I hope everyone had a wonderful Spring break! On Monday, everyone was bursting with stories of what they did and who they saw during their week off. Sounds like lots of family, friends and sunshine!
This week, we worked to get back into routine and start some new learning opportunities.
We started by co-editing a writing sample about my adventures over the break, and then students wrote and edited their own, either 1:1 with my support, using a COPS checklist, or a combination of the two. I'm proud to see that each student is demonstrating a greater awareness of punctuation, capitals and spelling as we continue this practice.
Using our Girl Guide cookie problem from before Spring Break, we looked at how students solved the problem, and also how they communicated that they solved the problem. We realized that even though we all got to the right answer, some important math information was missing from our work. Together, we identified what information was important, and how it could be incorporated into our work for better communication, Students then completed the Car Wash problem, with the intention of improving their communication from the Girl Guide Cookie problem. Everyone did an amazing job!
When we shared our work on the Car Wash problem, we noticed many students chose to use pictures or symbols to communicate their understanding, so I challenged the students to find an alternate way to represent their work using materials in the classroom.
Challenge to model with a material or tool in the classroom. See which ones your child can speak to.
 |
| Number line |
 |
| Montessori bead bars |
 |
| Hundred board - version 1 |
 |
| Hundred board - version 2 |
As we continue to develop our number fact fluency, we have started to target our automaticity of 5 and 10 facts in order to use them flexibly as an anchor to solve other facts. We have been using the 10 frames as a visualization strategy for number bonds within 10. The Making 10 game in our Math Game package from Student-Led Conferences helps support developing efficiency, accuracy and flexibility with this skill. Keep the face cards in and challenge your child to use subtraction (counting back) strategies to make new combinations!
As shared previously, students with strong number sense are able to manipulate numbers and understand how to use various strategies to solve problems,. Students develop their number fluency along a continuum of learning that starts with basic counting skills that leads to efficient strategies that may include recall.
We started revisiting colour in order to develop our vocabulary and descriptive writing, as well as connect to our upcoming new Wall Story - In My Heart: A Book of Feelings. Students worked together in a small group to sort the names of different paint colours such as dandelion, mahoghany and slate into common categories. It was exciting to see students reason with their group based on their real world experiences with colour, use terms such as tint and shade and describe how the could see the colour being made. Please watch for an email next week as we encourage students to wear tints and shades of a certain colour over 8 days to connect to our Wall Story, and offer interactive comparing, sorting, grading and naming opportunities.
In your child's mail folder this week, please find the April Scholastic book order. Orders are due by Thursday, April 18th. If you use the code "CLIFFORD" you can pick a free book if you spend $30 or more online.
Please see the email sent out by Kathryn Molcak regarding upcoming opportunities to volunteer for swimming at the Trico Centre in April and May. If you are not currently receiving emails from our Volunteer Coordinator and would like to, please send me an email and I will have you added.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Ms Thomas
