You'd never know we were winding down for the holidays as we have so many projects on the go in Language Arts, Social Studies and now a new one for Science...the fun never ends in 5E!
So what have we been up to and what is coming up:
LANGUAGE ARTS:
Our final Literature Circle discussions will be on Monday, December 8th just after lunch. The students should have finished reading their Friendship novel and have 2 more full page responses completed in time for the discussion. A big THANK YOU to our parent volunteers who were able to come in and share their thoughts on the books and help guide our discussions!! The students will be working on a final project for their Literature Circle groups using a Web 2.0 tool called Voicethreads. As a group they will identify the elements of the story and discuss how they feel these elements affected the story or changed over the course of the novel. If you'd like to see what Voicethreads are all about, click on the word Voicethreads! If you want to check out some Voicethreads done by others, click on the tab labelled Browse on the Voicethreads page. It's so cool and I think the students are going to have a blast! If you have any questions about it, feel free to call me at the school or send an e-mail. (As it is a web-based tool, we will not be revealing our full names, school or real pictures. We are using the students' self-portraits as their "profile images".)
Along with this project, the students will finish reading their December book (Winter, Christmas or survival themed) and create a Holiday Card for their book report. I will definitely give the students some class time but the card is due for Thursday, Dec. 18th! The students have an outline in the L.A. duotang that describes what is expected for this report.
Today we enjoyed a WARM FUZZY moment as part of our Friendship unit and building community in our class. I read the students a story from the original Chicken Soup for the Soul that inspired our work. (Here is a shorter version of the story, click here!) Ask your child about the activity and where they have chosen to store their Warm Fuzzy guy!
MATHEMATICS:
It's all about the "new math" this week as we explored front-end rounding, compatible numbers, compensation and using benchmarks for estimating sums! We are all on a learning curve this week as we practiced and discovered new ways to work with large numbers to estimate large sums. It's exciting to see the students reveal their knowledge and number sense as they explain their thinking when using these different strategies. We will continue practicing these new concepts for the next couple of weeks.
SOCIAL STUDIES:
We are well underway with our research of the six major aboriginal groups of Canada. So far we have learned about their food and shelter. Next week (amongst the MTYP and school concert) we will try to complete our research about their clothing and transportation. During our research the students are learning how to cite information (in a very basic format), read before writing, searching for keywords using the index and table of contents as well as organizing our information in a graphic organizer for later use.
Our research will definitely be continuing into the New Year when we will finish with our final presentation in the form of an "Aboriginals of the Past" Museum Gallery!
SCIENCE:
The students did a great job preparing for their Digestive Quiz today! Thank you for helping them study...it showed! The students will have their quizzes back for you to view on Monday.
To finish off our study of "Maintaining a Healthy Body", the students are going to be assigned an organ from the human body to research and write a riddle for the class to guess their organ!
Our focus will be on using the internet to collect information, specifically how to effectively use Google as a search engine. It's a short and sweet way to top off this unit before we dive into new Science material in January.
ART:
As you can see from the sidebar, the students designed active snowman and colored them using chalk ...and glue! You'll have to ask your child how they did it!
At the Holiday concert on Wednesday, you'll see your child's beautiful handi-work in creating our multicultural celebration of the holidays with our flags in the shape of a Peace sign across from the office.
OTHER:
- LM Holiday Concert is Wednesday, Dec.10th. 1:30pm for the afternoon performance and 7:00pm for the evening.
- All grade 4 and 5's are off to the MTYP for "Frog and Toad" play on Thursday, Dec.11th at 12:10pm. (Please have your child stay for lunch on this day as we will be eating early.)
- Secret Santa names were drawn today! Remember to keep your gifts to $5. We'll be opening them at our X-mas party on the last day of school.
"It's starting to look a lot like Christmas...everywhere you go!"
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Eby
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