Today was another busy day!
We had our second indoor recess of the year! This time because it was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO COLD outside! Please please please help ensure that your child is coming to school dressed WARMLY!! It was incredibly cold at dismissal even just standing in the hallway to say goodbye to the kids!
Students continued to work on writing their cinquain poems before they headed off to music and then gym where they got into groups of four and played four on four in basketball!
For their story today, Mrs. Litman had students read with her to share their story. Brooke and Jullianne read their parts with her first before Mrs. Litman asked what the author's message was. Many students offered their ideas, and one response was "don't underestimate someone because they are really small." Ben and Wilson worked read to the class with Mrs. Litman after! Ask your child what their favorite part of the stories were!
We are continuing to work on making our writing more interesting to the reader, and students worked hard to turn a snoozerama sentence into one with strong verbs and adjectives!
Today in word work, students worked on cutting out their words that they took home yesterday and then worked either independently or with a partner on looking for ways to sort them. They will work on this again tomorrow, and will bring home a copy of the words again tomorrow so that they can practice at home as well. By sorting the words, students look for familiar patterns and rules to help them spell new and unfamiliar words.
In math we worked on using estimation as a strategy to help find the sum of two large numbers. We are also working on making sure to read what the instructions asks us to do, whether it is asking us to ESTIMATE (about how many), or to find the exact solution. Looking at the numbers and then making an estimate is a good strategy to become comfortable with to help with using mental math to solve problems. Here is an example of what the students did today in math. (unless they were in discovery centers, and Kareem and Jullianne were working on different problems with Mrs. Litman).
"The toy shop sold 117 wind up cars and 289 battery operated cars in one week. About how many cars did it sell?"
Ask your child to share with you how they estimate to find out about how many.
Clue: we talked about estimating to the closest 100 or using front end estimation.
We ended the day by working a bit on our Origins project. I shared with the class one of the website links that is a great resource for the students to research about their country. In regards to their country, tomorrow we will be working in class to come up with specific questions the students want to ask of you or a family member in regards to their country of origin. They will have to pick a family member to interview. They will also be expected to research at home about the different celebrations/customs/traditions/stories/emblems. I will include more specific information and expectations in an email tomorrow after school, after the kids have had a chance to generate their interview questions. The at home portion of the project will be due the week of December 9th:) For tonight, they are just to explore the website link we discovered at school. Here is how you get to the website: you will need to enter the username and password
username:LA06
password:4105
click on ENGLISHclick on ONLINE REFERENCE CENTRE
scroll down and click on BRITTANICA SCHOOL
then select ELEMENTARY- the kids can imput their country of origin and a great deal of information pops up. It also allows you to select the level of reading. I showed the kids how using a mac they can have the computer read the text to them. IN this program there is a button to press to have the computer read to them, this was not working at school, and may work at home I am not sure.
The ONLINE REFERENCE CENTRE is a great resource for many other websites as well, including bookflix. Some of these websites require passwords, but if you access it through the learnalberta website you won't need the password, once you imputed the learn alberta one.
Important information:
Families Helping Families (read the specific blog for specific information) thanks to the families who have been posting their information.
Friday, November 22- PD no SCHOOL
Thursday, November 28th- Fun LUNCH
PS I did keep the homework journals at school (the ones that were handed in) as I wanted to spend some time reading through their work! The journals will come home again tomorrow.
Homework:
read 15-30 minutes
Mathletics 15-30 minutes
go to learnalberta.ca and check out your country of origin.
Question for the blog:
What strong verb could you use instead of "eat/bite" or "move slowly"?
See you tomorrow,
Ms. Handelsman
