Rocks and Minerals Jeopardy

We played a rousing game of Jeopardy this afternoon with categories such as Types of Rocks, Minerals, and Vocabulary.  The orange team walked away with a deceive win but were challenged to a re-match tomorrow afternoon.  Ask your child what questions they were able to answer during Rocks and Minerals Jeopardy to help their team.

Princess Hyacinth is our anchor book this week and we are trying to determine if the story is a fairy tale.  We have explored the elements of a fairy tale, our favourite fairy tales and where they come from but Princess Hyacinth is not an old story nor is she a typical princess.  Little learners have responded to the text with their own thinking around the problem she encounters and how Boy helps out.  What we do know is that friendship can be found even when you aren't looking for it.

We ordered numbers from greatest to least and least to greatest this morning and then finished up our Game of More with our partners.  A quick refresher of regrouping was provided for those students still in the muddy waters around when to borrow.  It would seem more practise will be in order next week.  We will have a quiz on comparing numbers tomorrow.

Pillars of Care assembly Friday morning at 8:15

Things That Make Me Happy

We read 100 Things That Make Me Happy together - noticed that the list the author created rhymed - then talked with a partner about what made us happy.  We all then began a list writing campaign of our own and created personal lists of things that made us happy.  You could hear a pin drop in here while the writing was going on and that's what makes me happy!

We are coming to the end of our Rocks and Minerals unit and everyone is busy testing their own rock to see if they can determine if it is igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic.  We have come pretty familiar with the rock cycle and can give facts about each type of rock.  Everyone has been writing their own book and they will share that with you once they are published.

Game of More - great game today of making the largest number possible using the three cards dealt to us and then deciding which partner had more (the bigger number) and then finding out how much more by subtracting.  Higher order math people!!

Pillars of Care Assembly Friday @ 8:15

See You All Tonight

See you all tonight or tomorrow morning for student-led conferences.  Please note that the students will be leading the conversation so it is important that they attend.

Good Canadian Children

Thanks to all those good Canadian children who were dressed for the weather today!!

This is the kind of snow that is fun to play in when you are protected from the wet!  Keep up the good work.

Reverse aging tomorrow - students dressing like teachers (Mr. Hebert was wearing a button down shirt and sweater today and Mr. Sadowsky wears shorts and t-shirts;)

and teachers dressing like students tomorrow.

Please book a student led conference time for Thursday evening or Friday morning on-line.

No school Friday 

Reading Salad

Wednesday is reverse day at Beddington Heights - students will dress like teachers and teachers will dress like students!

Please book a student led conference for Thursday evening or Friday morning and be sure to bring your little learner with you as they will lead the discussion.

We made a reading salad all together today - into the salad bowl we put green books (lettuce) to show us reading the text and red brains (tomatoes) to show our thinking.  We discovered that real reading is thinking because there was way more thinking in our salad then text.  We also decided that we enjoyed the story more because of the thinking.

How hard is a rock?

How hard is a rock is the question we are attempting to answer in our science work.  We are testing different rock samples  by scratching them with our fingernail, a penny, and a nail.  We will then compare the results to the Mohs Hardness Scale to help us decide if the rock is igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic.  Next week we will test our own rocks - please check with your little learner to see that they have a rock at school.

Knew and new.  Two words that sound the same but have different meanings.  When making connections to fiction readers usually have personal experiences.  With non-fiction texts we usually make connections because we have read a book, seen a video or been there!  When approaching non-fiction I like for us to find in our brains the things that we already knew and then move into the information that is new.  When we watched a Magic School Bus episode about rocks and erosion we discovered that we already knew a lot of information!  The new information we are able to store into our heads!

Scholastic book orders due Friday.

Read 20/10

Rounding

My classroom is covered in number lines!  We began our unit on rounding by making interactive and very visual number lines. We then posted them all around the room.   When students have a good grasp of rounding, they are capable of making reasonable estimates.  Rounding and estimating are useful tools in real life situations.  We use them to see if we have enough money when shopping or when trying to get somewhere on time.  We will be working all week to round numbers - stay tuned.

"What parts of your body do you use when you read?"  this was the question I asked this morning and the answers were VERY interesting.  Students aren't aware that their brain is an active part of reading and so I introduced my reading friend, Benny the Bookworm, and we looked in his brain for all the things he does while he is reading.  Benny can make connections, visualize, ask questions, infer and transform.  He is a pretty amazing reader.  We will continue talking about what our brain is doing while we read all year long.  Tomorrow we will begin practising paying attention to our brain!

Read 20/10

Scholastic book order due Friday Nov. 15

A Poppy is to Remember

Remembrance Day will be observed at assembly tomorrow at 10:30 am.  Our wreath of poppies is ready to be laid - ask your child why the poppy has become the symbol of this very important day.

MART - where we combine an art activity with math.   We took care of the art part today drawing and painting a fall tree.  We were careful to stay in the lines with the paint, keep the paintbrush up on its toes like a ballerina and not smashed into the paper, then stamping fall leaves onto and around the tree.  Tomorrow we bring in the math part by estimating the number of leaves on that tree then finding a strategy to determine exactly how many leaves we put on that tree.  A good strategy would be making groups of ten, skip counting by 2's etc.  MART.


Read 20/10

Assembly tomorrow @ 10:30

No school Monday

Reading Goals

Currently we all have a reading goal and strategies to reach that goal on our Iris accounts.  You can view your little learners goal when you come to Student Led conferences November 21 or 22.  Ask your child about their goal.

Four corner planner is one way for young writers to plan the story they want to tell.  We have each planned a story about things we have done for the first time that we can tell a story about.  On each corner of the paper we drew a picture of each of our firsts.  We brainstormed things like our first concert, first trip to Disneyland, first time at the circus that come out of our memory pockets and we can write about.

Dodgeball club started today -

Read 20/10

Remembrance Day assembly Friday @10:30

No school Monday

Healthy Learners

Our morning snack break is an opportunity to fit extra nutrients into your little learners diet.  Snacks should consist of nutrient-dense food like fruits and vegetables, whole grains and seeds.  This will help keep the blood sugars even and the tears at bay!  A health snack has about 100 calories in it and has about 7 grams of sugar.  Consider anything that comes in its own wrapper - apples, oranges, grapes, tomatoes, carrots etc.  All those pretty pre-packaged foods are a trap.  Beware!!  As part of our health unit we will be talking about super foods and how they affect our brains and emotions.  Foods that power our brains.  Please keep the Halloween candy at home for the occasional treat.

Sometimes being almost right is good enough!!  Estimation is an essential skill in math and we began today by estimating the number of rocks in a jar.  We made a referent group of 10 rocks and then continued counting by making groups of 10.  We had all agreed that counting by 10 was efficient and easy to do.  Taking our work a little further some of us were able to find the difference between the actual number of rocks in the jar and our estimate.  Which brought us to the various ways to subtract bigger numbers.  It was a lot of work for a Monday morning!

Ask your child about the facts they learned this morning about Winnie-the-Pooh.  Probably my favorite mentor text, 'Finding Winnie' tells the Canadian story behind the making of the beloved Disney character.  We were all amazed!!