HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

What a fun week we've had preparing for the holidays! I know this may sound corny but I feel truly blessed this year with an amazing group of students. Many of the adults that work in our classroom feel the same way about the respect, dedication and enthusiasm that 5E displays everyday at school!

Amongst the festive activities, we still managed to get some work accomplished! So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up...(in 2009!):



LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our Voicethread projects were finally completed early on this week. The students had so much fun (as did I!) recording their "scripts" and especially commenting on each others work! I hope your child has shared their work with you on the Voicethreads site. I have provided them with the password to be able to access their projects (as I have made them private from public internet viewing). I am going to try to embed them into our blog this week if you are having difficulty viewing them!

On Thursday I introduced our new unit for January. We will be doing an author study of Chris Van Allsburg. He is best known for his books, Jumanji and the Polar Express. We had a little "sneak preview" session where the students had about 30 seconds to flip through the books (he has written over 10 books!) to get an idea of how he illustrates and writes! His picture books are actually geared towards the 8+ age group. We headed to the computer lab to visit his website to learn more about him. It's a very informative and interactive site so I've included it in the "Cool Websites" on the sidebar of the blog. To get us into the holiday spirit, I read "The Polar Express" and we viewed the movie on Friday afternoon! The students seem anxious to begin reading the rest of his books!



MATHEMATICS:

This week we had fun practicing the problem solving strategy of "Acting it out/Using objects". These types of problems involve more logical thinking rather than working with numbers. We practiced several problems throughout the week before the students wrote a problem for me to assess. I'll be correcting those over the holidays!

In January we will be starting up our new unit on DECIMALS!! (Try the game in the "Cool Website" section of the blog)



SOCIAL STUDIES:

We continued with our research this week! I had the students research the Clothing of their aboriginal group using the books in the class. Afterwards, I had them hand in their work to assess their understanding and ability to find the information, organize it, and put it in their own words. Everyone seems to be right on track!

I hope to finish up the research shortly after we get back from the holidays, in order to begin our final presentation for this unit...our "Canadian Aboriginals of the Past" Museum Gallery!



SCIENCE:

Early in the week, the students completed their "Organ Body Riddles"; typing them up on the computer and drawing a diagram of their assigned body part. On Tuesday, we headed down to Mrs. Phillip's class and presented our riddles to her Grade 8 Science students who are also learning about the human body (in a little more detail!).

Each student read their riddle aloud and the grade 8 students tried to guess which organ it was from the clues in the riddle. The 5's were a bit nervous at first but also proud of their work and enjoyed sharing with the "big kids"! Mrs. Phillips was impressed and the grade 8's enjoyed our visit as well (we'll have to do more sharing!).

In 2009, we will begin a new unit in Science learning about Matter and the physical and chemical changes that a substance can undergo. It's a unit full of experiments and hands-on activities!



FRENCH:

Oui, oui!! We will be continuing our unit on Healthy Snacks into the new year! We've learned how to say the different food groups en francais and played a fun French game to practice saying and learning vocabulary of the different kinds of food.



OTHER:

• I hope you've found a cozy spot in your home for your child's Snowman we made on Thursday! They were very proud of their creations...check out our Snowman class picture on the sidebar of the blog...pretty cute! Thank you to the parents who were able to come and help us glue on eyes and stuff socks!


• Another big THANK YOU to the parents who contributed the yummy snacks for our class party on Friday and to EVERYONE for the shopping required for our Secret Santa celebration. The students were so excited! They had so much fun opening them up and guessing the riddles! It was a great way to kick start the season of giving!


• Finally...a HUGE THANK YOU for the kind words and lovely gifts I received on Friday!

Have a relaxing, fun and joyous holiday visiting with family and friends (I know I will!).

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Mrs. Eby