Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!

The week has gone off to a busy start, since last week we have taken a short break from the Arctic and now focused on what is going on in our own backyard. We discussed the idea of the season 'Fall' in relation to our senses. The students came up with great ideas and descriptions about fall so our free writing time has been focused on that the last few days. The work the students are producing is great! Lots of stories, poetry, even some song lyrics! With the writing the students have been so hard at work producing we have also focused on movement. In one activity in small groups the students created a poem together and while reciting it to the class, they created movements to go with their main idea. We have been working on the concept of 'fluid motion' ask them what it is ;)

In math we have been working continuously on different ways we can collect, sort and explain data. The last two days the students have been hard at work creating their pictographs. They each thought about a question they wanted to learn about the class, than after collecting the information they needed, each one of them had to created pictures to create a graph. On a side note, those of you who have read the October newsletter (posted on the school website) may have seen an explanation of the new school wide math problems. From the newsletter:

Teachers are engaged in professional development around the topic of problem based
math where students work to solve rich math tasks that can be sustained over a long period
of time. Parents ask often what they can do to support students at home. In addition to working on basic math facts at home with your child on a regular basis, we have included a series of family challenges for the month of October. Each challenge is designed to be worked on for a week. Your child is encouraged to bring their thinking/work around the challenge to school.

Family Math Challenge link

I encourage you all to explore the problems posted on the above link with your children, and encourage them to bring their solutions to class to share.

A special thank you to all who donated to 'Toonies for Terry'. The school raised quite a bit of money and the Terry Fox run was a great success!