Back to Work!!

I hope everyone had a great break and happy holidays! 

Rocks & Rings was here this week! It was so cool and so much fun! We have some curling naturals in our group, keep an eye on them!
"The Curling Canada Rocks & Rings program is designed to introduce the Olympic sport of curling to elementary school children. By bringing the curling rink to the school gym we reach children that would otherwise not have access to the roaring game. "

To find out more about this program you can visit the site here

We are getting right back into business in class! This is our first week of our spelling program. Spelling will only be done on 5 day weeks. Every Monday students will copy their spelling words into their agendas. Their lists will be 5 spelling words + 3 challenge words. The challenge words are chosen from the popcorn words we have covered so far in the year. Throughout the week we will do activities in class to practice these words; students are encouraged to practice their words at home as well. On Fridays, we will write our tests! 

To find a master list of our words, click here. 

In Daily 5 we are doing great with Read to Self! The students are up to 12 minutes of reading the whole time! We are not launching work on writing! We have talked about student roles during work on writing and teacher roles. 

The most important parts are getting started right away and write the whole time! To practice this we are building our stamina, we have timed writing sessions! Students this week were given 3 mins, 4 mins and 5 minutes to write as much as they could about a chosen topic. Our topic this week was what you can and can't do in snow! It was amazing to see how much more they can write when they light those bumfires! Each sticker shows how much they accomplished each day.

Holy Super Senses! In Science, we are continuing to discuss our 5 senses and how they help us see the world. This week we are focusing on the sense of touch!

Our first experiment was reaching into and feeling mystery bags! Each bag had a different item inside and we only used our sense of touch to feel and describe the items! Some of the things we felt was sandpaper (rough), a stuffy (soft, fuzzy), A block (smooth), fathers (soft, fluffy), pinecone (pokey, hard) and a tape ball (sticky). 

Next, we started our first page for our senses books! TOUCH! We tested a bunch of different materials by how they felt, came up with describing words and glued them onto a hand page. 

 

In Math we have started a unit on patterns. The students have worked with various materials to create and copy patterns. We have learned that patterns can be made using different colours, shapes, sizes of objects and pictures. Some of the patterns we have created follow the ABAB, ABB, AAB, or ABC rule. 

 

Next week, we will focus more on extending patterns.