October 1 - 5

A Few Reminders:

• October 8th - No School, Happy Thanksgiving!
• October 10th - Blue Flame Kitchen Visit. 
• October 11th - Trustee Visit. 
• October 16th - Photo Retakes.
• October 18th - Fruit Order Forms Due.
• October 19th - No School, PD Day.
• October 22-24th - Book Fair!
• October 23rd - Parent Teacher interviews. 
• October 23rd - Earth Rangers Visit @ 2:00pm.

Every Child Matters! 

Way to go, showing your support and wearing Orange on Monday! 

ELA 

Reading

As we move into October, we are beginning to focus on specific reading strategies each week. I will introduce the strategy, model with the whole class, and then give students independent practice time. The goal is to have students using the strategies during their read to self time in the class, and at home. 

This week our reading strategy focus is Questioning: I can ask meaningful questions to understand what I am reading. To introduce this strategy I read a very fun book, This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen. This is a great book for questioning as it provokes a lot of intrigue in the students - why is that fish wearing a hat? Whose hat is it? 

Questioning can happen before reading, during reading, and even after reading. Putting this categories on the board, I read the students the title and had them come up and write down questions they might have about the book at this stage. As we read through the book, when they had a question we would add a sticky to the board. 

Once we finished we went back, looked at our questions and checked to see if we could answer them! 

Next, students worked in small groups with a picture book and stickies. Together they read through the book and thought of questions they had as they went along. They put them in the book, and we have had them in our feature bin all week for other students to read through and engage their questioning skills. 

Writing

We are continuing to work and fine tune our skills during KidBlog writing time. Students spent time researching about R.L Stine, the author behind the series of Goosebumps! 

As a class, we brainstormed questions you might want to answer when researching R.L Stine. Questions that someone who had never heard of him or met him might ask. This has students creating appropriate questions based on a topic, and using given sources to answer them.  

Once we had our questions up, students spent time in partner groups researching facts about him. Together they worked on creating a title, and taking jot notes. They are encouraged to read facts and write them in their own words. There was lots of interesting things about Robert Lawrence Stine for them to find out!

After we came back together to see if we could answer all our questions. 

As a class, we worked to write a summary paragraph based on what we found out. 

 Robert Lawrence Stine, or Bob to his Family, is an American author who writes children's horror books. He was Born October 8th, 1943 in Columbus, Ohio and now lives in New York City with his wife and their dog Minnie. At 9 years old R.L Stine was bullied and had no friends. One day he found a typewriter and decided to create his own friends, but as monsters! His First novel was called Blind Date. R.L Stine made over 400 million copes all around the world!! R.L Stine's Birthday is on Thank's Giving this year witch is pretty cool to me! R.L Stine  has a Brother named Bill and a Sister named Pam. R.L Stine is now 74 years old almost 75 years old. 

- TR

Some students wrote their research in their own words. 

Robert Lawrence Stine, who is also known as Bob from his family, he is a American kids horror novel author. R.L Stine was born on October 8th, 1943 in Columbus, Ohio. But today, he is living in New York with his wife, Jane and his dog Minnie.

 At just nine years old, he was bullied through school and did not have many friends, until he found a typewriter and made his own friends, but monsters... After that he decided to become a writer, and in high school he joined the school paper, for more experience. His very first horror novel is called blind date, and after it was published he was known as a kids horror story writer.

These days he is still writing horrific books for kids, and the series is one of the best selling  kids books ever. He get the ideas from the out doors, like when his son, mat could not get his Halloween mask off, that's when he came up with the book The Haunted Mask.

When he was a Joke- Book writer people knew him as Jovial Bob Stine, but when he moved to writing horror he moved to his real name To seem more serious. His favourite horror book is called Something Wicked This Way Comes By Bob Ray.

And that is all about R.L Stine that you need to know.

- BK

Students were also introduced to Talk About it Tuesday this week! This is where we work on opinion writing. Students will be posed a question, and then they will have to pick an opinion, and explain why they think it is the best choice. 

This week they had to choose pets! Would you rather have a pet koala? Or Kangaroo!

When we're writing an opinion based paragraph, we need to first introduce our opinion. I showed them the various sentence starters we can use when introducing our opinion. 

Once they had written their introduction, they got into groups with students who had the same choice! Together they came up with good relevant reasons why their choice is the best. We worked together to determine what a good reason sounded like, and how descriptive it could be. 

Next week they will complete their paragraphs on KidBlog.

We also did some letter writing! Together we read the story Turkey Trouble by Wendy Silvano. This is a story about a silly turkey that tries to disguise himself on Thanksgiving so Farmer Jake has something different to eat for Thanksgiving. 

As a fun response to the boo, students put themselves in the point of view of the turkey and wrote a letter to Farmer Jake. In their letter they had to try and persuade the farmer to try a new main dish! They choose 3 of their favourite meals to describe to him and sway him to choose something less-turkey-like this Thanksgiving. 

MATH

We have been working very hard on solving word problems involving t-tables. In partners and on their own, they worked through various word problems. 

Everyone does very well to solve problems within a t-table, however, everyone is encouraged to read their problem and ensure they understand what they are solving. It is very easy to make small mistakes when adding in their t-tables. 

SCIENCE

This week we went hunting for natural waste in our environment! Natural is not man made, and occurs from nature. This can be fallen leaves, twigs, branches, animal droppings and even dead bugs!

 Students took ipads outside and started hunting our school grounds! They were able to take pictures, label and upload them on Seesaw to show their peers. 

A Special Visitor

Mrs. K stopped by to give us a little lesson on typing posture, and was able to show off some serious typing skills! The kiddos are motivated to practice hard for a future type off!