I hope you enjoyed your Friday "off". I actually had a great day listening to some reknowned Canadian authors (Kenneth Oppel and Carol Matas) talk about their lives as writers, promote their latest books and discuss strategies to engage our young writers. It's always refreshing to be sitting on the other side of the desk and be the learner instead of the teacher!
So what have we been up to in 5E and what is coming up...
LANGUAGE ARTS:
With the theme of Friendship in all of our Literature Circle novels, we started off the week with a fun "graffiti" brainstorm activity to activate our thinking about qualities of a good friend. You can see our handy work in the photos on the sidebar of the blog.
Along with reading and responding, we have been looking more closely at the elements of a story. On Thursday, the students worked in pairs reading a picture book and were asked to identify the characters, setting, plot, theme and resolution (the story elements we cover in grade 5). We will be focussing on these same elements as we discuss their Literature Circle books on Monday. Speaking of which, the students must be read to the halfway point in their novels and have 2 full page responses ready for their first Literature Circle discussions on Monday!
Next week, the students will finish reading their books and write 2 more response journal entries for their final discussions on Monday, December 8th. The students will be given class time to read and respond and begin working on their final projects for their book.
MATHEMATICS:
Wow! The students did an amazing job on their Place Value quizzes on Tuesday! We have moved onto comparing and ordering large numbers and will also look at front end estimation.
Hopefully you received the latest assessment of their multiplication facts. I am so proud of everyone for completing their booklets. The results of their assessments are "proof in the pudding" as everyone has made a marked improvement in their multiplication mastery!
SCIENCE:
Check out those digestive systems on the sidebar...colorful and crazy! What a great hands-on activity putting the different organs together. The students viewed another video on Tuesday where they used a "Word Cycle" graphic organizer to put the organs in the order that food is digested in the body. A much more effective tool than a simple question and answer sheet! We will be winding up this unit next week...so, yes...anticipate another quiz in the near future...watch those agendas!
SOCIAL STUDIES:
The class is very enthusiastic about our first big research project of the year! The students have been placed into groups and assigned a specific aboriginal group to become "experts" about, that lived in Canada thousands of years ago. As a class, we looked at the questions we want to learn about the different groups and discussed the concept of "culture". To activate our learning, the students studied the pictures several books on the topic and drew sketches to represent the different cultural areas they will be studying during this project. On Thursday, we began looking at how to research by using books as a secondary resource. We will continue with our research next week and hopefully get into the computer lab to access the internet as another resource of information.
FRENCH:
We've begun our new unit on Nutrition! The students are learning new vocabulary associated with snack foods and are learning how to express their preferences en francais.
ART:
The theme for our Holiday bulletin board outside the office is "Linden Meadows wishing Peace Around the World at this Holiday time" (or something like that, we're still working on our message). The students actually had a lot of fun reproducing flags from around the world, trying to represent the multicultural nature of our student body. We are going to put the flags up in the shape of a peace sign. It should look stunning! Check out the front bulletin board next week.
OTHER:
- We had a successful Lockdown practice on Thursday! 5E was mature, prepared and calm.
- Thank you to Mrs. Beazley for coordinating our costumes for the upcoming Holiday concert. We've lucked out this year with a simple black top and pants with some glittery garland on the cuffs! I hope you all received the letter on Thursday.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend...Holiday celebrations are just around the corner!
Mrs. Eby
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