Please see the additional blog note regarding SchoolMessenger. On Friday, important information about upcoming Student-Led Conferences was sent out to all families through SchoolMessenger. If you are not signed up with SchoolMessenger, please read the blog note to do so, or contact the office for support. Our school typically does not send out newsletters or notices with the exception of field trip forms, so SchoolMessenger and your child's classroom blog are the best ways to stay informed.
A reminder that our Alien Inline sessions are Monday, Wednesday and Friday of this upcoming week. Students are welcome to bring their own helmet and keep it at school for the duration of our sessions. Alien Inline will provide helmets to those who do not have one.
With the warmer weather approaching, students will be spending more time outdoors - before school, at lunch, at recess, and the occasional Phys. Ed. time. Please continue sending your child dressed in layers so they are comfortable through the range of temperatures we experience in a Calgary day. Snowpants or rain pants are still ideal as they help keep kids dry as the snow turns slushy.
Last week, we had a visit from Code Mobile where students had the opportunity to do guided exploration of the program Scratch for coding. The students had an amazing time, and where excellent in their role as leaders to the kindergarten buddies we were paired up with. Scratch is available as on online program, an offline version available here, or as a Scratch Jr. app. if your child has expressed an interest at home.
We have been developing Social Stories for small school problems, and we are in the end stages. Students helped developed a bullseye rubric to assess their work, and understand how to be "on target". Students assessed where they were, where they wanted to be, and what they needed to do in their writing to get there. In the upcoming week, students will add small pictures to their work, and then we will be in the publishing stage!
We have also been learning about hot and cold with animals, using the book, "Over and Under in the Snow" to develop a wall story. In our wall story, we are identifying animals that hibernate or stay active, as well as adaptations these animals have.
In math, we have been having discussions about tools versus strategies. As we work towards developing a variety of number strategies, we often need to communicate or reason our solutions. Number lines are one of the tools we can use to do so, and students have been using them to demonstrate counting on/back, skip counting, more than, less than, and solve story problems. Through these story problems, we are also developing a list of key words that indicate what we should be doing on our number line, counting up or counting back (less/more, adding/subtracting) such as: spent, lost, flew away, eaten, broke, difference, left, came, gave, hatched, etc.
Students have noticed that number lines comes in a variety of forms in the real world: Montessori bead chains, rulers and thermometers. If you happen to see other places where numbers are used in a "number line" representation, please point them out and have a discussion about it with your child. Some of the examples I noticed over the weekend so far: a jug with measurement lines on the outside, and yard lines on a football field.
Our Sound Study for the next little while is based on developing students' understanding of long vowels sounds. Although they should already be familiar with "flipping the sound" rule in reading, we are exploring the different combinations that long vowels can take. Currently we've explored "ai" as the long a sound, through the word families "ail" and "ain". During a Making Words activity on Friday, students were able to show how they can apply this vowel pair within syllable spelling for accuracy.
This week, you would have received a letter home from your child sharing what they learned and enjoyed in the months since winter break. Students have been working on guided, step by step lessons on editing their work for capitals, periods and spelling. This looks different for every child depending on their level of readiness, and I can talk to you about it at conference if you have questions about how to support your child with these skills at home. Please continue to focus on the growth and personal successes of your child by reflecting back on their letters home from the Fall.
As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Hope you're enjoying the amazing weather this weekend.
Ms Thomas
