Wednesday 9 May 2018

It's May?!

Hello everyone! It's been so long since my last post (whoops, let's blame it on a very busy classroom). I can't believe we're already in May; this year has flown by! We're continuing to focus on building our literacy and numeracy skills through our daily centres and morning work, as well as getting better at being comfortable using learning tools. This is such an important skill for Jr. High, so I want to make sure all the students are ready for future challenges!

We're wrapping up a lot of big units in other subjects and I'm hoping that in June we'll have some time for students to work on passion projects in which they can research and write about a topic of their own interest (something we often don't get to do enough of in school)!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic Spring; enjoy this fantastic weather!

Tuesday 6 March 2018

Marching On

Hi everyone!

I am in awe by how quickly this year seems to have flown by! I can't believe it's already March (hopefully Spring comes soon!).

We've had a great February; it absolutely flew right by! The Olympics were fun and we got into the spirit by making some Olympic Ring and Canadian Flag art and watching Cool Runnings (classic!).

I have a feeling March is going to fly right by us as well (I can't believe it's already the 6th!). We have our Field Trip to Heritage Park with Ms. Rogers' and Mr. O'Brien's class on March 16th, and report cards also go home that day. Then, the week after the kids have a very short week because Parent Teacher Interviews are going all day and into the evening on March 22nd, and teachers have a P.D. day on the 23rd. We'll end March with our Easter Liturgy on the 29th at 1:30pm, then all the kids will be off until April 9th for Spring Break!

I hope everyone has a fantastic month and a wonderful Easter! Stay warm!

Sunday 28 January 2018

Happy February!

Hello again!

January went so fast, I can't believe February is already here; it's going to be summer before we know it! We had an excellent month back after Christmas; swimming lessons were really fun and a great indoor activity for our winter months.

We also got a new classmate! Simon, our betta fish joined us as our Class Dojo prize! We even added him to Class Dojo (he loses a lot of dojos for distracting others, but gains them back for working so silently).

I've been working this month to get our Google Classroom up and running. It's a really easy way to assign online tasks, share PDFs we're using, and interesting links. We've had a couple of hiccups so far (that's always how it goes with technology, isn't it?), but I'm really excited about it.

February should be an exciting month! It will fly by, especially with Teachers' Convention and Family Day right in the middle, but we're going to be doing a lot of really fun activities in class! Our civilizations in Social Studies have been tons of fun and a great way to apply what we're learning about democracy. We're going to be starting our Space unit in Science, which I'm really looking forward to!

Thanks for all your continued support, I hope winter is treating everyone well!

Thursday 11 January 2018

It's 2018!

Hello and welcome back!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas break and enjoyed a well-deserved break with family and friends! I'm really excited to be back and get right back into work!

2018 has been great so far (despite this cold weather!). We're finishing up our Air, Aerodynamics, and Flight unit in Science with Flight - we're going to be researching an animal or insect that flies and make a parachute that will safely drop an egg to safety as our final two projects. We've started our big focus on writing in Language Arts, which has changed up how we do Morning Work. We're utilizing Barbara Mariconda's Empowering Writers resources and will be focusing on genre before jumping into narrative writing utilizing the writing diamond.

January is going to be a really fun and busy month - we have swimming lessons every Tuesday and Thursday morning, which should be a lot of fun!

Also starting back up is Souper Stars! This is really exciting for us because we didn't know if we would get a second chance after they had a change in scheduling during September-December. They'll be starting back up with us at the end of January!

Thanks for all your continued support, I hope everyone has a fantastic New Year!

Tuesday 5 December 2017

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hi everyone! I'm so excited it's December and Christmas is almost upon us! We have so much to look forward to this season! In our class, we will be doing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" starting on Wednesday, Dec. 6th. During these days, we will have a new Christmas theme each day and will design much of our Language Arts, Math, Art. etc. activities around these themes. Because of the time commitment, we'll be skipping Morning Work during December to ensure we have enough time to complete all our daily tasks! It's going to be lots of fun, I know I'm very excited about it!

On December 13th, our entire school is having a Christmas Pageant at 6:00pm. Our class will be singing Silent Night with Mr. O'Brien's class. We've been hard at work and it should be a lot of fun.

We're also going to have our Cake Pop and Polar Express day on December 20, which will be tons of fun for all the elementary students. The next day will be our last day before Christmas break. Our Advent Liturgy will be at 1:30 on the 21st and we'll be celebrating in the morning with Mrs. Kieser's grade 4 class!

I hope your holidays are wonderful and safe!

Monday 6 November 2017

Stay Warm!

We had a long Fall, but it sure feels like Winter now! Be sure to bundle up; as long as it's warmer than -20 we'll still be heading outside for SPARK and recess!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Halloween; we had a great time in our classroom decorating the door, making bats, writing a news article about a zombie takeover, and enjoying Halloween treats!

November is going to be a very busy month! We're well into our classroom routine of centres on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, where students have the chance to work one-on-one with myself for math and for guided reading. They're also able to work on reading and doing math problems at their level.

We're almost finished reading Holes! It's such a fantastic book it will be very bittersweet when it's over. Louis Sachar is an amazing author, so I encourage you to find more books of his to read at home!

In Science, we've discussed a lot about the properties of air, and now we're going to start focusing on aerodynamics and flight! This will be tons of fun as we'll begin looking at how animals and insects fly as well as how airplanes and other man-made objects fly!

Social Studies is going to be really fun this year, as well. We're still learning about democracy and now students are going to have the chance to create their own civilizations. This will be a really fun projects that will touch upon rule making, types of governments, mapping, and communities! I can't wait to see what the students all come up with!

I hope you're all staying warm in this cold weather, it sure feels like Christmas is just around the corner!

Thursday 12 October 2017

It's already mid-October!

Happy Fall, everyone! I can't believe we're already halfway through October! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and ate lots and lots of stuffing and turkey!

We're very busy and having lots of fun in grade 6! We've started our Math and Language Arts centres on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and we're still working on our math word problem of the day, sentence of the day, and journal writing for Morning Work.

In Science, we've been doing a lot of experiments and demonstrations about the properties of air. It's awesome to be able to do such hands-on examples with the class!

All year we'll be working on different aspects of democracy and government in Social Studies, it's very exciting with the local election happening. we're participating in Student Vote so the kids will get to cast their own vote for who they would vote for in the municipal election if they were able to!

The Souper Stars program has been great so far and in the next few weeks the kids will get to be in the kitchen working hands-on with safety and food preparation. It's going to be really interesting and hopefully we'll have a lot of fun!

Our field trip to the Ann and Sandy Cross Conservation Centre is coming up very soon and will be a wonderful time! We're all really looking forward to it! Remember to dress for the weather and pack a lunch; it's going to be a full and exciting day!

Also, our Thanksgiving Liturgy is on Friday at 1:30pm; we've been organizing it with 8T and look forward to seeing any visitors who can make it!

Have a wonderful rest-of-October and try to find the time to get outside before it gets too cold!

It's May?!

Hello everyone! It's been so long since my last post (whoops, let's blame it on a very busy classroom). I can't believe we'r...