please make sure your child is dressed appropriately and has a water bottle at school.  
Today we talked about our "invisible buckets" that we all carry and how when we someone makes us feel bad drops fall out of our bucket and how when someone makes us feel good it fills back up.  We read a story based on this.

Tomorrow we will continue our discussion and talk about our second tribe agreement "No-Put Downs".  

We worked hard on our "Mini-Mes" and most students had their materials at school.  Please ensure your child's materials are with them tomorrow if they haven't brought them already. Here are some of our students working hard on their Mini-Mes

We did a math diagnostic quiz today to see what we know in basic numeracy.  After we completed that we began an introductory math activity called "Figure Me Out"  Students must compose a series of questions about the numbers that are a part of their lives (age, show size, number of pets, soccer jersey etc.) They must try to make he questions as complex as they can to show "what they know" surrounding basic numeration (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing)  Here is the example I supplied

 You will get to see your child's finished product on Open House which is September 30th.

We began our discussions surrounding digital citizenship today.  Today we discussed what responsibility we have as members of the online community. We discussed the ring of responsibility below.  Have your child explain what it means.  Have them also tell you what activity we did on the carpet today surrounding the ring of responsibility.

 

We will continue to discuss digital citizenship over the next few weeks in order to prepare us for working responsibly online both at school and at home.  Well that's all for today. Have a good evening and stay cool! 

Day 2

Today we had an assembly about school expectations with Mrs. Gill and Mrs. Vokey.  Students also had their first gym class.  It is important that after today all students have gym clothes to change into for thier gym days as well as indoor shoes that are acceptable for the gym (running shoes are best).  Students presented their "Grebigol" they made with a group yesterday.  We were surprised to see how given the same materials each group came up with something very different.

 

Remember all students were only given limited supplies and 20 mins to create this and they had to do it without talking.  We decided as a class that sometimes a time limit makes us get to work and not dwell on unnecessary things.  The no talking rule taught us its easier to get along and accept others ideas when we are only talking in non verbal ways.  We learned "listening with your eyes" is almost as important as listening with your ears!

We began work on our "mini-mes" today.  Students are asked to bring in any other supplies for their mini me from home tomorrow.  This may be a picture of family or pets, stickers, magazine pictures of favourite singers, movies etc.  I showed them my example and gave some ideas as to what to do.  Students will continue to work on these tomorrow.  Parent pleases help students to remember these items.  We also did s "speed reading" test today.  Ask you child about it!  We spent the last 2 periods today getting to know the other grade 5 classes.  We all met outside for some cooperative games.Ask your child what game was their favourite today! We will continue to do team building games with our community of grade 5 students throughout the year. As they have many leadership roles within the school this year it helps that they are all comfortable working together as a team.  That's all for today!   

OUR FIRST DAY!

Well we all had a great first day!The students were surprised to see that our class has no desks!

 I have opted for tables this year instead of desks and each student has their own bin to house their personal items.  I hope this assists us to keep ourselves organized as well as help us to work in groups easier.  We also have a few areas to collaborate in a bit more comfort. One is our reading area.

...and one is our "lounge"

Today we played some getting to know you games and talked about our classroom set-up.  After that students had their first music class of the year. We have a new music teacher as Mrs. Moddle is on maternity leave.  Her name is Mrs. Abraham.  

After music, students worked together to come up with traits they think a "good student" and a "good teacher" should have and we combined our lists to come up with a master list.  We will all try to display these traits throughout the year.  :) Students then had some time to create their name plates for their bins. Here's an example of Komals:

 

At the end of the day we did a very tricky activity called "The Grebigol"  I read a story about a monster called "The Grebigol".  Each group was given 4 sheets of construction paper, 4 pipe cleaners, a paper plate and a piece of cloth material.  They then had to create a Grebigol as a group…without talking! The students worked well to communicate without their voices!

Tomorrow we will talk about how important it is to read verbal and non verbal signs to help be attentive listener.  We will also talk about our challenges with this task.  We had a great start to the year!

 THINGS TO NOTE: students have MUSIC every day 1,3,7,9 and GYM every 2,4,6,8  They have COMPUTERS every day 5 and 10.  As always students are required to have an indoor pair of shoes at school to help keep pour classrooms and hallways clean. 

If you have an extra box of kleenex and an extra paper towel roll you could send into school with your child we could sure use them.  Thanks!