WHAT'S UP IN 5E?

A FOND FAREWELL...

2009-06-27T08:30:00.003-05:00

What a fantastic year to finish off my time with a homeroom class! Looking back on our archives within this blog, we sure were a busy class, full of fun, exciting and productive learning experiences. All of those things can't happen without an enthusiatic and hardworking group of students willing to get "down to business" and that is definitely what 5E was all about this year.

The best part of saying "Farewell" this June is that I get to see everybody again next year in the library! I'm very excited about this new adventure/chapter in my career as I will be continuing to take online university courses to pursue my Masters of Education (specializing in Teacher-librarianship) as well as revving-up our Library program at LM!

So as our final blog post of the year, here's what we've been up to and what is coming up in the last 2 days of school:

The students finished up their Literature Circle technology projects early in the week and presented them to the class Thursday morning! Interestingly, several of the books in this round of LC's were made into movies. One of my favorite books is "A Wrinkle in Time", an exciting, action packed fantasy, so to celebrate our hardwork with our final round of LC's the students watched the movie and the one group was able to make some interesting comparisons between the book and the movie interpretation.

To finish up our Math learning this year, two groups of students presented their Geometry projects to the class on Monday and Tuesday. The students were asked to apply what they had learned from their presentations into an imaginary town map; identifying such things as parallel lines, perpendicular lines, trapezoids, rays, etc.

On Thursday, the students had some fun playing with Tangrams. Tangrams are an ancient Chinese math puzzle consisting of 7 geometric shapes to create different forms and figures.

The rest of our week was filled with many year end "tidying up" activities and preparations for grade 6. Our theme days of "Munchday", "Chewsday" , "Thirstday" and "Funday" made the week a little more interesting to say the least. I've included a few photos from our week of theme days to show you how much fun we really had....from crazy drinks to overloading on sundae toppings!!

As you may have noticed, most of your child's school work has made its way home this week so they don't have a big load to haul on the 30th. Also, you should have received your child's report card on Friday, along with their grade 6 placement for next year.

Next week....

On Monday, the students will be finishing up their posters about Summer Safety! I am hoping that they may have an opportunity to share the important message about "fun and safety" to some of the younger students at LM on Tuesday morning but if not, I hope to have the posters on display at the Lindenwoods Community Center this summer!

Monday afternoon, the two grade 5 classes will be involved in some fun games outside from 1:00-2:30 and then finishing off our playtime with a Canada Day themed picnic of hotdogs, chips, drinks and icecream treats. A HUGE thank you to Mrs. Beazley for helping to coordinate volunteers and organize the food portion of this event! THANK YOU!

Tuesday will be our final day of school with our annual Canada Day assembly in the morning (along with some desk and locker cleaning too!) Remember to wear your RED AND WHITE clothes!!! For those students who are still around, Tuesday afternoon there will be a movie in our classroom and the students can bring a snack or a drink to enjoy while they watch.

Well...I can't believe this year is really over! I will miss everyone so much, as it has truly been a superb year with an absolutely amazing group of students. Thank you for all your support, words of appreciation and help in the classroom. Have a wonderful summer and I look forward to seeing everyone in the library in September.

Love, Mrs. Eby

FUN T.U.S.C. in action!

2009-06-19T20:16:00.003-05:00

Here's a little "snapshot" view of our final FUN T.U.S.C. meeting of grade 5! Enjoy!
(If you are viewing this from an e-mail message, please click on the "WHAT'S UP IN 5E?" link at the bottom of this message to view the Bubbleshare photo show.)

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

CARNIVALS, COUNTDOWN AND CRUIZIN'

2009-06-19T18:57:00.003-05:00

This is it folks...countdown time...7 days and counting!! What a fabulous day on Friday for our Carnival! A HUGE THANK YOU to all the parents who helped to make the day so fabulous for the students. They were looking forward to it all week and the weather cooperated too (maybe a bit too much!). We've already started with our "winding down" this week and we have more "winding down" to come.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Once again, a big thank you to our parent volunteers who were able to join us for our last Literature Circle of grade 5. I think every book was a big hit this round and we are finishing off our literary genre study with a final group technology project. The students had to choose their favorite (or most appropriate) form of technology that we've learned this year, to present their book to the class! It's a wonderful project that culminates everything they have learned all year about story elements, technology, public speaking and working together as a cooperative group. Next week the students have a few more periods in the Computer Lab and then they will be presenting their book to the class!
Speaking of presenting, we had a really FUN T.U.S.C. on Thursday! So much fun, that it took all afternoon to get through all of the speeches! I put a few pictures together in a Bubbleshare to show off their talents. It's been a great T.U.S.C. year! Thank you for all your support at home with the "extra" homework and supportive audience for practicing.

MATHEMATICS:

It was all about the long division this week! We finished up our last "official" math unit this year on Friday with their final unit quiz on long division. I'll be marking those this weekend and the students should have them back on Monday for you to review and sign.
We have 2 groups of students that will be presenting their Geometry projects next week, giving us a mini-unit in Geometry! Geometry is a fun way to end our year in math...tangrams, tessellations and triangles, oh my!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

With such a short week, the students only had a brief lesson on the "Battle of the Plains of Abraham". We viewed an episode from "Canada: A People's History" that portrayed a re-enactment of the battle; a pivotal moment in canadian history. Next week, we hope to look at the battle from both sides from a more empathetic view point.

SCIENCE:

I'm convinced that it must be our fault that it was cloudy and rainy last week since I was teaching about Weather, because this week, we didn't do any Science and it was sunny!!! Wait, that's not exactly true. The students had fun doing a scavenger hunt of the Weather Map found in the Winnipeg Free Press. For many of the students, it was their first time looking at that section of the newspaper and for others, they had no idea how much information was actually available in the newspapers weather section!! It was an eye-opening experience.
You'll have to watch the skies to see if we're learning about weather or not next week!

OTHER:

I'm hoping everyone has received my letter home about our last "week and 2 days" of school! We have a fun week of "theme days" next week to make it exciting for the students. Here's a brief reminder of our events: Monday - Munchday (bring a snack), Tuesday - Chewsday (chew gum today), Wednesday - Weird'n Wacky Day (dress/ hair funny), Thursday - Thirstday (bring a yummy drink for class), Friday - Funday (Sundae Party and afternoon movie).

Thank you for your contribution to our Friday Sundae Party...I will provide the ice-cream and the students are each bringing in their selected topping! It's a yummy blast!

The students will slowly be bringing home their notebooks and supplies we are no longer using, so they don't have a huge pile of stuff to bring home on the last day!

Report Cards will be coming home on Friday, June 26th!

Enjoy the sunshine this weekend!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to all our great dads! We love you!

Mrs. Eby

Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus...NO MORE CLOUDS!

2009-06-12T09:40:00.003-05:00

I hope our Weather unit in Science has not spurred on this unusually cloudy, rainy spring! It seems that our grade 5 year is still plugging on into June and only 2 and a bit more weeks left of school (despite the weather). Once again, this class astounds me with their focus and willingness to continue learning and growing even into our last few weeks... and a few extra quizzes tossed in here and there!

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our final literature circle discussion will be held on Wednesday, June 17th. The students need to have finished reading their novel and have their assigned role completed along with one page of responses by Wednesday! A big thank you to our parent volunteers this round who were able to join us on our whirlwind tour of Literary Genres!

We had our final T.U.S.C. meeting on Wednesday this week (which ended in the biggest sigh of relief as you can imagine!). Everyone is excited as they prepare for our FUN T.U.S.C. meeting on Thursday, June 18th! I think it will be a yummy one too as we have 4 healthy snacks being prepared for the meeting (I guess that role was a big favorite!).

MATHEMATICS:

We are into our final unit in Math this year...long division! Again, this concept requires a lot of practice and drill to really engrain the concept and strategies into our mathematical thinking. The students were introduced to the concept with a fun lesson about "Remainder Joe" (as you can see in the photo on the blog). We started slow with the idea of "reverse multiplication" and have worked our way to 2 digit division with one remainder. On Friday, the students were introduced to two different strategies for dividing into 3 digit dividends. With some practice over the weekend and next week, we will hopefully have this mastered in preparation for grade 6. An assessment of their understanding of division will be come in the form of a quiz on Friday, June 19th!

Our final few days of math will look at the world of geometry...always a fun and easy way to end the year!

SCIENCE:

Weather...what more can I say...not a fun topic to discuss lately!! We've been having some interesting discussions and lessons this week about air as we explored the differences between air masses, fronts and air pressure. We had a rousing game of Weather Jeopardy on the SMARTboard Thursday to prepare the students for their quiz on Friday.

Over the past month we've managed to cover the essential learning outcomes for this unit, so over the next week we will have some fun researching weather disasters and how to keep ourselves safe!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

This past week we've been learning about the parts of a textbook and the various strategies to use when reading expository text. Of course at the same time, the students have been learning about the colonization of the English in Newfoundland and Halifax before their big battle against the French!

Next week we will be looking more closely at the lives of a soldier during the time of the famous battle on the Plains of Abraham.

FRENCH:

It's been numbers, numbers, numbers this past week! I've done something I rarely do...give a pop quiz! The students faired very well. Of course this was not a formal evaluation for the report card but merely a means for me to assess their understanding thus far. Next week we will begin our application of our number vocabulary into the idea of how to tell time...en francais and make our own personal clocks to have fun telling time. "Quelle heure est-il, s'il vous plait?"

OTHER:

Just a reminder that there is NO SCHOOL on Monday, June 15th for report card writing!

It's Carnival Day on Friday, June 19th! If you did not get a chance to purchase your wristbands for $3/student this week, your child may buy one on Friday! It's a fun day! Come out and share lunch at the vendors or take a "whack" at getting a teacher wet at the Pitch Burst station. (I've kindly passed this honor on to my fellow staff members! LOL)

Next week, a letter will be coming out addressing some special activities we have planned for our final week (and 2 days) of grade 5, to make them fun and exciting!

Tuesday, June 16th...all library books must be returned to the library. There will be no more exchanges until we resume in September (with me!!!!).

Have a fabulous weekend! "Here comes the sun, little darlings!"

Mrs. Eby

5E Poetry Glogs!

2009-06-08T15:27:00.002-05:00

Check out our POETRY GLOGS at http://5epoetryglogs.wikispaces.com or click on the link on the glog below where it says : Welcome to 5E poetry glogs!

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK!

2009-06-06T11:58:00.002-05:00

Hi! I’m Marissa, “the blogger of the week” for this week. I’m going to give YOU the inside scoop and everything else about Empty Bowls. (That's me in the middle of the picture holding my pink empty bowl with my classmates on either side of me!)

Well, on June 4, 2009, ONLY the grade 5’s (5E, 5L, and 5H) put on the event, Empty Bowls. This event is a fundraiser for Winnipeg Harvest. Winnipeg Harvest is a non-profit organization that is run by volunteers! People that cannot afford to buy the food to feed themselves and their families can go to a food bank like Winnipeg Harvest, and get food.

Anyways, the evening was filled with fun and entertainment. 5E and 5L played the instruments and sang two songs, Island Song and The Lion Sleeps Tonight. 5H wrote “So much depends upon…” poems and played the xylophones and sang Lean on Me. Also, there was a dance performance of “Jai-Ho”. Mrs. Lee Newton came to talk to us. Mrs. Newton is the person who started Winnipeg Harvest! Did you know that Mrs. Newton started Winnipeg Harvest in 1983? On Thursday morning, we made Tomato Herbed Soup with Mrs. Simone. The soup was quite easy to make…tomatoes, pepper, garlic, celery, onion, etc and not to mention delicious! Although, at the actual Empty Bowls, it was still hot and I burnt my tongue! Our class made posters in computer class with Fireworks Macromedia software, Mrs. Meen helped us! On the hallway across from the office, our class created a sort of mosaic art piece with a bowl on it. I think that our class thought that it would look kind of weird, but it looks really cool-actually! Ohhhhhhh-yummy… don’t forget about the Cookie Auction! There were 8 jumbo cookies that the teachers/staff in our school baked. You could buy 1 ticket for $1, and 3 tickets for $2. You put part of your ticket in the bag, and the other you kept. Later they drew the LUCKY winners! (Obviously not me…)

So, why exactly is it called “Empty Bowls”? Well, with the help of Mrs. VanNice and Mrs. Ans in art class, we created some really cool bowls-first out of clay then into the kiln. We glazed them, then into the kiln again! The kiln is a big oven that the temperature rises to be over 1000 degrees! The bowls turned out really nice, and so cool! That is where the Bowls from “Empty Bowls” comes from. But, the Empty part is to represent the empty stomachs of the people who can’t afford food here in Winnipeg. So, leave your bowl empty. Now, that you know what Empty Bowls is, means, and how it was created, what happened after this fundraiser?

You had to buy your child’s bowl. Just with all the buying of the bowls raised a total of $820.00! THEN, the cookie auction raised $191.00. Now, drumroll please… in total, the grade fives here at Linden Meadows raised a total of $1011 for Winnipeg Harvest! Did you know that every dollar Winnipeg Harvest receives, they can buy 20 dollars worth of food! Hooray to us, for raising soooo much money! This is just one of the acts of kindness we can do to make this world a better place.

EMPTY BOWLS AND FULL HEARTS!

2009-06-05T18:31:00.004-05:00

Our blog title this week says it all "Empty Bowls and Full Hearts!". The students put on a spectacular fundraising event on Thursday night! Besides the overall organization of the event, the ultimate product of the evening was all the efforts of our grade 5 students, everything from the bowls to the centerpieces to the entertainment to the decorations! I don't want to take away too much of the limelight from our "Blogger of the Week" so I won't say anymore about Empty Bowls. However, if you missed the evening (or just want to see it again), I've embedded the video from the evening into the blog; so be sure to click on the "WHAT'S UP IN 5E?" at the bottom of this e-mail message to see it on the actual blog.

It's hard to believe we could get any other school work accomplished this week with all the excitement, BUT we did!!! Unfortunately, it's what I like to call "crunch time", as I prepare to write their final report cards for grade 5! You've probably already noticed a few quizzes this week and you can expect a few more coming up next week in Science and French. Thank you so much for your support! We are coming close to the end of a FABULOUS year together and I am hoping for a happy and successful finish!

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our final unit of Literature Circles has begun! The students have been reading their various genres of books and writing their reading responses. We have added a new element to our final round. Within each group, the students have been given a special role that they must prepare for and share at their literature circle meeting. The roles are: Discussion Director, Connector, Vocabulary Extender, Literary Luminary and Illustrator. Giving each student a role to perform should add a bit more structure and independance to the literature circle discussions. The students must have their book read to the halfway point, written a one page response and have their role ready for TUESDAY, JUNE 9TH!

Well, it's finally here...our last OFFICIAL T.U.S.C. meeting for the year...WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10TH! I don't think the students are as excited about our last offical meeting as much as they are looking forward to our "FUN T.U.S.C." where they can choose their favorite role to "do again" without getting evaluated by me!

MATHEMATICS:

It's been a full week of math as the students have been practicing their long multiplication skills...and practicing and practicing! We finished off the week with an assessment of their learning on Friday.

Next week begins our dive into DIVISION and of course the various long division strategies!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

The students received their assessments for their New Fance letters on Wednesday. Please return their rubrics signed once you've had a chance to review it. I was blown away this week correcting their New France tests. It seems that by putting themselves into the "shoes" of a colonist in New France helped them to really understand the concepts we covered during our unit.

To finish off our year learning about early Canadian history, we will take a look at the role the English played in establishing Canada and of course the infamous BATTLE OF THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM!

SCIENCE:

It's been a cloudy week in 5E (no pun intended)! We've been learning all about clouds...how they are formed, what they are made of, what types of clouds produce what weather and more!! The students worked in pairs to create CLOUDY posters using cotton balls to display the various clouds in the sky.

Next week we will be learning about the properties of air, air pressure, air masses and how this affects our daily weather. I would like to have a quiz on their understanding of what we've learned about weather so far (hopefully by Friday) but I can't be sure that we'll be ready, so I'll keep you posted through your child's agenda. Thank you for understanding.

FRENCH:

With so much going on in our core subject areas, our French unit on Numbers has been "lagging". We will jump back into our unit this week and again have a quick assessment of our learning later in the week or early next week! C'est la vie!

OTHER:

I'm working on putting the students' POETRY GLOGS onto a wiki so that you may view them altogether! I'll keep you posted.

The annual LINDEN MEADOWS CARNIVAL is back again!!! The carnival date is June 19th and the early selling of wristbands begins Monday. Hopefully you received the gold colored sheet on Friday. Everything you need to know about the Carnival is on the pamphlet! Volunteers are GREATLY needed at this event and much appreciated by our hardworking Parent Council. If you are able to help for even just 30 minutes, that would be fantastic!

Library is on Tuesday! I believe this will be our last book exchange before Mrs. Husack and Mrs. Plexman begin their year end inventory of books.

Only 16 more days of grade 5...let the countdown begin!

Mrs. Eby

2009-06-02T21:26:00.002-05:00

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK!

2009-05-31T14:53:00.001-05:00

Hi, it's Sarah St. here with Blogger of the Week (again!).
Yes, Thursday’s track and field meet was chilly, but the 5E athletes were on fire ;) The 8x60 team came in second in their heat. Way to go to all the runners! Track and Field Day is a day to hang out with friends and make new ones. It is also a chance to enjoy some friendly competition. Next year is our last year to go to the VW/LM track meet. Lots of us are eagerly awaiting Monday morning when Mrs. Eby is handing out the ribbons, but remember the most important thing was to have fun and try our best. I know everyone did!

FUN IN THE SUN!

2009-05-29T16:36:00.005-05:00

WOW, another fabulous week of learning and fun in 5E! I think the highlight of the week might have to be a toss up between our exciting Track and Field day and the fun the students are having with their Glogster poetry projects on the computer. The students are having a blast playing with the tools and graphics on Glogster and even the opportunity to do a little social networking amongst their peers! I love being able to check in on them at anytime and leave comments/suggestions for their posters.
It's hard to believe we only have one more month left of grade 5!!! So let's take a look at all the other things we've been up to and what is coming up next week:

LANGUAGE ARTS:
As you know, the students have been madly working on their Glogsters which are due on MONDAY and thanks to this wonderful Web 2.0 tool, the students can finish them on the weekend at home! With our poetry unit at an end, we are going to be starting our final round of Literature Circles on Monday. Our theme for this round is "Literary Genres". Each of the groups is reading a different genre of literature (ie. fantasy, sci-fi, historical, biography, realistic and survival). Thank you to our parent volunteers for joining us one last time!
Next week we have TWO T.U.S.C. meetings...Tuesday, June 2nd and Friday, June 5th! It's quite amazing to see how much the students have improved in their public speaking over the past 4 months and even their all-round self -confidence.

MATHEMATICS:
We are moving along quite quickly with our Long Multiplication unit. The students are learning two methods to answer a long multiplication question. Next week we will be learning how to multiply 3 digits x 2 digits! The students will be getting a test on their understanding of these concepts on Friday, June 5th!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week the students completed their research for their letter to France! We had some fun brainstorming french names for their "characters". The final "authentic and old" looking letters look really cool. I picked them up on Friday so I could get them marked over the weekend. As this was our final assignment for this unit, we will be having a final test on New France on Wednesday, June 3rd. The students will work on a review on Monday and we will go over the answers on Tuesday!

SCIENCE:
Our Weather unit continued this week with a focus on the Water Cycle! We reviewed the process quite closely both visually and by writing it out in their own words. To make it a little fun, the students made Water Cycle bracelets to help them remember the sequence of steps. If your child brings home their bracelet this weekend, ask them if they can remember what all the colors represent!! Next week we will be looking at clouds and cloud formation as the students complete a one-week observation of the different types of clouds they see in the sky. (Hopefully we won't have too many to observe!)

OTHER:

Track and Field was a huge success! We'll have our very own informal ribbon ceremony on Monday for our athletes! Way to go, 5E!
It's EMPTY BOWLS WEEK! This week the students will be heavily involved in final preparations for our big night on Thursday, June 4th! It's going to be a great night of entertainment and yummy soup. I will be contacting parents who offered to volunteer with soup making on Thursday morning. We can use all the help we can get, it's a big job! Otherwise, I look forward to seeing everyone at 4:30pm in our school gymnasium. Bring your loonies and toonies for our Big Cookie Auction to help raise EVEN MORE money for Winnipeg Harvest!
Library Book Exchange is on Monday!

Have a great weekend...enjoy the sunshine! I will be planting my PINK FLOWERS and wearing my sunscreen (I got quite the burn from our cloudy yet sunny Track and Field day!).

Here is a video of our fun Track day! Please click blue words "WHAT'S UP IN 5E?" in this e-mail to see the video on our actual blog site.

P.S. That's Mrs. Hurak in the blanket with me!

See you all on Monday.

Mrs. Eby

BLOG, SMOG, FOG...no...GLOG!!!!

2009-05-22T16:01:00.003-05:00

I hope everyone survived our "miserable" May long weekend! It wasn't that bad for us out at Lake of the Woods and by the sounds of several of the students' journals I read on Monday, the fishing was pretty good too! If the sun knows what's good for it, it will make more of an appearance this weekend too. Winnipeggers can only handle so much cold weather before that's ALL they'll talk about!

So let's get on to happier, "sunnier" business...here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:
Our budding class of poets has had another successful week of poetry writing and we are ready for our final project...creating a GLOGSTER! Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties on the side of the website creators, the glogster site was "under construction" during our computer time this morning. This is a website that will allow the students to create a multimedia poster of their poems with text, graphics and even sound capabilities to record their voices! It even allows for commenting between the students to share their thoughts on each others' work.
In lieu of our computer time, we had a mellow class of Poetry Cafe as the students shared their poems to the jazzy tunes of Marissa's aunt's saxaphone music and a rousing applause of "snaps" from their classmates!
I've encouraged the students to try out the site this weekend to find out what it can REALLY do! They have all received a "nickname" and "password" to access the site and the link is on the sidebar of the class blog! We'll get into more details on Monday with tips and tricks.
With "Track and Field" on Thursday (Day 5), we will only have ONE T.U.S.C. meeting this week on Monday!

MATHEMATICS:
This week in multiplication we learned about the associative property and worked in groups to solve the "Life is a box of Chocolates" math problem (see the photo on the sidebar of the blog). What an interesting "array" of answers (teehee...no pun intended!)! We also learned how to multiply large numbers that end in ZEROES using the "remove and tack on" method of multiplying. Some questions went home this weekend for practice! Next week we tackle the big stuff as they learn to multiply one digit x two digits and 1 digit x 3 digit in two different ways!

SCIENCE:
Our Weather unit has begun! This week we tackled one of the BIG QUESTIONS for this unit..."What is the difference between weather and climate?" and provide a definition of each. We had some fun playing with the SMARTboard during Science class as we are all learning how to use this new tool together! Next week we will start looking at the Water Cycle.

SOCIAL STUDIES:
It's been a fun week in Social Studies as the students take on the imaginary role of someone living in New France in the 1600's. They are researching their new role and preparing a "friendly letter" to a relative or friend back in France, telling of the hardships and accomplishments they have experienced while living in the New World. I have assigned the rough draft of their letters for homework over the weekend. We will be revising and editing on Monday and the final drafts will be due for Wednesday, May 27th! As our unit on New France draws to a close, watch for a test date in the coming days!

OTHER:

Next week we will begin with more preparations for our Empty Bowls event on June 4th. Thank you for your generous donations to Winnipeg Harvest!
TRACK AND FIELD DAY is Thursday, May 28th! You know the drill... come with a lunch, sunscreen, plenty of water, a hat, things to do between events and appropriate clothing for the day's weather! It's always a fun day, feel free to join us on the field to cheer on our athletes!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Mrs. Eby

RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY!!

2009-05-15T11:12:00.005-05:00

So perhaps, "Rain, Rain, Go away!" isn't the best poem/song ever written but it seems appropriate lately! Fortunately for us, the poetry and passion for writing in 5E has been stronger than ever this week as we dove head first into our Poetry unit in LA! Some of these poets are giving me "goosebumps" with their amazing talent for writing.

With our two unit tests at the beginning of the week finally completed, we were able to sink into our new units with fresh minds and a few "weights" lifted off of our shoulders. The May long weekend may not look good for weather but happily the students only have T.U.S.C. for homework this weekend (and a good idea might be snuggling up with a good book by a warm fire!)

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our Poetry unit has been a lot of fun! In just two days, we read the novel "Love that Dog" by Sharon Creech which is written entirely in verse. It's all about a boy who isn't so crazy about poetry at the start of the book and learns to love it by the end as he shares his feelings about the loss of his dog and becomes a fan of a famous poet. The poems in the book inspired our own poetry writing this week as well as learning about various poetic devices to improve our poems. Ask your child what onomatopeia is (and how to say it)! Next week we will write a few more poems before we put our poems into a final project ...USING TECHNOLOGY!! It's a new program I've used in my university course that I can't wait to share with the students!

The countdown is on as we only have 5 more T.U.S.C. meetings left in our program! There is only one meeting next week on WEDNESDAY, MAY 20th.

Back by popular demand we are going to have one final literature circle round in June! If you are interested in reading a novel and joining one of our groups for discussions, please send a note in your child's agenda or send me an e-mail! It's a great experience and the students love sharing their ideas with an adult.

MATHEMATICS:

Our multiplication unit has begun. I introduced our unit with a fun activity looking at arrays in the book "One Hundred Hungry Ants". Our investigation of arrays and multiplication continued with a look at the commutative property of multiplication (ie. 5x7=35 and 7x5=35)and discovering the world of factors. These concepts lay down the foundation of numeracy in multiplication before we begin looking at the process of multiplying 2 digit numbers.

As well, our daily "Math Minute" warm up exercises are continuing with our third Math Minute quiz happening on Wednesday, May 20th.

SCIENCE:

With our unit on Chemical Changes at an end, the students had some fun unwinding as they prepared and performed a brief commercial for their Engineering Challenge Thermos's! Next week we begin our unit on Weather (how fitting!).

SOCIAL STUDIES:

This week we watched a video to review our understanding of "Colony life in New France" and completed our mapping work surrounding the development of Canada's first colonies.

Next week the students will be introduced to their final assignment for this unit...imagining that they are a person living in New France and writing a letter to their family/friends back in France telling them of the hardships they are facing in this New World!

FRENCH:

Un, deux, trois...it's time to practice those numbers! The students did a great job on their Family tests and their Family Albums looked amazing! Our next unit in French will review their numbers to 100 and how to tell time en francais!

OTHER:

Thank you for the RSVP's for Empty Bowls and your generous donations. Even if you are unable to attend our event, a $10 donation is gratefully accepted to support Winnipeg Harvest and to purchase your child's Empty Bowl creation!

Thank you to our amazing volunteers who helped with Thursday's last Super Lunch of the year!

BAND INSTRUMENT TRIALS!! Just a reminder that on Tuesday, May 20th, Mr. Normandeau will be here in the Linden Meadows band room from 5:30 -8:00 for the Grade 5 students to come and try-out what instrument they would like to play next year!

LAST SCHOLASTIC BOOK ORDER OF THE YEAR!!! Book orders are due Tuesday, May 19th!

Library next week is Friday, May 22nd!

NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY, MAY 18TH! Victoria Day!

Stay warm and have a great long weekend!

Mrs. Eby

PROJECTS, POETRY AND PROBLEM SOLVING, oh my!

2009-05-08T17:04:00.004-05:00

OK, OK...I know, I know...it's been a CRAZY couple of weeks as we've had so many projects on the go. I think we can start to exhale this week as we finish up with a few tests and begin our last "units" in the four core areas to take us to the end of June.

I really enjoyed our tri-conferences this week as well! It was a lot of fun celebrating the great progress so many students have made since the beginning of September. For many of the students their goals for our last two months of the year were improving organizational skills, continuing to put in that extra "T.L.C." and preparing themselves for grade 6! What an ambitious and forward thinking group!

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

As you know (and many of you saw at our tri-conferences), our Chicken Soup books are completed with the self-evaluations ready for my final assessment. Believe it or not, I'm really anxious to begin reading and marking their books. The students have really poured their hearts into their stories and revealed their "inner writers". We had a fun celebration on Thursday to autograph each other's books, read each other's stories and enjoy a well-deserved treat (on me!).

On Tuesday, we began our Poetry unit! To spark the excitement of poetry, I purchased special notebooks for the students to use for collecting and writing their poems over the course of this mini-unit. We had a lot of fun with our first poem "I can't write a poem"! It was a silly list poem of unique excuses why they couldn't write poetry. Next week we will continue with poetry as we read the novel "Love that Dog" which is written entirely in verse!

There are only 7 T.U.S.C. meetings left in our program (plus our "Fun meeting"!) I think everyone is determined to get a few more "3's" before our very last meeting. Next week we have 2 meetings, one on Tuesday, May 12th and Thursday, May 14th!

MATHEMATICS:

This past week we squeezed in another problem solving strategy "Looking for a pattern"! Now it's time to finish off our year with an intense study of multiplication and division. As we approach LONG multiplication and division, it's an important time to start "honing" our multiplication facts once again. I have put a fun multiplication site on to our blog sidebar to warm us up for this next unit. Get ready!

SCIENCE:

What a fun week in Science as the students worked in cooperative groups to create their homemade thermos' and finally tested them on Tuesday! The students learned how to read a glass thermometer and record their results in the form of a line graph as they observed the temperature drop over a 15 minute period of time. As a group, they wrote up their experiment using the correct scientific process and designed attractive posters. Next week they will be presenting their thermos' in the form of a commercial (just like T.U.S.C.)!

On Wednesday, the students were given time to work on the review for their test coming up this Tuesday, May 12th! We corrected the review on Thursday so it is ready for studying this weekend.

Our final unit in Science this year will be studying WEATHER! (Hopefully I can fit in one more technology project here too!)

FRENCH:

The students handed in their Family albums this week and they look fantastic! As we finish up our unit on "La Famille", the students have begun working on their review for our final test. On Tuesday we will go over the answers to the review and practice the unit vocabulary in preparation for the final test on WEDNESDAY, MAY 13TH.

For our next study in French we are going to take some time to re-learn our numbers up to 100 as well as how to correctly tell time in French! Quelle heure est-il?

OTHER:

The students had a very eye-opening and philanthropic visit to Winnipeg Harvest with Mrs. Rappaport on Monday! They helped sort potatoes and had the opportunity to see where all the action takes place once food is donated through such learning service projects as Operation Donation and Empty Bowls...speaking of Empty Bowls!
Hopefully you have all received the letter regarding EMPTY BOWLS this year! Our date is June 4th from 4:30-5:30. It's a fun after school event with entertainment and yummy homemade soup, prepared by the students themselves. Please return the RSVP as soon as possible, along with your $10 donation to Winnipeg Harvest to purchase your child's bowl. We had Cameron Cross, the Art consultant for PTSD, visit the students Thursday morning to tell them more about the program. This year Linden Meadows is fortunate and excited to have the founder of Winnipeg Harvest herself, as a guest speaker at our Empty Bowls event!!!

Once again, thank you to all the parents who were able to attend tri-conferences this week and I look forward to those few phone calls over the next week, with those of you who were unable to attend, just to connect and answer any questions!

FYI...Mrs. Rappaport and I have switched days this week so she will be teaching her curriculum on Day 5 (Monday) and I will be there on Day 6 (Tuesday) doing what I do!

Have a very Happy Mother's Day!

I know it is also the Lindenwide Garage Sale as well this weekend so good luck if you're a seller or a buyer! (Let's hope this cold weather disappears very soon...mini-soccer is just not any fun with mittens and toques on!)

Mrs. Eby

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK!

2009-05-07T08:25:00.004-05:00

Hey! I’m Angie your "blogger of the week". The open house T.U.S.C last week was a blast. Everyone was prepared and all of my classmates did great! After the chairperson adjourned the meeting, Nolan brought 3 yummy healthy snacks for everyone, including the parents! That was truly a good meeting. Also, our Chicken Soup books are published and are NOT amateur (anymore that is). They are book shelf quality, and ready to be read. We all did a great job publishing the books and took a lot of time writing and revising. And thank you to the parent volunteers! Our books wouldn’t be so great without you. Also, I have made a “class photo”, in cartoon version. I made that for our classroom to just see the cartoon version of them. If you do not like your character, tell me at school and maybe I'll change your picture to a more "you" version. The order is from left to right. Top row: Yeoul, Nolan, Nick, Melanie, Brendan, Mitchell, Sarah St., Ryan, and Kelsey. Middle row: Mrs.Eby, Angie, Erin, Rachel, Sarah Sl., Julia, Tegan, Mrs.Cotton, and Mrs.Regher. Bottom row: Nick W.(NOT MICHAEL JACKSON), Marissa, Siho, Thomas, Sammi, Laura, Dylan, Ritika, and Maddy.

APRIL SHOWERS, BRING MAY FLOWERS (or targets!)

2009-05-01T17:11:00.007-05:00

It's been an unbelievably busy week in 5E...and we're loving every minute of it! I think the highlight of our week was the realization of our Chicken Soup publications on Thursday (or maybe it was our Open House T.U.S.C. meeting on Friday!) Either way, the students have once again proved how hard they can work...even under a bit of pressure! We've even managed to squeeze in some time to reflect on our targets and set some goals for our last couple of months of grade 5. The students' "Target Binders" will be coming home on Friday for you to share TOGETHER with your child before our Tri-conferences next week.

It seems that all of our units are finishing at the same time, so we are wrapping up unit projects, writing final assessments and getting ready to begin our final units for the year over the next week.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

With our Chicken Soup books finally published, the students have been given the weekend to add any "finishing touches" to their stories and the overall TLC of their books. They must also take the time to self-evaluate their work before submitting it to me on WEDNESDAY, MAY 8TH! They are really proud of their finished products (as they should be!).

Before we jump into our final round of Literature Circles, I wanted to have some fun with Poetry this month. April is the "official" National Month of poetry but we're going to extend it to May for a fun look at this genre of literature. I have a special surprise for the students on Tuesday to kick start our unit! Along with this poetry theme, the students have been working on their book report for April. The due date for this has been set for Tuesday, May 5th. Several have been handed in already and are hanging on our "Poet-tree" in the classroom!

Thank you so much for such a great turn out to our OPEN HOUSE T.U.S.C. meeting on Friday. The students were so excited to "perform" for you and I think we were all thoroughly entertained. It's an incredible platform for the students to not only build their self-confidence and public speaking skills but to research topics that interest them and then have the opportunity to teach it to their peers in the form of an organized speech! I can't rave about it enough! We have about 8 more meetings before our program comes to an end. Next week we have only one meeting on WEDNESDAY!

MATHEMATICS:

The students did a fantastic job on their Fraction test this week! Thank you for signing the tests and returning them so promptly. Here are some photos of the students practicing fraction concepts in center-based activities:
BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

We have jumped back into Problem Solving this week, looking more closely at the strategy of "Looking for a Pattern". It's a nice culmination of some of the previous strategies we have looked at over the year. Next week we will finish up practicing this strategy and assessing their understanding on Thursday with a quiz.

SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week in Social Studies, we took a closer look at the Seigneurial System used in New France. The students worked on reading expository text in order to find information.

SCIENCE:
It's been a fun week in Science as our unit comes to an end! The students have been working in teams for the "Engineering Challenge" to create a container that acts like a thermos. On Tuesday the students will be testing their "inventions" by pouring a cup of hot water into their containers and recording the temperature to see which container holds in the heat the longest!!
Along with this experiment, the students must write up the challenge in correct scientific procedure on a poster and present their findings to the class!
As the unit has come to a close, the students will be assessed on their understanding of the concepts we've covered involving Chemical Changes. A review will be going home on Tuesday with the final unit test on Thursday, May 7th!

FRENCH:
Our Family unit has also come to the end! The students have been working hard to put their "Album de Famille" together. They have been asked to submit their projects for Tuesday, May 5th. As with all our units, the students will be assessed on their comprehension of the vocabulary and verbs learned during this theme with a quiz. We will review the vocabulary and concepts this week with the quiz on Tuesday, May 12th.

OTHER:

Tri- conferences are coming up next week! I look forward to seeing many of you Thursday evening or Friday. If you were unable to book an appointment this term, I will be giving parents a quick call to just "touch base" or answer any questions you may have after viewing your child's Target Binders.
Just a reminder that there are no classes on Friday, May 8th!
The students are off to Winnipeg Harvest on Monday, May 4th with Mrs. Rappaport. What a wonderful learning service experience and ties in nicely to our Empty Bowls project! More information will be coming home soon regarding our Empty Bowls event this year...book your calendars for June 4th from 4:30 - 5:30 for this worthwhile and fun event!
Thank you to the parents who were able to come in on Thursday to help us put our Chicken Soup books together. It's a big undertaking and I appreciate all the help I can get! Please enjoy our little video production of "Chicken Soup Publishing in Action":

Have a super weekend!

Mrs. Eby

ENJOY A BIG BOWL OF CHICKEN SOUP!

2009-04-24T16:22:00.004-05:00

It's great to get back to business and get some serious work done after all our fun field trips! I can't believe how fast the year flies after Spring Break. I am having so much fun with this class and there is still so many things I want to do before June.

We enjoyed a rousing and lively concert with Aaron Burnett on Tuesday. I love his songs as my girls have them all memorized but I was starting to wonder if he wasn't getting a bit too "young" for our grade 5 students. Although I have to say I saw a lot of singing, laughing and dancing amongst the 5E bunch (even Mrs. Zimmerman was having a blast!).

So here's what we've been up to in the classroom and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

It's been a serious week of revising in 5E as we come down to "crunch time" with our Chicken Soup publication date looming in the near future. The students were asked to self-revise and edit as well as peer-revise with a friend. I've informed the students to ask for their parents help with spelling and grammar but not to interfere with their story content too much! This weekend's homework is to get our stories and cover pages ready for our Bookmaking Workshop on Thursday, April 30th! This requires doing some typing! If your child needs some help as they take a long time to type, feel free to assist them in this portion of the project. On Thursday, the students were given a checklist of tasks (it's on a pink piece of paper), that need to be finished by the following Thursday, April 30th in order to be ready for publication. Thank you for all your support and help with this project...I know it's a "biggie"!

We also have our OPEN HOUSE T.U.S.C. meeting for the parents on Friday, May 1st at 1:00pm. I think it's going to be a "full house" too! The students are getting excited and nervous all at the same time! We have one more "practice" meeting before the big day on Tuesday.

I have also assigned a new book report for April! April is National Poetry month, so in the spirit of poetry, the students are asked to write their book report in the form of a poem. They have received their assignment outlines and can begin whenever they have finished their "book of choice". These reports are due on Tuesday, May 5th!

MATHEMATICS

Our unit on Fractions has come to an end. The big unit test is Tuesday, April 27th. The students corrected their review packages on Thursday and on Monday we will be playing various Fraction games in centers, to study the concepts we have learned over the course of this unit.

Next week we will learn and practice another problem solving strategy, "Finding a Pattern", before we begin our next big unit on Multiplication and Division!

SCIENCE

With the success of our egg experiment this week (you can see our rubbery eggs in the picture on the sidebar of the blog), we thought we'd extend it and see what would happen if it was exposed to air and not the vinegar...no luck hardening again, they just shrivelled!

We had fun extending our chemistry learning by talking about molecules and creating a methane molecule using toothpicks, jujubes and mini-marshmallows! Who knew science could be so yummy? This unit has also come to an end! We will be finishing our learning with a team project, where the students will be the scientists. This project will be introduced next week! Watch the agenda for a unit test date coming up on "Chemical changes"!

SOCIAL STUDIES

With our field trip to the museum not too long ago, we took a bit of a hiatus from New France but have begun our closer look at the lives and culture that made up Canada's first colony. The students viewed an old (but highly informative) video about the different cultural aspects of Life in New France. We will continue looking at the lives and roles of the people of New France next week.

FRENCH

It seems like we are finishing a lot of units this month. We have finally completed all the pages of our "Album de Famille" and now the students will be putting them together in the form of a Scrapbook next week. They followed a model to create a poem about their families and typed them up in the computer lab on Thursday. I hope to have their final scrapbooks on display for our Tri- conferences in 2 weeks!

OTHER:

Library is on Monday...don't forget those books!

Winnipeg Harvest permission slips and $3 are due ASAP. What a great field trip to understand the purpose of our Empty Bowls fundraiser! More information will be coming home shortly about our annual Gr. 5 Empty Bowls event...in the meantime, put a circle on your calendar for June 4th from 4:30- 5:30pm

Have a great weekend...I hear it's warming up a bit again! Time to rake those lawns yet?

Mrs. Eby

"EYES ON TECHNO" in Action!

2009-04-17T16:24:00.001-05:00

Please visit our actual blog site to view these photos (click on the highlighted words "WHAT'S UP IN 5E!" at the bottom of this message!) Enjoy!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.

FIELD TRIP FRENZY IS FINISHED!!

2009-04-17T11:54:00.006-05:00

It's been a whirlwind of field trips and special school events! I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter long weekend! We had a cool, blustery walk this afternoon as we completed our goal for the Walk-a-thon fundraiser. I haven't heard the totals yet but I believe the school community has raised enough money for at least 3 or 4 SMARTboards. Thank you sooo much for supporting our 21st century learners!

With all the events outside of school over the past two weeks, the students have proven their maturity and LM spirit by behaving as responsible, respectful youth. I was very proud to be their teacher! Although this has meant time away from our routine core curriculum outcomes, the activities outside of the classroom have certainly provided enriching and rewarding learning experiences to support the growth of a well-rounded student.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

It's been another week of quick writes but it's coming down to "crunch time"! I've asked the students to select 4 of their personal narratives to FINISH writing this weekend, adding adjectives, similes and ensuring that they are long enough to convey their story idea effectively. Next week we will begin the revising process and hopefullly start designing our Chicken Soup jacket covers!
Next week we have two T.U.S.C. meetings and I've presented a challenge for the students to add a piece of "technology" into their speech for Monday. We're calling it "TECHNO TUSC!". The students were given time in the computer lab on Friday but we ran into some technical difficulties. I've asked the students to work on them over the weekend and save them on their USB drives so they may be transfered into their student accounts on Monday!
Get out your calendars, folks...it's time to announce our OPEN HOUSE T.U.S.C. meeting date, where you, the parents, are invited to see what all the "commotion" is about...FRIDAY, MAY 1ST at 1:05 pm. A formal invitation will be making its way home next week but I thought an earlier announcement would provide more time to make "work arrangements". Hope to see you there!

MATHEMATICS:

We are coming close to the end of our Fraction unit. Next week we will be looking at converting fractions into decimals and vice versa, using the denominators of 10ths, 100ths and 1000ths! As you can guess, with the end of a unit comes a final assessment. Our final test on Fractions will be Tuesday, April 28th! We will be reviewing our fraction learning with a study guide and some fun learning centers near the end of next week.

SCIENCE:

This week we have been "examining eggs" and their chemical reaction to vinegar! Thank you so much for the quick response to empty glass jars on Tuesday, we successfully received more than enough and were able to begin our investigation. The students studied the physical properties of the eggs before they "plopped" them into the vinegar and have been making daily observations of the changes taking place (check out the eggs' before and after pictures on the blog)!

OTHER:

Once again, thank you to our parent volunteers for our "second last" super lunch of the year!

BOOK ORDERS are due for Tuesday, April 21st!

Tri-conferences are coming up again in 3 short weeks...please fill in your preferred appointment time and return it as soon as possible as there is only ONE evening and a full day Friday for this term!

5E took the V-8 Challenge Friday after our Walkathon! Do you know what 8 vegetables make up this super healthy drink?

Have a fabulous weekend! As you dust off your bikes, scooters and rollerblades, remember to play safe and WEAR YOUR HELMETS!

Love ya,

Mrs. Eby

HAPPY EASTER!

2009-04-10T15:02:00.005-05:00

Happy Easter everyone and welcome back to school! It seems strange to come back from a week of holidays, only to have another 4 days off (well...at least the students have 4 days!). Disneyworld was everything I had hoped it would be and more! I'm hooked and already planning our next trip in a few years when the girls are ready for the waterparks. From the "buzz" in the classroom this week, I'd have to say that everyone in 5E must have had a fun and rejuvinating Spring Break!
So let's get back to business, shall we?
Here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:
It seemed like too short of a week to accomplish much but we did manage to squeeze in a couple of quick writes and a T.U.S.C. meeting on our first day back! As you probably already are aware, I've asked the students to write a personal narrative about the day they were born. This is a difficult task to accomplish on their own so they have been assigned the job of interviewing "mom and dad" or reading their baby books to gather the facts. Once they have done their research, they have been instructed to write their "story" as if they had full language ability at the time of their birth (in first person). I hope you have fun sharing such fond and important memories with your child this weekend! They are truly eager and fascinated to learn about the day they were born and it ties in nicely with their Family Life unit with Mrs. Rappaport.
With all our field trips this week and next, we are having a "double" T.U.S.C. event next week with two meetings back to back, Tuesday and Wednesday. The students have been given plenty of warning and hopefully they are able to find some time this weekend to get their roles ready!
Next week we will continue with quick writes and soon begin the process of selecting their favorite stories and revising them carefully, in preparation for final publication in their Chicken Soup books.

MATHEMATICS:
Our study of Fractions continues...on Monday we jumped right back into fractions with a hands-on visual lesson in comparing the values of fractions. The students are learning to compare fractions by deciding if the fraction is closer to 1, 1/2 or 0 by "reading" the numerator and denominators of the fractions. Ask your child whether 7/8 is closer to 1, 1/2 or 0 and how they know that?

SCIENCE:
We continued our investigation of Chemical Changes this week with a look at the active ingredient of YEAST! As in all experiments of science, "you win some and you lose some", our experiment was NOT a success on Monday but after the yeast was given time to rise, our experiment proved a success after all! Check out the picture in the sidebar of our blog.
Ask your child what signs exist that the activation of yeast (as in baking bread products) is a chemical change?

SOCIAL STUDIES:
What a great week for learning about history! I had an amazing time at the Manitoba Museum on Thursday. The students were well-behaved (as always), full of great questions and eager to learn. I like to tease and say, "That was our Fur Trade unit all in one day! I hope you were paying attention!" but in all seriousness, our guides for the Fur Trade gallery did an exceptional job of capturing the students attention and sharing their vast knowledge on the topic! Thank you to Mrs. Meyer for accompanying us for a portion of our day, it helped a lot.
I had some fun creating a slideshow of our day that I posted yesterday, please enjoy!
We are now learning about Life in New France and the various roles of the Europeans who first colonized the province we now know as Quebec.

FRENCH:
It's time for a big push to finish our unit on "La famille"! We are currently working on our next page for their French Family Scrapbook learning how to express family celebrations and verbs in French.

OTHER:

No School on Monday, April 13th (In-service for PTSD staff)
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra field trip first thing Tuesday morning...I've asked the students to dress up for the performance!
Our visit to the South Winnipeg Technical Center for "Eyes on Techno" on Wednesday morning!
Our LM Walk-a-thon Fundraiser on Friday, April 17th in the afternoon. If any parents wish to join us or want to volunteer in another capacity, please feel free to come along!
School Registration update and intention forms due ASAP, thank you!

As I sit here typing this, the sun is beating down into my dining room! I actually lay out on my lounge chair (in the snow) and soaked up some rays this morning! Please enjoy the wonderful weather, family time, Easter celebrations and reassuring signs that spring is on its way!

Mrs. Eby

A FEW "SNAPS" OF OUR MUSEUM TRIP!

2009-04-09T16:01:00.002-05:00

Click on the arrows to move through the slideshow!

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There are signs of SPRING and SPIRIT in 5E!

2009-03-27T09:29:00.004-05:00

Our class has amazing school spirit!! We had several days of full participation by everyone in the different activities and theme days throughout our Spirit Week! Check out our Tropical and Clone Day outfits on the sidebar of the blog. We were sure having fun! The Gym Riot on Friday was just the "kick off" we needed to send our students off on their holidays with smiles on their faces and good memories of LM in their hearts!

Believe it or not, even amidst all this spirit we actually got some work done!

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up (after Spring Break):

LANGUAGE ARTS:

We've continued with our writer's workshop mini-lessons and quick writes. This week we learned how to write using similes as well as having some fun writing our own versions of the classic poem, If I were in Charge of the World, originally written by Judith Viorst. We will continue with our quick writes and mini-lessons in April as we develop a collection of personal narratives from which to choose for revision and editing and eventually publishing in our own Chicken Soup books.

We had an interesting T.U.S.C. meeting this week as it was interrupted by a surprise performance by 4 members of the Winnipeg Wesmen that shot some hoops for the grades 5-8 (in lieu of our cancelled Walk-a-thon). The students were so impressed that Mrs. Zimmerman's son was a member of the team!

Our next T.U.S.C. meeting is the FIRST DAY we get back! Be prepared 5E!!! Maybe you could try to share something about your holidays through your T.U.S.C. role (might be tricky for some of you).

MATHEMATICS:

This week the students had some fun on their math assignment to represent their "typical school day" in a pie graph, using fractions that represent a day divided into 24 hours. It was a great way to have them making connections with real life activities, practicing representing fractions pictorially and simplifying those fractions to lowest terms. An added portion to this assignment was the paragraph they needed to write to explain their "mathematical" thinking and learning through this type of activity.

Thursday was their Fraction quiz to assess their understanding of the concepts we've covered in Fractions up to this point. The quizzes should be returned to you for your signatures on Friday! When the students return from Spring Break we will be finishing our study of fractions by comparing their values and converting them into decimals!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

On Tuesday, the students watched an excellent video that covered all the major historical events that occurred from 1400- 1867 in Canadian history. This was a fantastic overview of the curriculum outcomes that the students need to learn before grade 6, as the gr.6 S.S. curriculum continues in Canadian history from 1867 - present day! Now we will be taking a closer look at each of these events beginning with life in New France.

Our field trip to the Manitoba Museum on April 9th will provide some necessary background information about the Fur Trade era when Canada truly opened up as a country.

SCIENCE:

Our unit on Chemical Changes is already off to a sizzling start as the students experienced our first chemical change experiment watching sugar turn to caramel over a hot plate! They are learning to recognize a chemical change by identifying specific "signs" within an experiment. Ask your child what "signs" to look for in a chemical change.

OTHER:

As you know, our Walk-a-thon has been moved to Friday, April 17th. Mark it on your calendars if you would like to join us for our walk!

Book orders have been submitted for April, I hope to have your books in after the break!

It's Good Friday on April 10th...no school!

Museum trip on Thursday, April 9th...pack those lunches.

Have a fun and safe Spring Break holiday! Our amazing, hardworking class of students deserve the rest and relaxation!

My family and I are driving down to Sioux Falls, SD and then flying out to Disneyworld with my brother's family to meet our parents in Orlando! It's princesses and rides for me next week! (Wish us luck getting through the flooded roads of North Dakota!)

Mrs. Eby

BLOGGER OF THE "SPIRIT" WEEK!

2009-03-23T21:43:00.002-05:00

Hi, my name is Julia! I'm your "Blogger of the week"!
It's cool to care so we made project love kits for Tanzanian children which includes pencils, erasers, rulers, note books and a letter. We also put together the kindergarten’s kits with them. We had a lot of fun!!!
Did you know it will probably be until next September when they get their kits? It is because they have to travel so far over the ocean and other places.
I am really exited for spirit week! How about you!!!?
I loved wearing pajamas on Monday and I think we are going to have a lot of fun dressing like clones. The staff did musical chairs at lunchtime. They all did a good job but Mrs. S won in the end. The spirit week planners had some very good ideas.
We are going to have a lot of fun throughout the week!
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – all the days – Fun! Fun! Fun!!!
So dress up and enjoy the spirit.
YEAH, SPIRIT WEEK!!!

LOONIE AND LOVING IT AT LM!

2009-03-19T09:45:00.007-05:00

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." - Winston Churchill

Thank you for all your support of such worthy causes this past week. I know it must seem like we've been asking for a lot of donations lately (and the field trip money wasn't great timing either!). It's funny... on personal note, I always compare my spending to a cup of coffee at Starbucks! If I can spend almost $4 on a cup of fancy coffee then I guess I shouldn't complain about a dollar here or there (OR maybe I should stop buying such expensive coffee) either way, your support has been greatly appreciated! The students really got into the spirit of giving and thinking of others as we put together our Project Love kits today! Sunglasses Day was a bit hit in 5E...it's cool to care!

Besides all of our abundant generosity and spirit of giving this week, we've been busy at work in the classroom and even starting new units in our core subject areas before our holiday break!

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up....

LANGUAGE ARTS:

The students finally had a chance to share their HERO speeches on Monday with our "Red Carpet Ceremony" in the afternoon. I took plenty of pictures and created a collage of the students for our hallway display. Come take a peek if you're ever in the school! The awards were very unique and represented each individual hero quite accurately.

This week we have begun my favorite Language Arts unit... an extensive Writer's Workshop under the theme of "Chicken Soup Story writing"! Over the course of this unit, the students will be engaged in several writing activities to develop their skills in writing powerful personal narratives. We will be looking at elaborative word choices, exciting leads, endings with a moral and sharing small moments in our lives through a story. The students will NOT be doing a book report this month as they are busy reading "Chicken Soup" stories from my collection of books in the classroom. "It's learning through modelling and exposure!" The more they read, the more they understand what a powerful personal narrative looks like, feels like and sounds like to be able to write their own. Our summative active for this unit will have each student publishing their very own "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books! It's a long process but well worth it!

Our T.U.S.C. meetings are becoming more and more interesting and appealing as the students comfort levels and public speaking skills continue to improve. With their new found confidence, I have informed the students that I will be assessing with a bit more "vigor" from now so it's time to "take it to the next level"! They did an AMAZING JOB this Friday! Next week we only have ONE T.U.S.C. meeting on Wednesday, March 25th...we are doing it in the morning due to the Walk-a -thon in the afternoon!

MATHEMATICS:

Right now we are tackling a difficult outcome in learning Fractions...simplifying/ reducing fractions to their lowest form. We've been practicing a lot this week! Next week, the students will be given a fun assignment to review what they have learned about equivalent fractions and how to simplify them..."How do you spend the typical school day?".

I would also like to assess their understanding of these concepts before the Spring Break so there will be a quiz on what we have learned about Fractions thus far on THURSDAY, MARCH 26TH!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

Our unit on Explorers has also come to an end this week! Their Canadian Explorer Identity Cards look amazing and will make an informative display in the classroom. The students wrote their quiz on Friday and I didn't see anyone break a sweat, so I think we're ready to learn about NEW FRANCE!

What was life like here in Canada for the first europeans who started a colony in Quebec? What were the different roles that people took on in New France? Those are a few of the questions we will be pondering over the next few weeks.

SCIENCE:

We're on to "Part 2" of our unit on Matter! The students experienced their first REALLY big test in Grade 5 with our Physical Properties and Changes test (just getting them ready for grade 6!) so now we will be experimenting with CHEMICAL CHANGES! We will be taking a fun look at molecules, the Periodic Table and of course, the difference between a physical and chemical changes!

FRENCH:

We're still working on our unit on "La Famille". This week we reviewed our understanding of the different members of the family with a funny look at a famous family, the Addams Family! We also began learning different French verbs to express how we share in various celebrations and holidays with our families.

OTHER:

Thank you for getting the Manitoba Museum permission slips and money in so promptly. It's a fantastic field trip that really reinforces what we are learning about Canadian History and something to look forward to right after the break!

THE LM WINTER WALK-A-THON is Wednesday, March 25th! Again, thank you for your sponsorship in raising money for some great technology improvements within our very own school. We're hoping to have enough money to purchase a Smartboard in every classroom!

The countdown is on for Spring Break...No School from March 28th to April 5th!
Library is Tuesday... get those books renewed for the holidays!
Spirit Week is ALL NEXT WEEK! Please review the yellow memo that went home on Friday with all the details! Monday is Pyjama Day...stay cozy!

Thanks for a great week, 5E...slowly but surely I'm fighting this cold and getting back on my feet! Stay healthy and enjoy another warm weekend.

Mrs. Eby

STAY HEALTHY, 5E!! YOU ROCK!

2009-03-13T14:24:00.004-05:00

Believe it or not...it's been an incredibly rough week for me! I haven't been this sick in a long time! My head is still dizzy and my throat is very hoarse but I am so proud of 5E as I heard they pulled together for a terrific Project Love assembly as they proudly showcased their "ABC's of Project Love" Voicethread on Thursday. I have embedded the Voicethread in our blog if you wish to take a moment to watch it! They did an amazing job!
I can't wait to get back into the classroom on Monday for our Red Carpet Hero Ceremony that I needed to postpone on Thursday due to my absence. With the assistance of Mrs. Cotton's wonderful e-mails and picture taking, I am posting this week's blog (as best as I can!).

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:
As you know, we've been preparing for our Red Carpet Hero Ceremony this week. We will definitely have our big ceremony on Monday so remember to "dress up" if you're feeling like getting in the spirit of a true "red carpet" experience. Along with our hero speeches, the students have been working on our Project Love campaign for 2009 by preparing the following Voicethread presentation that took place at the school wide assembly on Thursday.

With our Hero unit finally complete, we are going to be starting our "Writer's Workshop" unit! The students will be immersed in several different writing opportunities and experiences. I call this our "Chicken Soup" unit as the students will be learning how to write amazing personal narratives much like those found in a Chicken Soup book. As you can probably guess, at the end of our unit, the students will be publishing their very own Chicken Soup novels!

Next week's T.U.S.C. meetings are Tuesday and Friday!

MATHEMATICS:

This week the students continued to review and practice equivalent fractions. Along with working in their Math duotangs, the students worked in groups to create "Equivalent Fraction" posters to collaborate their understanding of the concept and display a pictoral representation of "equivalent fractions". Next week we will begin looking at comparing the values of fractions!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
We had a productive week of Social Studies this week as the students researched the 5 main explorers that were key in the discovery and eventual colonization of Canada. They studied the three C's (Cabot, Cartier and Champlain) that explored Canada via the St. Lawerance river while Henry Hudson and Martin Frobisher tackled the Northwest Passage as a means to finding the "shortcut" to India and the spice trade. The students worked in groups to research ONE explorer and created an "Identity Card" covering the 5W's about that explorer's life.
Next week, the students will be sharing their "discoveries" and pooling their knowledge to compare the different impact each explorer made on Canadian history.

SCIENCE:
It was the big science test this week! I know everyone was anxiously awaiting their marks. I will have them in their "hot little hands" by Monday! The students viewed a video this week that summarized what we've learned about Physical Changes and introduced our new concept of Chemical Changes that we will begin next week.

OTHER:

It was Super Lunch on Thursday! Thank you to our parent volunteers who assisted with supervision and delivery. Your help is greatly appreciated!
Library is on MONDAY! Don't forget those books!
It's Loonie week starting Tuesday...a loonie to wear green in support of the Rainbow Society, a raffle ticket and a chance to win prizes!
Friday's loonie day allows you to wear your sunglasses for the day in support of Project Love and we will also be making our kits on that day!
2 more weeks to Spring Break...the countdown is on!

Everyone take care, stay healthy...I've missed you! See you Monday!

Mrs. Eby

IN LIKE A LION AND OUT LIKE A LAMB!

2009-03-05T18:54:00.004-06:00

What's the old saying again? "March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb!" I'm not quite sure how to interpret that saying this year but so far we've had a nice week of warmer weather (not so "lion" in nature, except that weird rain/snow stuff on Thursday!)
It's been a short week with the students but a long week with Tri-conferences. Thank you so much for taking the time to come in and celebrate your child's successes and helping to plan for some very realistic and attainable goals for the next half of our year! In the words of Mrs. Zimmerman, "It's important work!"

So here's what we've been up to this week and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our Literature Circles are finally completed! Thank you so much to our parent volunteers for reading and sharing your thoughts with us. I hope to have one more "round" of literature circles in late May if you are interested in volunteering again (or for the first time!). To finish up this study, the students will be using their knowledge of speech writing and delivery as they plan a speech for the "heroic" character in their book. They must also create an appropriate award to present to them at our RED CARPET CEREMONY! The rough copies of their speeches are due on Monday, March 9th and our RED CARPET HERO CEREMONY will be held on Thursday, March 12th!

We had one of our best T.U.S.C. meetings to date on Wednesday! From laughing over funny books to partaking in the healthy snack of Chef Gaston, our public speaking skills are really starting to shine! Our next two meetings are Monday and Thursday.

Along with our regular E.L.A. program, the students will be helping me to promote Project Love using our experience with Voicethreads once again! If you recall, Project Love is an initiative that helps gather school supply kits for children in Africa who are seriously lacking in sufficient materials to attend school and learn. It's a great opportunity to help others and embed some philanthropic traits in our leaders of tomorrow.

MATHEMATICS:

Our unit on Fractions is off to a yummy start! This week we began looking at the concept of equivalent fractions. After I had read them the "Hershey Fraction" book, the students designed their own chocolate bar covers and used the 12 pieces of a Hershey chocolate bar template to determine several equivalent fractions. Of course, it all ended with a tasty treat to sweeten the deal! Next week, we will continue practicing and working with equivalent fractions.

SCIENCE:

It's been a week of review as we prepare for the big test on Tuesday, March 10th! This past Tuesday, the students were introduced to a study strategy called "Mindmapping" that has the learner creating a visual picture of a concept to help them understand and remember it. The class has also received a review package that they began on Wednesday. The review package and mindmap are both due on Monday so we can correct it before Tuesday's test!

With the first half of our unit complete, we will be moving from Physical Changes to Chemical Changes. More fun and hands-on experiments yet to come!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

OK, OK...it's been another slow week...it's taking awhile for those explorers to get to Canada! (Haha!) I hope to get further into our study next week.

FRENCH:

The students have been learning about how to express different activities they do as a family en francais! Currently they are working on their second page for their "French Family Album" by writing about 2 activities they do with their family. Ask them how to say: "We like to go to the park" en francais!

OTHER:

Operation Donation is over as of Friday, March 6th! Thank you for your generosity.

LM's March Newsletter will be coming out next week.

Have a terrific LONG weekend! I'm off to LaRiviere on Saturday for Haleigh's Barclay Ski Race! Wish us warm weather..it's been a cold ski season this year for all of us!

See you Monday!

Mrs. Eby

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK

2009-02-28T17:02:00.001-06:00

Hi, I’m Dylan and this week’s “Blogger of the Week”.

On Friday our class did a wicked cool and tasty science experiment. We made ice cream! (It’s not your store bought ice cream parlour DQ ice cream. It was sort of a mush). It was so much fun and super delicious. The experiment is like this:
Purpose: To find out if it is possible to produce a physical change by turning milk into ice cream.
Hypothesis: If you want to comment on what you think will happen.
Materials: Milk (not chocolate) chocolate syrup or vanilla salt sugar (add more if using vanilla) ice large and small ziploc bag.
If you want to find out the procedure ask for a 5E student science duotang because I don’t have all day to write here.
Note: you have to add the salt to the ice or the experiment is blown.
That’s all for now.
Dylan out.

THE ICE CREAM EXPERIMENT!!

2009-02-27T16:32:00.003-06:00

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

A FREEZING FEBRUARY...someone turn up the heat!

2009-02-27T14:00:00.005-06:00

In spite of the cancellation of our "Physical Activity Day" today, we had a blast celebrating our "P.A.D. Pity Party" this afternoon! We had a nice surprise treat of homemade cupcakes from Brendan's mom for our movie intermission. (Thank you...they were delicious!)

With the end of February comes the conclusion of many fun"I love to read" activities this month. We had 3 winners for the "We Read Everywhere" bingo sheets! Congratulations go to Ritika, Sarah Sl. and Nolan! We also had the pleasure of two guest readers this week, Mrs. Zimmerman and Ms. Plexman (our library technician ...and published author!). A big thank you goes out to them for sharing their time and talent with us.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:

We had our second T.U.S.C. meeting this week and you can see the students improving and "getting the hang of it" already! Remember to be prepared ahead of time as we have two meetings next week on Monday AND Wednesday.

Our first literature circle meeting for the halfway point in our Hero novels was on Tuesday. The students were very excited to share and now they are anxious to finish their novels for our last literature circle discussions on TUESDAY, MARCH 3RD along with 2 more responses. On Monday, they will be introduced to their final lit.circle project!! Thank you to our parent volunteers who were able to join us for our second round of Literature Circles this year.

Along with T.U.S.C. and Literature Circles this week, we have been reflecting on our classroom targets in preparation for Tri-Conferences next week. In Language Arts, we have been focussing on our targets surrounding writing organized paragraphs and our personal responding skills.

MATHEMATICS:

Our Fraction Fun began this week as we created our very own Fraction Strip posters to compare the values of fractions. What size piece of a chocolate bar would you want, 1/3 or 1/10? (Check the sidebar of our blog to see our colorful fraction posters.)

We covered the basic concept of fractions by representing them with pictures and identifying the numerator and denominator of a proper fraction.

This week we also began a new "warm-up" Math program called "MATH MINUTES". At the beginning of each Math class, the students do 10 questions that range from easy review questions to new math concepts that are above grade level outcomes (fun and challenging!). We've only done 2 "minutes" so far but the students seem to enjoy the variation!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

We only managed to squeeze in one Social Studies period this week but it was a great opportunity to review what we've learned so far about early explorers!

SCIENCE:

I think the Science experiment that will be most remembered this week is our "Ice cream in a baggie"! There's nothing like -30 degree Celsius weather to inspire a class to make ice cream, a great example of a physical change as the milk changed states from a liquid to a "solid". It was a yummy hit! Be prepared...I think some students will be going home ready to make their own this weekend. Next week, we will be reviewing what we've learned about Physical Properties and Changes as there will be a test on Tuesday, March 10th.

OTHER:

Tri-Conferences are next week, Tuesday and Thursday evening and Friday morning! I look forward to sharing your child's successes and future goals for grade 5.

The Scholastic Book Fair returns to Linden Meadows next week also. 5E will be visiting the fair on Tuesday, Mar.3rd where the students may "window shop" to purchase things later during conference time OR they may buy the books on Tuesday afternoon as well.

Your P.A.D. cheques should be in your child's agenda, please check to see that registration fee has been reimbursed.

Our "P.A.D. Pity Party" was a hit! We watched the Disney movie "Sky High" which ties into our unit on Heroes...an action packed (yet relaxing) afternoon show!

Stay cozy and warm this weekend...and start thinking "spring thoughts" to help raise those temperatures! See you next week!

Mrs. Eby

NANCY GREENE...A TRUE HERO!

2009-02-20T16:43:00.011-06:00

Ok...I have to start this week's blog off by sharing my encounter with Nancy Greene last weekend. What a sweet and amazing woman! The timing for meeting her seemed perfect as we had celebrated the Olympic Spirit in September and now we are in the middle of our Hero unit in Language Arts. She was very obliging as I asked to have my picture taken with her (to share with you) and she even signed my ski boot!! I have an Olympic Gold medal skiier's "touch" on my boot...I'm bound for good skiing this season! I've included a link in our "Cool Websites" section if you want to learn more about her.

Here's another picture of Haleigh with Nancy! She spoke to Haleigh's ski class and then they followed her down the hill. What an experience!

Enough about Nancy Greene, I hope everyone enjoyed our second annual Family Long Weekend too! It's been a short week at school but an eventful one!

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our "Hero" unit is up and running! The students received their Literature Circle novels on Friday with much anticipation. They had several opportunities this week to read and respond to their novels. Our first Literature Circle meeting for the halfway point in the novel is TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24TH at 11:20. The students need to have read to the halfway point in their novel and have 2 responses completed for the discussion. Along with reading our Hero novels, we have been having some thoughtful and reflective class discussions about the definition of a hero and their character traits. (You can see our web of adjectives on the sidebar of the blog!) On Friday, the students began some research on our very own Canadian Heroes. The students will be asked to choose one hero next week and practice their "organized paragraph" writing skills in a brief biography of their chosen hero!

We had our FIRST T.U.S.C. meeting on Thursday! I won't say too much about it, as it is our topic of discussion from our "Blogger of the Week". Let's just say, I was really impressed. The meeting ran very smoothly (for our first one)! I think some of the students' nerves kicked in but now that they know what to expect and our T.U.S.C. targets are posted, our next meeting should be a huge hit! Our next T.U.S.C. meeting is TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24TH!

MATHEMATICS:

We've finished up our latest problem solving strategy of "Making an Organized List". The students breezed through their assessment on Wednesday. On Friday, we began reflecting on our targets regarding Problem Solving in preparation for our Tri-conferences in less than 2 weeks.

FRACTION FUN begins next week as we begin making connections to our unit on decimals and get inspired by some "hands-on" activities!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

Who were the next Europeans to make contact with North America? and...Why did they come? As we begin our unit on "The Age of Exploration", these are some of the big questions we will be tackling. We kick started the unit with a video on Wednesday and reviewed the big ideas today with some mapwork, to create a visual representation of our learning. Ask your child why nutmeg was such a sought after spice in the 1400's?

SCIENCE:

Our study of Physical Changes continued this week as we reviewed changes of state with a fun Bill Nye video! Today, the students looked at the solubility of a piece of candy into water! We learned that the rate at which it dissolves can be affected by three factors. Ask your child if they remember what those factors are! It was a yummy experiment too as everyone chowed down on an extra piece of Jolly Rancher. What a sweet class!

We are almost finished our investigation of this concept...watch for an upcoming test date to evaluate their understanding of the ideas we've covered so far.

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK:

by Brendan

Hi, I’m Brendan, the blogger of the week and I’m going to talk about yesterday's T.U.S.C. meeting. I thought the meeting went really well for our first time, about a 6 out of 10. There were some amazing speeches and the jobs were done very well. I am really looking forward to the next meeting and hope we can do even better.

Here are some questions to think about for next time:

What is your favourite job so far besides vacation?

Do you think we will do better or worse on our next TUSC meeting?

Are you looking forward to doing chairperson?

Answer the poll question on the sidebar of the blog (I made it for Mrs. Eby!).

OTHER:

Library is Thursday this week!

We only have 2 book orders for Scholastic this month so I'm extending the deadline till Monday if anyone is still interested in ordering!

Thank you to Mrs. Rappaport for her help this week with my daughter's sudden ear infection "crisis" on Wednesday.

It's D.E.A.R. week starting on Monday...have your books ready for the chime over the P.A. system to alert us to "Drop Everything And Read!"

Bingo reading cards are due on Wednesday if you want to enter the draw for some prizes!

The Canada Day poster contest deadline is fast approaching. Please have your poster ready to send off on Wednesday if you are entering the contest.

Have a terrific weekend! Happy Reading!

Mrs. Eby

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!

2009-02-12T09:49:00.005-06:00

I'm writing this week's blog on Thursday as I know tomorrow is going to be a wild and fun day! I am also spending the weekend in Assessippi (leaving at 3:30pm sharp, according to my husband!), for my 7 year old daughter's Husky Snow Star downhill ski race. It should be an amazing experience as Nancy Green herself, will be attending the race and giving pointers to our "rising Canadian ski stars"! Even I'm excited to meet a Gold winning Canadian Olympic athlete. I'll have to remember to take lots of pictures!

Enough about me...here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

All week we've been "tuning up" our public speaking skills with fun gesture drills, impromptu practice speeches and a fun tongue twizzler (twister) competition! The students are getting pretty pumped up about our first T.U.S.C. meeting on Thursday, Feb.19th! Thank you for reading through their TUSC duotangs and signing them so promptly. It's a big committment but TONS OF FUN!

Today, the students were introduced to our selection of novels for our Literature Circle on HEROES. I will be placing the students into groups and they will be receiving their novels to begin reading and responding over the "Louis Riel" long weekend. Our first halfway point literature circle meeting is TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24TH which gives the students a good head start and plenty of time to read and respond.

I love the Valentine's Book reports! The students have put in a lot of T.L.C. this month. I look forward to reading them. With Literature Circles beginning next week, the students are not required to respond in their Reading Logs for the next 2 weeks, as all of their reading and responding will be centered around their LC novel! I can hear the students cheering already!

MATHEMATICS:

With our decimals unit behind us, we have ventured into another problem solving strategy, "Using an Organized List". We are on our fourth practice problem this week, and the students seem to be catching on to the technique. It's a tricky strategy which requires some mental math skills! I would like to assess this strategy with a quiz next week...probably Thursday, Feb.19th so we can big our FRACTION FUN unit!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

We've finished off our quick study of the Viking Explorers with our quiz today! We had a lot of fun yesterday playing "Viking Jeopardy". I think I "dated myself" when so few students had ever watched Jeopardy and were unfamiliar with the game show style!

Our next focus in Canadian History is "The age of Exploration" , learning about the group of European explorers who came 400 years later to make their claim on Canadian soil!

SCIENCE:

It's been all about Physical Changes this week as we began exploring the various TYPES of physcial changes that can take place all around us. We discussed reversible and irreversible changes and the concepts of "expansion and contraction". On Tuesday, we had a blast with the physical change of "size and shape" as the students turned a regular piece of paper into a hole that they could walk through. Check out the pictures on the sidebar of the blog!!

We will continue to explore various Physical Changes next week before we begin our study of Chemical Changes!

FRENCH:

The students family trees look fantastic! I can see they have a firm grasp of the vocabulary necessary to express the different members of the family and use the correct possessive adjectives. We will be continuing with our unit of "La famille" next week as we work on our various pages to include in our final project... creating a family scrapbook!

OTHER:

We're looking forward to a fun and festive Valentine's Day celebration tomorrow! Thank you to all the parents that were able to contribute to our class party on Friday. We will be guessing the babies on Friday so your precious, adorable baby photos will be coming home soon!

The "Reading is Everywhere" bulletin board is up across from the office! There are close-up photos of different reading material that the students are trying to guess over the course of the month. Come and take a peek! Keep working on those bingo cards.

Super Lunch was a great success today. Thank you to our parent volunteers who were able to supervise over the lunch hour (very much appreciated!).

Tri-conferences are coming up! Please submit your preferences for appointment times as soon as possible as our secretary begins filling in the slots as they come in!

LOUIS RIEL DAY! - February 16th NO SCHOOL! Have a fun, family weekend!
New Scholastic Book Orders went home today! They are due by FRIDAY, FEB.20th!
Next Library period to renew or return books is Wednesday, Feb.18th!

I hope you survived our slippery week. Enjoy the long weekend! I'll see the students on Wednesday!!! (It's my "dayoff" on Tuesday...lucky me!)

Mrs. Eby

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK!

2009-02-07T11:05:00.002-06:00

It's never too late to feature our "Blogger of the Week" portion of the 5E blog...

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK

By: Sarah St.

Hi! I’m Sarah St., your “Blogger of the week”.

This week Mrs. Eby introduced T.U.S.C. I think T.U.S.C. is a fun and interactive way to learn good public speaking skills. It also helps with writing paragraphs which is useful in all subjects. The first T.U.S.C. meeting is on Thursday, February 19. I am excited about my role as scientist. I hope most people are happy with their jobs, but if not don’t worry we switch frequently! I like the way T.U.S.C. makes you think because there are lots of different categories with some subjects you might not normally write about.

In conclusion, I think that T.U.S.C. will be a unique and fun experience!

FEBRUARY FOLLIES BEGIN!

2009-02-06T09:32:00.005-06:00

YEAHHH! It's finally warming up! Let's hope this weather trend continues for awhile at least, so our students can get some vitamin D from the sun and get outside! Meanwhile in the classroom, it's been an exciting week as the students finally learned about T.U.S.C. (our new ELA program) and actually started practicing some public speaking skills.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

As previously mentioned, the students were introduced to our T.U.S.C program, The Ultimate Speaking Club. We started off brainstorming all the DO'S and DONT'S of public speaking to see how much they already knew about being an effective public speaker. Needless to say, they were right on top of everything! It took us almost the whole week, but we finally read through the entire T.U.S.C. package, so the students are well-informed about all the different roles they will be preparing over the next five months of school. I have asked the students to take home their duotangs to share with you this weekend. Please sign the first page to indicate that you have previewed the contents and understand how the program works. If you have any further questions, please feel free to give me a phone call or e-mail. Our FIRST T.U.S.C. meeting is Thursday, February 19th, so they have plenty of time to prepare for their first role! After that, we will have be having a T.U.S.C. meeting every Day 2 and Day 5 of the school day cycle. I sent home a new timetable for Feb - June that includes when we will be having TUSC meetings so you can help keep your child on track! There is very little time alotted for the students to prepare for TUSC at school, this is more of an ongoing homework responsibility. Having said that, many of the roles do NOT require that much preparation. It all depends on the 'role description' and the ingenuity and ambition of your child!

Next week we will be doing several mini-lessons to help us prepare effective speeches as well as learning how to deliver an engaging speech.

With "I love to Read" month, I thought it was time for a new Literature Circle to begin...our theme this round is HEROES! Each novel will have a main character that portrays the characteristics of a true hero in some form or another. As of right now, I have 3 volunteers for Literature Circles (Rachel &Julia's mom, Laura's mom and Ryan's mom). If I've missed someone who would like to volunteer, please send me an e-mail or a note in your child's agenda! The dates for our meetings will be Tues. Feb.24th at 11:15-12:00 and Tues. Mar.3rd at the same time (these times are somewhat flexible if you have a conflict but would still like to join us for LC). The students will be receiving their books at the end of next week!

One final reminder...Jan/Feb Valentine's book reports are due FRIDAY, FEB..13TH! There will be no book report for Feb. since we are doing Literature Circles.

MATHEMATICS:

I am so amazed at how well the class picked up the concept of decimals. They worked hard this week working on some money problems as well as reviewing their learning through several practice questions. OUR BIG UNIT TEST IS ON MONDAY, FEB.9TH! I have sent home one final review sheet if any of the students wanted to keep up their skills over the weekend before the test (this was an optional homework lesson).

Our next unit ties into decimals quite nicely...FRACTION FUN! However, before we start our next unit, we are going to return to our list of problem solving strategies and spend some time learning about the strategy of "Organizing a List". This type of problem is a little more challenging than our last two strategies so we will be practicing several problems over the next week in Math class.

SOCIAL STUDIES:

We've learned a lot about the Vikings' role in Canadian history of the past two weeks. Next week we will be finishing up our study of the Vikings in Canada and preparing for a quiz to assess our understanding of their impact on Canadian history. I've included a fun game to play to review their knowledge of Vikings, the link is on the sidebar of the blog under "Cool Websites". Have fun playing...can you win the million dollars?

SCIENCE:

We wrapped up our understanding of Physical Properties this week by creating a Pictionary page of all the concepts we had learned during our hands on experiments! On Friday, the students were introduced to the concept of Physical Changes and we brainstormed several physical changes that take place around us everyday! Ask your child the definition of a Physical Change and try to come up with some that are found around your home!

FRENCH:

Our "Souvenirs de la Famille" unit is well underway. The students have been learning the names of the different members of a family and how to write the correct possessive adjective for the different words (ex. ma soeur= my sister, mon frere=my brother). We've started an assignment to create a MODIFIED family tree to practice the vocabulary and correct use of the possessive adjectives. As many of the students have very LARGE families, I've asked the students to just choose one side of the family to include in their family trees. (Not an easy thing to ask as you can tell the students love their families and want to include everyone!!!) The students have been asked to complete their rough copies by Monday so they can begin their good copies next week.

ART:

The students enjoyed their first Art class with Mrs. Van Nice on Wednesday. For many of them it was their first time in the Art room at Linden Meadows...very exciting! They are learning how to write using Calligraphy.

OTHER:

I hope you have received my note regarding Valentine's Day celebrations in 5E. Just to remind you, our "party" will be taking place after recess in the afternoon in case you have volunteered to bring in a treat for the class.

Library books are due for renewal or return on Monday, Feb.9th

It's Louis Riel Day on Tuesday, Feb.16th (No school)!

Super Lunch is next week on Thursday, Feb.12th.

With "I love to Read" month, the students received a pink BINGO sheet that is an optional activity to do at home. If they DO finish the activities and get it signed by their parents, they can enter their completed sheet in a draw to win some great book prizes from Mrs. Husack in the library. (I have lots of extras if someone has lost theirs already!)

Have a fabulous weekend! Thank you for returning the report card envelopes and comment sheets so promptly. 5E is an intelligent, motivated group of learners! I'm having a fabulous year teaching and learning with them. Thank you for your continued support in your child's growth and educational experience.

Mrs. Eby

OOPS!!

2009-01-30T18:07:00.002-06:00

I had a little technical error today. I posted the blog before I was finished it. Please click on the highlighted link "What's up in 5E?" at the bottom of this message to see the FULL and COMPLETE blog entry for this week at the actual blog site.
Thank you.
Mrs. Eby

REPORT CARDS...AT LAST!

2009-01-30T11:46:00.012-06:00

The excitement was building this week as Report Card Day drew closer and closer! With our new system of two report cards and three conferences, January does seem like a long time to wait to see your child's progress on paper (I know...I was anxiously awaiting my 7 years old daughter's report from grade 2!). I hope it was worth the wait! We have a very hardworking class that knows how to set goals and reflect on their learning!

So what have we been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

It was our final week of Van Allsburg stories. Not only were we reading and inferencing this week, but we were doing some creative writing! The students are working on creating a sequel to TWO BAD ANTS and this time their adventures take them into a school. Next week, I am hoping to integrate more technology and put them into a Photostory to produce a mini-movie! I've asked the students to finish their pictures for homework so we can scan them into the computers on Monday.

We also read Jumanji and the students were asked to write another page for the book. They had a lot of fun imagining themselves in the story and using descriptive language to write about the next daring "roll in the game". To celebrate the end of our unit, we watched the family movie "Jumanji " that stars Robin Williams Friday afternoon. It was interesting to compare the movie to the book...quite different!

Just a reminder, the January/February book reports are due on Friday, February 13th! Keep reading and feel free to start working on your rough copies in your Language Arts duotangs. I actually have received 2 finished ones already!!

Next week we begin our "Mini Unit on Public Speaking" to prepare us for T.U.S.C.! The students have been anxiously waiting for me to introduce and begin our T.U.S.C. program. If you are not already aware, T.U.S.C. stands for The Ultimate Speaking Club! It is a large part of our Language Arts program which encompasses 4 of the 6 strands in the ELA curriculum; writing, speaking, listening and presenting! Before the students begin actually preparing and writing speeches, we will be covering some of the basic skills involved in writing and delivering an effective speech.

MATHEMATICS:
Our focus this week has been on adding and subtracting decimals. The students have had to review their previous knowledge about regrouping and borrowing when adding or subtracting large numbers as well as the added component of "lining up the decimals" before calculating the answer. Next week we will be doing some problem solving that covers the relationship between decimals and money. The students will be receiving a review package for the final unit test on Wednesday which we will correct on Thursday! The final test on decimals will be MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9TH!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
It's been a fun week learning about the first European contact to North America...no, it was not Christopher Columbus but the Vikings!! We saw a cool movie where an actor played Leif Erikkson and retold his story of discovering the New World. We also visited an interesting website to learn more about the National Historic site of L'anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland where the Vikings actually settled in the 11th century.

SCIENCE:
This week the students finished up their "Stickability" experiment with glue. Ask your child which glue has the strongest property of "stickability"! As we went through this experiment, the students learned about how to correctly write a science experiment. We reviewed these steps on Wednesday as we experimented as a class with the property of buoyancy.
Next week we will be finishing up our exploration of properties of matter and have our first peek at Physical Changes!

FRENCH:
Our unit on "La Famille" has finally begun! The students created pictographs of their family members and labelled them in French. We discussed different items that could be found in a family album as the final project for this unit will be to create their own personal Family Scrapbook en francais!

ART:
In our final class of Art (in the classroom), the students began designing a poster for the Canada Day Challenge. I have made the completion of these posters optional. If the students are interested in entering, they must have their posters completed and ready to be mailed by February 25th. Mrs. Hillman is sending out a school mailing of all the students' posters who would like to be entered in the contest. The winning poster for the country will receive 4 tickets to the Winter Olympics 2010 in Vancouver!!!!

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK:

by Rachel

Hi my name is Rachel. I am the blogger of the week.
I am going to quiz you on your favourite thing going on in 5E.

My answers:
What do you like better?
Gym Music
Music

What do you like better?
Social Studies Social Studies
Science

What do you like better?
Out door recess in the winter In Door
In door recess in the winter

What do you like better?
Pen Pen
Pencil

What do you like better?
Math Math
French

To send us your answer, click on the word "comments" at the bottom of the blog and fill in your answer with only your first name and hit "Publish comment".

OTHER:

Thank you for the baby photos! It's a fun activity for Valentine's Day and it represents a physical change to go from a baby to an adult (as well as making us "une famille"!)

Please return the report card envelopes with the blue letters signed, as well as the letter regarding Family Life instruction signed as soon as possible.

Have a great weekend...did I hear it's supposed to rain on Saturday?

Mrs. Eby

MUSEUMS, MUNCHIES AND MORE!

2009-01-23T17:26:00.004-06:00

What a fun week!!! The students should sleep well this weekend with all the activity happening in 5E this week! I want to start by thanking all the parents that were able to attend our Aboriginal Museum Exhibit. The students were very proud of their hard work and happy to celebrate the end of a unit by sharing their new found knowledge with you...their biggest fans! For those of you who would have loved to be there but not able to attend, I have taken pictures of their projects and posted them to the blog (so please click the link at the bottom of this message to check out the actual blog!)

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

We're still having fun reading, interpreting and solving the mysteries of Chris Van Allsburg. As we read the books together, the students have been learning about a reading strategy called "inferencing". Ask your child what that means! We only have a few more books left before we begin our next Literature Circle unit. The theme of our next round of Literature Circle novels is "HEROES". If you are interested in being a volunteer for our second round in February, please send me an e-mail and I'll put you on my list. (I don't have any exact dates to offer just yet but I'll be sure to let you know by next Friday.) The students have also noticed my 'TUSC is coming soon' poster in the classroom. This will be an addition to our Language Arts program starting up next month...watch for more news in our next blog!

The students should all be reading a book of choice for our FEBRUARY book report which is due on Friday, Feb.13th. They have been asked to write me a Valentine letter describing their book's story elements with a short personal response! I love the creativity and TLC the students have been putting into their book reports to make them stand out.

MATHEMATICS:

The students are really catching on to our unit on Decimals! We've finished up comparing and ordering decimals this week. I've introduced the "thousandths" place to our place value chart. With the new Math curriculum this year, the outcomes have changed slightly to include the "thousandths" place and omit rounding. Since I had already included rounding in their booklets, many of the students have been encouraged to go ahead and practice this skill (although they will not be assessed on rounding.) A great opportunity for enrichment for some of our keen Math students! Next week we will also be covering adding and subtracting of decimals, which will bring us to the end of this unit and yes, you guessed it!...another test! A review package will be coming home near the end of next week with our unit test in the first week of February. Watch your child's agenda for an exact date!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

What more can I say! The students did a fabulous job on their projects! Many skills and targets have been reached in the creation of these amazing exhibits...researching strategies, paragraph writing skills, teamwork dynamics, public speaking AND baking skills!!! Today the students were given an opportunity to reflect on their learning and the whole project experience. I'll let our "Blogger of the Week" share her thoughts on the Bannock-making experience Thursday morning.

So who discovered this land of diverse aboriginal people first? That is our next leap into Canadian history!

SCIENCE:

With our focus on our museum projects this week, we didn't get very much Science covered. It did get a little sticky Friday afternoon, as we explored the physical properties of 3 different types of glue. We are testing the property of 'stickability' by glueing two popsicle sticks together using 3 different types of glue. Watch for the results on Monday to find out which glue is the strongest!

ART:

As many of you saw at our Museum Exhibit, this week the students created imitation soapstone carvings like the Inuit people carve, but by using an air dry type clay. The northern lights backdrops made of chalk pastel really made a colorful and striking backdrop for their sculptures. Next week will be our last week doing Art in the classroom, beginning in February the students will be receiving art instruction from Mrs. Van Nice, the art specialist in our school. I'll miss teaching Art but you can be sure it will be integrated into the other core subject areas.

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK:

Hi! My name is Maddy! I’m the Blogger of the Week.
On Thursday everybody made bannock. Bannock comes from the Plains people. All the parents and classes that came got to try a piece. When we got to the Foods Lab, the teacher told us how to do the recipe then we got started. Each group got a kitchen. Once we got our aprons on and got in our kitchen, one person from the pair of 2 got all the ingredients into one bowl, while the other person was getting the butter melted and greased the pan. We mixed all the ingredients together and mixed for a while. After that, we put it in a pan and cooked it. It took a long time to cook so we had to wait until after lunch. After our presentation, the parents and children were able to eat some. The bannock was Delicious! If I was to rate making the bannock I would give it 10 out of 10!!!!!! I would like to go in the foods lab again because we usually don’t cook food in the foods lab. The foods lab was a lot of fun!!

OTHER:

Library is on Friday, Jan. 30th

Scholastic Book Orders (Feb.) are due Jan.30th

Thanks for a great week and all your continued support of your child's education...it makes my job very rewarding and a lot of fun!

It seems we're in for another cold snap...bundle up!

Mrs. Eby

"COATS ON CHAIRS, AGAIN!!!!"

2009-01-16T10:00:00.006-06:00

I hope everyone is enjoying a relaxing long weekend!
Coping with this freezing cold weather, I've tried to keep everyone distracted and busy by finishing up projects/assignments and planning for our big Social Studies Museum Gallery event. Thank you for your support this past week as many assessment opportunities presented themselves in preparation for me to write report cards on Friday.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our focus this week has been on a new Language Arts target for 5E...learning how to write an organized paragraph that includes an introductory sentence, several supporting sentences and an effective concluding sentence. As Ryan pointed out yesterday, "Hey, this is going to help us write our paragraphs for our S.S. projects, Mrs. Eby!" I love it when the students have me all figured out!! He was absolutely correct. Not only are we practicing writing well-organized paragraphs for LA assignments but also to use throughout the core subject areas.

Our Van Allsburg book this week was called "Ben's Dream". The character is transported to various famous landmarks around the world in his dream. Each student chose one of the 10 landmarks Ben visited to research and will eventually write a PARAGRAPH on the information they discovered! We've completed the research already and will be writing our paragraphs next week.

A big OOPS on my part this week, I completely forgot to hand out the new book report assignments that I had promised in the blog posting last week. (They've been sitting on my desk all week!) I will definitely have those in your students' hands on Monday! The due date for the assignment will not be until Valentine's Day so there is still plenty of time. Just keep reading!

The students have begun using their new Reading Log format this week. On Monday, I will be checking everyone's reading log entries to ensure they have read consistenly for the week and have written ONE big response for the week.

MATHEMATICS:

We've been cruising through our decimal unit this week! The students are catching on very quickly as we practice reading, writing and representing various decimal numbers to the hundredths place. We've been working with number lines this week and comparing the value of decimal numbers using "greater than" and "less than" symbols.

Next week the students will be adding the "thousandths" place to their understanding of decimals and how to add and subtract with decimal numbers!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

OK folks...this is it! We've finally come to the end of our research of the aboriginal peoples of Canada. The students have finished up their paragraphs and will be putting them together on their groups display board next week. We are aiming to present our projects in our Museum Gallery Exhibit on Thursday, January 22nd in the afternoon. We will be setting up our classroom like a museum to display our project work and artifacts to share with other classes in the school and open it up to you, the parents as well. I will work on creating a schedule for the afternoon and will be sure to send home a more detailed time for your visit, early on in the week.

Once we have completed this unit, the students will begin to learn about the next group of people who made North America (particularly Canada) their home!

SCIENCE:

This week started off on Monday with our Mystery Powders experiment! The students continued to investigate the characteristics and properties of a substance by using their senses to try and identify 6 similar yet uniquely different powdery like substances. The addition of water and vinegar definitely helped to identify two of our mystery powders!

Ask your child how to identify baking soda without tasting it?

Next week we will have some fun learning about the property of "stickability" (is that a real word?) and how to write an effective scientific experiment.

FRENCH:

The students handed in their "Super Sandwich" recipes on Thursday! They look scrumptious and nutritious! We are winding up this unit with a quiz on Monday, January 19th. The students worked on their review on Friday and have been asked to practice their vocabulary sheets and the review package over the weekend to prepare for the quiz.

Our next unit in French centers around the theme of "La Famille"!

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK

by: Mitchell

I’m Mitchell, the Blogger of the Week. I am going to talk about the book I am reading. I recommend The Birchbark House series #1 and #2 because they have sad parts, humorous parts, action and even happy moments. I recommend them also because they are a nice length and have the perfect font size. The book is about a aboriginal girl named Omakayas and her family. The plot of the story involves many things I can’t name all at once. The book goes in seasons: summer, fall, winter and spring. My favourite is winter because very, very sad parts happen. Omakayas has a very emotional life in the book for sure. Right now I’m reading book #2, The Game of Silence. It is about new puppies, a new brother and a war. To find out more you’re going to have to read the book! In conclusion it’s a great series for all ages to read.

OTHER:

Physical Activity Day packages went home this Friday for you to review with your child to decide which of the options your child would like to participate on Friday, February 27th. Registration is Friday, January 23rd...please do not hand in your registration or cheque until that day! If you have any further questions, please call/e-mailMr. Babiuk at the school.

Report Cards go home Friday, January 29th!

Thank you Mrs. Beazley and Mrs. Meyer for a great Super Lunch on Thursday

Stay warm and toasty...hopefully that thermometer will be making a rise this weekend

Mrs. Eby

THE HOCKEY SWEATER

2009-01-09T17:36:00.004-06:00

In Language Arts class today, the students wrote their Story Elements Quiz to assess their understanding and ability to identify the elements within a story. For the quiz, the students were asked to silently read a short story. I gave them a copy of The Hockey Sweater written by Roch Carrier ( a very famous French Canadian author). It's a classic and beloved tale of Roch's childhood and the passion that French-Canadian's have for the sport of hockey and particularly their obsession with the Montreal Canadians.
I found the animated film on Youtube, that is told by Roch Carrier himself (cute Francophone accent and all).
Enjoy!

HAPPY NEW YEAR and WELCOME BACK!

2009-01-09T09:48:00.010-06:00

I can't believe we've only been back for one week! I feel like we never left!! The students are amazing! They are back on track and working as hard as ever. We've started a few new units and are feverishly working to finishing up some units we were learning about in 2008.
We have a new "feature item" on our blog this year, the students will be taking turns each week to be "THE BLOGGER OF THE WEEK". They will select an idea, topic or fun classroom activity to write about and share with YOU, my blog readers! Marissa has enthusiastically asked to write the first "edition".
With report card writing day just around the corner, the students will notice a few brief assessment opportunities over the next couple of weeks.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our author study of Chris Van Allsburg has really opened the eyes of the students regarding picture books...they are not just little kids anymore! They are sinking their teeth into his mysterious and message-filled storylines and powerful illustrations. At the same time, we are practicing (as a class) more advanced reading strategies such as "inferencing", "predicting" and "synthesizing"... and still enjoying a great story!

To get the students actively reading again, they will be assigned a book report for the month but it will not be due until February 14th (coincidence? I think not!). The book report will have the students writing ME a Valentine's Day letter about their book. Further details and an outline of the assignment will be coming on Monday.

I have also "redesigned" the students READING LOG sheets so they will only be required to write ONE weekly response instead of a short one everyday! These sheets will also be available and handed out to the students on Monday. I will be checking their Reading Log sheets on a weekly basis every Monday morning starting January 19th.

MATHEMATICS:

We've started our unit on Decimals! For a fun introduction, I had the students draw pictures of things that were less than a whole object (in other words, "less than one" like a decimal number). We continued learning about decimals and the place values they hold (ie. tenths, hundredths and thousandths) and how to properly read a decimal number!

Ask your child how to read this number: 2.36 ?

SOCIAL STUDIES:

Finally!!!! We've completed our research of the different cultural elements of our Aboriginal groups. Next week we will be working on how to write an "Expository Paragraph" by putting our research notes into a legible paragraph. Hopefully, by the next week we will begin assembling our museum display boards and creating our "authentic" artifacts for display.

SCIENCE:

We're off to a running start with our unit on the Physical Properties and Changes of a Substance. We started the unit with a fun Safari hunt in the classroom, observing the different characteristics and properties of "substances". On Wednesday, we learned how we use our 5 senses to identify the properties and characteristics of objects. To test their knowledge and various senses, we played a game of guess the substance. The students were only allowed to use one sense at a time for the 5 substances I presented to them! Have you ever tried chocolate covered banana chips?

Next week, we will continue exploring physical properties with more hands-on activities. I am planning an experiment for Monday that requires at least 5 empty egg cartons. If you have an empty one at home (preferably NOT plastic) that your child could bring to school on Monday, that would be fantastic!

FRENCH:

Our Nutrition unit is back on track! This week we learned 5 essential verbs to use when preparing a recipe...PLACER, COUPER, ETALER, MELANGER et AJOUTER! Ask your child to show you the actions for each of the verbs! Our final assignment for this unit is to write a recipe for "Le Super Sandwich". We started our rough copies today. They are sounding quite unique and creative. Next week, we will type those up in the computer lab and draw delicious looking pictures to go with them! As this unit winds up, watch for a review package going home, as the students will be assessed on their understanding of the concepts taught in this unit!

ART:

The students were anxious to art this morning and they weren't disappointed!! To integrate with our Aboriginal studies, the students learned and practiced techniques used by the Northwest Coast natives. They followed an experienced artist on an Arts Attack DVD that walked them through the steps to their final creation! I've posted an example on the blog to show how bright and colorful they turned out (and that was the practice round!). We will be trying this technique one more time except this time the students can choose their own Pacific northwest coast animal to depict in their artwork!

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK:

by Marissa

Let’s Stay Healthy

As Blogger of the Week I found some great tips and am going to share some with you. I knew that staying active is only one way to stay healthy, eating healthy is also important. Now one of the things that I don’t like about winter is that it is always so annoyingly cold!!

5 facts that I found most interesting were…
1. Only 1/2 of boys and 2/3 of girls eat fruit five days a week or more.
2. One in two grade 10 girls are on a diet or think they need to lose weight.
3. 50% of boys and girls are not drinking enough milk.
4. In the last twenty years, intake of soft drinks has more than doubled.
5. Food is the most advertised product to children on TV. There are almost no ads for fruit and vegetables, milk, or whole grain products.

4 of the Benefits of Healthy Eating are...
1. Healthy eating helps kids grow, develop, and do well in school.
2. Eating breakfast improves kids’ memory, concentration levels, problem-solving abilities, and creative thinking.
3. Healthy meals helps children be more settled, attentive, and ready to learn.
4. Healthy eating helps prevents kids from many horrible sicknesses and diseases.

I think that these are 15 good ways and reasons to be active and feel super!:
1.Have fun
2.Be fit
3.Have energy
4.Boost confidence
5.Prevent illnesses
6.Have fun with friends
7.Build a healthy body!!!
8.Live a longer life span
9.Shovel snow
10.Dance, skip, play catch, shoot hoops, swim, etc (join a community activity).
11.Play outdoors.
12.Leave the car at home when you can, walk, bike, scooter, roller blade, etc.
13.Challenge yourself to learn a new activity that you have never done before.
14.Organize neighbourhood, friend, party or family game. .
15.Feel alive!

Let’s Go Outside!!
When you go outside, please bundle up in scarves, hats, mitts, boots, coats, ski pants, etc. so that you do not get sick. If you are going skating, those can also act as padding when you fall!!! There are lots of fun things that you can do this chilly winter season like hockey, skating, build a fort, snowman building, etc.

Some of the websites that were helpful and that I looked up for tips on staying healthy were… http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthyschools/
http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthyschools/issues/index.html
http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthyschools/issues/nutrition.html
http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthyschools/issues/physical.html

(Thank you, Marissa, that was very informative with some great suggestions!)

OTHER

No school on Friday, January 16th for Report Card Writing

Scholastic Book Orders in 5E are due on Monday

Super Lunch is Thursday, January 15th!

5E Library Books due back on Tuesday, January 13th

Have a great weekend...I hope it warms up so the kids can get outside (as Marissa suggests!)!

Mrs. Eby

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

2008-12-20T11:16:00.003-06:00

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

2008-12-12T16:30:00.003-06:00

It's been a festive week in 5E with a wonderful Holiday Concert on Wednesday and our field trip to the MTYP for a great performance of "A Year of Frog and Toad"!
We're trying to wind down the year by finishing up some units in the different subject areas, but many will be continuing into the new year!
So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:
Voicethreads, Voicethreads, Voicethreads...the students are so anxious to get started! We've completed all the preliminary work so we should be ready to record on Monday. I've booked out our computer lab for almost 3- 40 minute periods so I hope we get finished too. The students wrote some terrific scripts, rehearsed them and downloaded pictures from the creativecommons site off the internet that represented their story element. We're ready to roll!
Our final book report for 2008 is due on Thursday, December 18th. A few students have already handed them in (take a look at the sidebar of the blog to see some examples of their Holiday cards!).
In the New Year we will be doing an author study of Chris Van Allsburg. He's best known for his picture books of The Polar Express, Jumanji and Zathura but he's written many, many others which are actually geared for older students. They make the reader "think" and make inferences as they are reading. I'm hoping to read the Polar Express before Christmas as we will be viewing the movie Friday afternoon as our end of year celebration. It's a great movie!
Check out this youtube preview!

MATHEMATICS:
Our unit on Number Sense has finally come to an end! The students have been working on estimation, greater than and less than, ordering numbers and rounding over the past month. We corrected the review package on Thursday and everybody seems ready for our quiz on Monday. Keep practicing this weekend!
For the last week of school we are going to tackle another strategy of Problem Solving called "Act it Out/Use objects". It's a fun and easy strategy that the students will actually enjoy amidst the hustle and bustle of the last week before holidays!
We'll be starting off the New Year learning about DECIMALS! It's a nice transition from Number Sense as we explore place value to the right side of the "ones" place!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
Our research of the different Aboriginal groups is coming along nicely. The students have been using books primarily as their source of information. This past week I introduced them to two different sites on the internet with loads of information www.firstpeoplesofcanada.com and www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com . This unit will definitely be continuing into January!

SCIENCE:
With the digestive system "under our belts" (no pun intended...teehee!), the students have selected an organ/part of the body for their mini-research assignment. For this project, the students have been using World Book online, Ask Jeeves and kidshealth.com as their sources of information. They are collecting their data and organizing it using a Concept Frame. The final assignment is being written out as a "What am I?" riddle for the class (or perhaps another class) to solve. We will be finishing these up in class this week. The students have been given a rubric to follow for the assessment of this assignment in their Science Duotang.
In January, we will be starting a new unit involving "Physical and Chemical Changes". The students will be learning more about the scientific process, how to write up a proper experiment and the basic elements of chemistry (oops, I made a pun again!).

FRENCH:
Our French unit on Nutrition has been slow going. We'll definitely speed things up in the New Year! The students have been learning how to express a preference for their favorite snack by using "Il prefere..." or "Elle prefere..." as well as the expressions "C'est nutritif!" or "Ce n'est pas nutritif!". Ask your child what that means.

OTHER:

Library is on Monday...don't forget your books!
Our Snowman Craft is on Thursday (Art day)! Remember to bring in one clean, white sport sock and 1 cup of rice for the craft.
Friday is our Secret Santa day! Please wrap and label your present with your Secret Santa name but not your name. Sign the card "From your SS" or something like that, as well as providing a short riddle for your SS to try and guess who you are! (Remember to keep your gift around $5.)
Thank you for your donations to the mitten tree and our cereal box drive this past week!
Let's have a "kind and helpful" week as we ring out a TERRIFIC four months of grade 5!

It's been snowing again! Enjoy that fresh snowfall and all your Holiday parties this weekend!

Mrs. Eby

LET IT SNOW! LET IT SNOW! LET IT SNOW!

2008-12-05T13:09:00.007-06:00

What a blizzardy, snowy day today! Time to wax those toboggans and skis and hit the slopes...wait not yet...we've got two more weeks of school!

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

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CLASS!

2008-11-30T18:56:00.004-06:00

Check out the students' self portraits!

FRIENDS, FUN AND ...FLAGS?

2008-11-28T16:53:00.003-06:00

It astounds me how much we can get done in just 4 days of school!

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

AN "INSPIRING" WEEK IN THE COMPUTER LAB!

2008-11-21T11:03:00.007-06:00

Oh the weather outside is frightful...but the classroom is so delightful! (You know the tune!)
Ok... so that was VERY CHEESY but I got your attention! And yes, it has been a fun week of activities and learning in 5E as we've spent several periods in the computer lab finishing up our final work on the Birchbark House!
So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:

The students have had a blast this week working on their webs that reflect the important events in Omakaya's life from our novel study of The Birchbark House. The Inspiration software is an excellent tool to allow the students some creativity and help them organize their thoughts. I am going to assess them and have them on display in the classroom. I've asked the students to take home their Birchbark House novel study booklets this weekend to "finish up" any incomplete pictures, questions or responses before submitting them to me on Monday for a final assessment.

Today, the student's received their Literature Circle novels. All the novels are realistic fiction with the theme of Friendship in the storyline. As the students are reading and responding in class (AND HOME), we will also be doing other activities in Language Arts class that deal with friendship and the story elements. For Literature Circle novels, the students are required to respond 4 times throughout the novel, at the 1/4 mark, 1/2 point, 3/4 mark and finally at the end. Their first deadline is MONDAY, DECEMBER 1ST, they will need to have completed TWO responses and finished reading to the halfway point in their book. On Monday, they will be meeting with their group and their parent volunteer (or teacher) to have a "lively" discussion about the book (share their responses, ask questions, give their opinions, etc.) up to the 1/2 way point. The students seemed very excited as they dove into their books!

MATHEMATICS:

For the past few weeks we've beens studying Number Sense by reading, writing and representing large numbers to 999 999 in several different ways. To assess their understanding of these concepts thus far, there will be a quiz on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH! I have given the students a review today which we worked on (a bit) in class and they can finish over the weekend. On Monday we will correct the review to ensure everyone is prepared for the quiz on Tuesday. After the quiz we will finish off the unit looking at ordering, comparing, rounding and estimating with numbers to 999 999!

Just a reminder that their "At home Multiplication booklets" are due on THURSDAY, NOV.28TH as we will be having another quick assessment at the end of the month to check on their progress towards our ultimate target of multiplication mastery!

SOCIAL STUDIES:

Our review of the Six main physical regions of Canada was completed this week with a "Sort and Predict" activity of the features that make up each of the six regions. We also watched a short video that reinforced the characteristics of each of these regions.

Today, we began looking at where the First Nations people settled in Canada and how they correspond to the different physical regions. We identified the names of the different Native groups and where they are located in Canada on a map.

SCIENCE:

We've been "digesting" a lot of new information this week as we've begun to explore the Digestive System! (teehee) The students have been introduced to all the major organs involved in the digestive process through a maze activity and we enjoyed a funny Bill Nye video that helped reinforce what we've been learning. Yesterday, the students began a hands-on activity putting the parts of the digestive system together with a partner. Today they completed them! You'll notice pictures of the students working on them on the sidebar of the blog (Faces have been turned away to protect their identity)! We will continue to study the digestive system next week and wind it up shortly with a quiz near the beginning of December.

FRENCH:

Everyone did very well on their "A l'ecole" quizzes this week! Thank you for returning their quizzes signed so promptly. Next week we will be starting our unit "Bonne Nutrition, Bonne Collation"!

ART:

Our Self Portraits are complete! We are such a beautiful class (I'm biased though...I luv'em!) They scanned them into the computers today so we can use them in the future for Web based projects.

We've been asked as a class to create something for the front bulletin board to promote our Christmas Concert "Home for the Holidays", so that will be our next big project! (The classroom was a buzz today with the excitement and nerves for auditions that took place at lunchtime.)

OTHER:

MTYP permission slips and money are due as soon as possible. Thank you!

November 28th is S.A.G. In-service for the teachers ...NO SCHOOL!

I can tell from the students' journals on Mondays that weekends in Lindenwoods are busy with basketball, hockey, gymnastics, dancing and spending time with family! Have a fun weekend!

Mrs. Eby

WRAPPING IT UP AND STARTING SOMETHING NEW!

2008-11-14T19:33:00.003-06:00

This is the first time since I started teaching 15 years ago, that I have missed a Remembrance Day Assembly. It seemed really strange! I heard the students and staff of LM did a tremendous job to show respect and remembrance for our fallen soldiers, veterans and peacekeepers of today. The poppy display at the entrance of the school is very striking!
With Remembrance Day on a Tuesday, it's been another short week, so I'm going to do my best in this blog post to keep it short too. I tend to ramble on a bit sometimes!
So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:
WE DID IT!!! We finally finished "The Birchbark House". The students seemed to really enjoy the novel and are looking forward to hearing the sequel. I've had a request to read it aloud instead of Phantom Tollbooth (my old classic favorite doesn't seem to be going over as well as I'd hoped for everybody!). Next week I have booked out several class periods in the Computer Lab for our final project of "The Birchbark House". In the past the students have created timeline's of Omakaya's life on big graph paper...with my new passion in technology, I've revamped the project to have the students creating a web of her life using Inspiration software. They had a chance to practice using this tool in their Computer Applications class with Mrs. Meen this week. If you are interested in playing with this type of software at home this weekend, there is almost an identical program on the web called WEBSPIRATION. I have included it in the links list in the sidebar of the blog. (Don't be deterred by the need for a username or password, this is common practice for all web applications...perfectly harmless.)
Once our webs are completed, we will begin our Literature Circle study. I have recruited 3 volunteer parents so far! If you are also interested in joining a group of students to discuss and read a novel that would be terrific. Your only requirement is to read the novel and come to two -40 minute discussions (with your selected group members who have all read the same book); once at the halfway point in the novel and one more time at the end of the novel. It's a lot of fun and the students love having parents to share in their learning! Our first meeting would probably be Dec. 1st and the second one on Dec.8th...check your calendars and send me an e-mail if you are available (or if you would like to join us next time!).

MATHEMATICS:
Our main focus this week was mastering our first problem solving strategy of "Making a Table". The students really seem to have a good handle on this strategy as their quizzes are coming home this weekend to show you their latest accomplishment! We returned to our studies of place value with a fun game today. The students were challenged to "beat the teacher" and create a number higher than mine. (I'll let them tell you all the details!)
Just a reminder that the "At home Multiplication" booklets are due at the end of the month (November 28th). I heard a great tip from a student today. She mentioned that her mom had taped her flashcards to the wall and every time she walked by she had to read out her facts! What a unique strategy!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
Our first S.S. quiz last week demonstrated a strong and determined class of learners!
We have begun to look at the question: "How did the location of the aboriginal people of Canada affect how they were able to survive off the land?" In order to really understand and interpret this question, we are doing a brief review of the 6 physical regions of Canada and identifying the different resources and climates that make up these regions.

SCIENCE:
The students appeared very prepared for their Nutrition test this Thursday, as you'll see by their assessment results coming home this weekend. It was also a great opportunity to talk about test writing skills and how to ensure you are completing the test to the best of your ability.
The students seem pretty excited to be learning about their Digestive System. After the test on Thursday, the students were asked to create their title page for this unit by drawing an "x-ray" picture of their digestive systems (how they think it looks BEFORE the unit begins). The title pages are due for Monday, Nov. 17th.

FRENCH:
Our "Back to School" unit is also finally complete. The students have received a review for their first French quiz on Wednesday, Nov. 19th. Most of the students have completed the review but they have been asked to take home their duotangs to study this weekend. We will be going over the answers to the review on Monday and reinforcing some of the key points for the quiz.
To tie into our new knowledge about healthy eating, our next unit in French is called "Bonne Nutrition, Bonne Collation" (Good Nutrition, Good Snacking!). It's a fun unit learning new food vocabulary and other relevant French phrases!

ART:
Our self-portraits are almost complete! The students finished their final sketches and have begun coloring their "good copies". I hope to create another slideshow of our artists' self-portraits to see if you can identify your bundle of joy!

OTHER:

The final Scholastic book orders (before X-mas) are due Thursday, Nov. 20th!
Library is Wednesday, Nov.19th
Running Club has started for all students every Tuesday and Thursday mornings beginning promptly at 8:00am
Physical Activity Lunches have also begun...grade 5 students have the gym to play organized games at 12:25 every Tuesday!
Holiday Concert auditions for gr.5 speaking parts begin this Friday at 12:25 in the music room

We have a full week of school next week...rest up this weekend and enjoy the snow!

(Ok...not such a short post after all...sorry!)

Mrs. Eby

IS WINTER HERE TO STAY?

2008-11-07T11:33:00.003-06:00

I want to begin this week's post by thanking all the parents for making it out in such terrible weather for our tri-conferences. It was nice to finally have a chance to sit down as a team and celebrate your child's strengths as well as making plans for reaching their individual targets! We have a dedicated group of students and I look forward to a fun and productive year of learning with them.
With the excitement of Halloween behind us and the layer of fresh, fallen snow before us, we've kept our noses to the grindstone. So here's what we've been doing and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:
It was a sad day in 5E as Mrs. Eby read Ch.10 of The Birchbark House on Wednesday. The students have become very engaged and attached to the characters in the novel and we all had an emotional moment as one of the characters passed away from smallpox. Our novel study has been a slow journey but a worthwhile one as we've learned so much about aboriginal culture, Canadian history and practiced our responding skills. I hope to complete the novel next week (fingers crossed) so we can work on their final project and begin our Literature Circles near the end of the month.
As outlined at tri-conferences, the students are encouraged to continue with their independent reading and responding using their Daily Reading Logs. Hopefully, these are coming home on a regular basis every weekend!

MATHEMATICS:
As you can see from the picture of our bulletin board in the sidebar of the blog, we have been practicing our Number Sense with "The Number of the Day" (N.O.D.). The students are given a particular number and asked to represent it in various ways. The bulletin board depicts the 8 main representations we practice in class but they are also asked to create a unique one on their own. Along with this skill, we are working on identifying the different place value in numbers and ordering these numbers from least to greatest.
We've jumped back into problem solving this week and will finish up our study of the strategy "Making a Table" with an assessment problem next Thursday. The students were given a problem to practice this weekend in preparation.
Our target of MASTERING multiplication facts is becoming more and more attainable by everyone! Keep working on those "At Home Multiplication" booklets, fun websites and flashcards. We will have another assessment of their learning near the end of November.

SOCIAL STUDIES:
We finished up our exploration of the Land Bridge Theory vs. Oral Tradition to explain how the first people came to North America. The students did a great job in their first Social Studies assessment and were able to explain the Land Bridge Theory very thoroughly in their own words. They will receive their quizzes back on Wednesday.
Our next focus in Social Studies will have us reviewing the geography of Canada in preparation for our inquiry question: How were the First Nations people able to survive off the land based on their location in Canada?

SCIENCE:
Our unit on Nutrition has come to an end. Hopefully the knowledge they have gained through this study has transferred over into their everyday eating habits and in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I'm sure those Rainbow Food Guide placemats the students created have come in very handy! As with the end of all fun units comes the assessment "of" learning. The students have been given a review sheet to help them prepare for their final quiz on Thursday, November 13th.
As I mentioned to the class, now that we know WHAT to eat, we are now ready to learn WHERE it goes and HOW it is processed by the body as our next unit of study is the digestive system!

ART:
Along with self-reflection this month has come SELF-PORTRAITS! We began our study on Wednesday with a "pre-drawing" activity. The students created their 'BEFORE' portraits (meaning no lesson, just draw yourself the best you can!). We have just started our 'AFTER' portraits in a step-by-step process that involves proportion, symmetry, measurement and patience. Who knew Art and Math went so well together?

FRENCH:
The students "Je vois" pages look terrific! I will be putting them together into our class book for the students to read and discover during free time. With our unit on school and classroom objects completed, we will be having a quiz on their understanding and grasp of the vocabulary the following week. We will be spending next week reviewing as a class. The quiz will be tentatively planned for Wednesday, Nov. 19th.

OTHER:

Mrs. Rappaport will be doing her "Day 6" work on Monday, Nov.10th as we made a switch to accomodate tri-conferences. Everyone is looking forward to another visit from baby Linnae in the afternoon.
Remembrance Day assembly is Monday, Nov. 10th at 10:45 in the school's gym. Everyone is welcome!
Library is also on Monday. Don't forget your books for renewal or return! Mrs. Husack hopes to return to the library on Nov. 17th. We wish her well! Mrs. Smitten has been happily "holding down the fort" in the meantime.
No school on Tuesday for Remembrance Day.
SNOW! SNOW! SNOW! What more can I say? Have fun! Play safe! Stay off the lakes! Please remember to start wearing warmer clothes to school for a more fun and comfortable recess play. Changing into indoor shoes is an important habit that needs to be reinforced now more than ever to keep our school looking nice and so as not to slip on wet floors. Please wear the appropriate footwear to keep those toesies warm and cozy!

Have a nice long weekend!

Mrs. Eby

A Symphony of Haunted Houses!

2008-11-03T21:10:00.005-06:00

I thought it would be fun to put our haunted houses to music! The students had a lot of fun creating their masterpieces. I'm sure many of them didn't make it home in one piece so here they are for your viewing pleasure!

DO THE HALLOWEEN HUSTLE!!

2008-10-31T20:05:00.003-05:00

What a great week! How the students kept so focused with the looming excitement of Halloween on Friday really surprised me! What a dedicated group of learners! Our primary focus this week has been preparing for tri-conferences next week, reflecting on our targets and setting goals for the coming months.
So let's look at what we've been doing and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:
We're not as far along in The Birchbark House as I would like to be at this point but we're going to do an intensive push next week to get caught up! The students continue to look forward to hearing about Omakayas's next adventure. I even introduced the sequels to the class and their anxious to have me read them already!
As I'd mentioned in my last post, there is no book report for November as we will be doing Literature Circles after we have completed our novel study. For the moment, the students are asked to find a novel (of interest to them) to read and respond to in their Reading Logs until they begin reading their assigned novel for Lit Circles.

MATHEMATICS:
As we set our targets in Math for the winter, the mastery of our multiplication facts became our prime focus! Hopefully, you have all received the letter, personalized flashcards and "At Home Multiplication" booklet that addresses our target. The booklet must be completed by all the students and returned to me by the end of November. Try to do a little bit everyday to reap the benefits of the continuous and rote practice which will really help to embed those facts in their long term memory.
We are also continuing with our Number Sense unit and working towards numbers to the "hundred thousands" place.

SOCIAL STUDIES:
Using a graphic organizer, the students reviewed their understanding of the Land Bridge Theory and created some interesting analogies of the theory to the Chunnel in Europe and the Confederation bridge connecting P.E.I to Canada!
Next week we will continue to review this idea and the students will be assessed on their understanding with a quiz on Thursday, Nov.6th.

SCIENCE:
There was a lot of "Snap,Crackle,Pop!" in the classroom this week as we began our cereal study! Our primary focus was to learn how to read the nutrition information labels on food items. The students were taught a basic understanding of what the different terms meant on a package of food (ie. fat, protein, sugars, calories, serving size, etc.). On Wednesday, we began to look at the labels on the cereal boxes that the students brought to class (Thank you so much!). Next week, we will be analyzing the various cereals to see which cereals really ARE a better choice to maintain a healthy body. We will also have some fun creating our own unique cereal! We are getting close to the end of this unit. Look for a unit test the following week!!

FRENCH:
Our unit on "L'ecole" is almost finished as well! Right now the students are creating a "Je vois..." page for a class "I Spy" book of classroom objects (en francais of course!). They have been completing most of this in class. The final due date for this assignment is Wednesday, November 5th! After this assignment, the students will be preparing for a quiz on this unit.

OTHER:

If you are ever cruising the hallways of LM, be sure to check out our "Scary, Scary Night" gallery wall across from the library in the Early Years wing! They look remarkably similar to Van Gogh's original design.
We had a lot of fun with our gingerbread haunted houses, food skeletons and jellybean math on Friday! A big thank you to all the parents and students for donating your veggies and fruit. Another big thank you to the parent volunteers who were able to come in and assist with our haunted house constructions...it was a sticky job but somebody had to do it!
UNICEF donations are being accepted until Thursday, Nov.6th if you are still wanting to make a donation.
PICTURE RETAKES are scheduled for MONDAY, NOV.3RD! Please bring in your proofs to the photographer if you are wishing to have a retake done.
Tri-conference appointment times should be coming home on Monday if you did not receive one on Friday. I look forward to seeing everyone next week as we sit down and work together to make grade 5 the most successful and productive year possible for your child!
On Monday and Tuesday of next week, I will be attending a two day workshop at the Manitoba Education, Citizen and Youth department that involves an intensive study of the new Literacy with ICT curriculum (integrating technology into our students' learning). I will still be in full attendance at tri-conferences...don't start without ME!

Have a spooky weekend! Happy haunting!

Mrs. Eby

STARRY STARRY NIGHT VIDEO and SONG!

2008-10-23T22:06:00.003-05:00

Notice the painting moving as Don McLean's song is playing! Enjoy!

IT'S BEEN A SHORT WEEK!!

2008-10-23T15:57:00.004-05:00

It was a very short week with the students for me! Wednesday was my day of "outside school" work. I actually had a lot of fun learning about wikis and how to incorporate them in the classroom. I look forward to implementing this collaborative web 2.0 learning tool over the next few months. I'll keep you "posted"!

In the meantime, the grade 5's have been getting revved up for Halloween and setting and reflecting on targets for our first tri-conferences coming up the first week of November.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Our novel study of the Birchbark House continues! I had a chance to review their booklets over the weekend and make suggestions for specific areas of improvement. The students are enjoying our lively discussions as we practice responding to a novel orally and then take the time to put them into their own words in their booklets afterward.

As you can see from the images on the sidebar of the blog, some of the students have completed their Skeleton Book reports already! The final due date for October's book report is Thursday, Oct. 30th. The students will get some time to work on them in class on Monday but after that they will be required to complete them on their own. If you are already wondering about November, I will be starting our first round of Literature Circles that month so there will not be an individual book report but rather a book they will be assigned to read, respond to and discuss with their Literature Circle group. More information surrounding Literature Circles will follow in the coming weeks.

Our Daily Edits every morning have been practicing our editing, spelling and grammar skills. This has been an on-going practice since the second week of school and a great opportunity to learn so many basic writing skills all wrapped up in several mini-lessons spread out throughout the year. On Monday, the students will be assessed on their progress so we can reflect on their needs and plan a goal for the rest of the year.

MATHEMATICS

We've jumped into our Number Sense unit with both feet this week. We are beginning with a review of place value up to 10 000 before moving into the hundred thousands place. I also introduced our "NUMBER OF THE DAY" skills sheet that requires the students to represent a given number (the N.O.D) in many different ways (ie. writing cheques, rounding, in a number sentence, roman numeral and in a word problem). We will be practicing this skill with increasingly difficult numbers over the course of this unit (and beyond!).

Our daily conditioning warm ups continue to reinforce our basic multiplication facts. On Tuesday, I asked the students to write down the facts they are repeatedly getting wrong into their agendas and take them home to study with their parents! The mastery of their multiplication facts to 10x10 will be an ongoing target in 5E this year!

SOCIAL STUDIES

On Tuesday, we had a chance to review the Land Bridge Theory by watching a video excerpt from the series "Canada, A People's History". It's a wonderful series that has actors re-enacting events in Canada's past and bringing it back to life for the students...a very effective medium!

We will continue to explore the Land Bridge Theory and compare it to aboriginal oral tradition. There will be an assessment of their understanding of this theory some time after the "craziness" of Halloween!

SCIENCE

It was an eye-opening experiment on Tuesday as the students experimented with various foods to find out "how much fat content" was in particular foods. They even took a fun quiz that compared various foods and they had to guess which one had more fat...another "lightbulb" moment for some of our students! Did you know there is more fat in a fish burger than a plate of spaghetti and meatballs?
Next week we'll be looking at the nutrition information labels on boxes of cereal, however...we need empty boxes of cereal to do this activity!!! If you have any empty boxes or a box almost empty you can eat up this week, please send it to school (you can collapse the box) with your child. Thank you!

ART

The students have begun their study of Van Gogh's Starry, Starry night painting and interpreting their own version into a Scary, Scary night! I have attached another Youtube video of Starry Starry night with the song by Don McLean. I hope you can view this at home with your child as I could not access it from school. It's a beautiful song and goes nicely with Van Gogh's painting. We hope to have our paintings ready in time for Halloween!

OTHER:

I hope you have all received your orange notice about the 5E Halloween festivities! Please bring in your toonie for the haunted house supplies ASAP! It's going to be a fun day!

Scholastic book orders for October should be arriving any day!!!! The students couldn't wait for me to hand out the November orders so they came home already. The due date for those is Wed. Oct. 29th!

We missed library on Thursday but I hope to get it early next week. Please return the library books on Monday.

UNICEF fundraising is due by November 6th!

Just a sidenote...please do not "reply" to this e-mail posting. (This is part of a group e-mailing system for your convenience.) If you wish to communicate with me privately, please send me an e-mail at heby@pembinatrails.ca or phone me at the school. Thank you for understanding!

Have a great weekend! Happy costume shopping (or sewing)!

Mrs. Eby

"FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD!!" - Oliver Twist

2008-10-17T11:11:00.006-05:00

We've got two short weeks in a row but lots of activities and learning keeping us busy! I hope everyone had a relaxing Thanksgiving. Based on the students "New Food" badges, it sounds like everyone enjoyed a yummy Thanksgiving feast! I was very impressed with all the different foods the students were willing to try. Hopefully, you have a new food to introduce to your supper tables in the future that won't be met with too many grimaces!

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:

The students are really getting into our novel study of "The Birchbark House". Their responding skills are developing rapidly as we reflect on the targets for responding daily and using them in our daily reading logs as well. Some great discussions have arose from the topics surrounding aboriginal beliefs and the role of the "chimookaman". I have asked the students to submit their booklets this weekend for me to see how they are keeping up with our daily work.

Hopefully your child is well into their October scary, suspenseful or mysterious novel in preparation for their skeleton book report. If they haven't already told you, the students will be writing their book report on outlines of skeleton bones to create hanging skeleton decorations for our classroom this Halloween. We will be doing some of the work in class but much of it can be done at home as well. It will be due on October 30th (in time for our party on the 31st!).

MATHEMATICS:
The students did a great job on their graphing quizzes! We've mastered that skill and we're moving on into Number Sense. To get their minds around the idea of big numbers, I read them the book "How much is a million?" and had them design a page for the book as their title page for this unit. We had a chance to share them today and start reviewing our place value knowledge from last year.
Next week, we will continue reviewing the different place values and how to represent numbers to 10 000 until we reach a million!
Our daily conditioning warm ups of our multiplication facts are a great reminder of the continuous work that needs to be done to keep up our facts. Feel free to "throw" some facts at your child in a car ride to hockey/dance lessons or even at the kitchen table over supper!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week the students finished their illustrations for the creation story we read together as a class. They also viewed a video of a different story of origin told by another aboriginal group and made many intelligent comparisons between the two versions.
Today, the students worked in groups as "scientists" exploring the theoretical side of how the first nations people first came to North America. I played the news reporter who shared "newsflashes" to help the scientists come up with their theories. They had a lot of fun working together to figure out how these nomads from Asia crossed the Bering Strait to North America without a boat! Ask them about the Land Bridge Theory this weekend!
Next week we will continue to explore this theory with a video and make some comparisons to the oral traditions of the aboriginal.

SCIENCE:
Food, glorious food!!! Our unit on nutrition is never dull when you're talking about food! The students reflected on their one day food diaries to see how they could improve their diets or keep on track if they were eating well! Today, the students were asked to create a nutritious, well-balanced meal plan for one day for a grade 5 student. This assignment was completed by many in class but some may be bringing it home for homework.
Next week we will be experimenting with various foods to check their fat content. It's always a bit of an eye-opener for the students!

FRENCH and ART:
Our French classes have been practicing our classroom vocabulary! We had a fun game of "Cercle Magique" where the students are able to practice speaking out loud and try to beat our classroom's best time!
Next week in Art we will be studying the works of Vincent Van Gogh and creating our own Scary interpretations of his "Starry, Starry Night" paintings using oil pastels and paint.

OTHER:

School picture orders are due for Wednesday, Oct.22nd
The UNICEF campaign has begun! The grade 7 and 8 students are working to raise an average of $12/ student. Your fundraising envelopes should be home today!
No school this Thursday and Friday (Oct.23rd and 24th) for Teacher In-servicing.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the warm weather (once again!) Let's hope we can keep our October temperature graph above the zero degree axis all the way to Halloween!

Mrs. Eby

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! "Gobble, Gobble!"

2008-10-09T20:51:00.010-05:00

What an unbelievably productive week we've had in 5E! We have such a busy, creative and energetic group of learners! Along with our routine class activities, we have one group of enthusiatic girls organizing a Dance Club for grade 5 students every Day 2 at lunch time with the help of Mrs. Finlay (our drama teacher) and another group of self-motivated young girls have begun an Animal Club for grade 2 students every Day 3 at recess! Our 5E students are really making the most of their school experience! WAY TO GO!

Wait till you hear all the other exciting work we've been doing and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:

We started off by celebrating Canadian authors and our first book report of the year with our Canadian Book Float parade first thing Monday morning! The students shared their reports, explained their "float" decorations and cheered on their fellow classmates! Thank you to Mrs. Birch, our new vice-principal, for attending our big event. If you get the opportunity, our floats are on display in the glass case across from the library. The students are very proud of their hardwork.

For the month of October, the students have been asked to choose a book to read that appears scarey, suspenseful or a mystery. They should have this book finished by October 24th.

Our study of the novel, The Birchbark House is proving to be a thought-provoking learning experience for the students as they make comparisons to the main characters way of life as an aboriginal girl in the 1800's to a gr.5 student in 2008! Along with making comparisons, the students are writing personal responses and learning Ojibway vocabulary. Ask your child what "ahneen" means?

MATHEMATICS:

We've finished our review of addition facts in our daily conditioning and have begun our year long target of MASTERING our multiplication facts! A fact of the day is posted on the whiteboard and refered to frequently throughout the day as well as our daily conditioning warm-up at the beginning of each math class.

As well, we've been reviewing our graphing skills this week in preparation for today's first math quiz. The students seem very confident in their understanding! Our next unit will be exploring number sense; which includes place value up to 1 000 000!

What a great introduction to large numbers with the conclusion of our mathematical folktale surrounding the story of the "One Grain of Rice". We will continue with our problem solving classes next week looking at our first strategy, "Making a Table". We will be practicing this strategy several times over the next couple of weeks.

SOCIAL STUDIES:

I hope everyone enjoyed a little chuckle with my video of Christopher Columbus from last week's post. On Thursday, I read the students a story that was told from the perspective of the native people in the Bahamas who were encountered by Christopher Columbus and his crew. I think it really drove home the idea that history and historical events have to be considered from many different perspectives as we learn it.

We are now beginning to look at Canada's origins and how Canada's First Nations people actually arrived in North America tens of thousands of years ago!

SCIENCE:

What a fun and hands-on week of learning we've had during our Science lessons this week! The students each received their own copy of Canada's Food Guide. They explored the different sections carefully in an oral scavenger hunt. To really get them thinking about what foods belong in each food group, the students created Rainbow placemats made from the food flyers they had brought in last week. The rainbow design represents the suggested servings of each Food group as outlined in the Canada Food Guide. I plan to laminate their placemats so they can refer to them at home at suppertime!

We ended off our week with a video that focuses more on the nutrients that the different foods provide for us everyday.

This weekend the students are bringing home a small assignment...to try a new food, something they've never eaten before! Hopefully this will help them to try some nutritious and delicious foods they have been avoiding (and mom wants them to "give it a try"!) Please fill in the badge slips with the name of the food and sign it. We will display our new food trials around the classroom!

ART:

The Group of Seven reproductions look AMAZING!! They are hanging in our classroom giving us a sense of our beautiful Canadian landscapes and the warm colours of fall. The students did a remarkable job replicating these masterpieces. I've been trying to create a slideshow of the artwork to share on our blog but can't seem to embed it so if you click the highlighted words "Group of Seven" you should be able to see the show. Enjoy!

On Thursday, the students had fun creating their "darker, monsterous sides" as they learned about symmetry and split their faces in half (you'll have to ask them about more of the details!).

Our next art study will look more closely at the works of Mr. Vincent Van Gogh...my favorite impressionist!

OTHER:

We had our first Super Lunch on Thursday! Thank you to Mrs. Beazley for all your help.

Book orders were due for Friday but will probably not get processed until Tuesday if you still wish to place an order!

LIBRARY is on Wednesday, Oct.15th...don't forget your books!

It's cooling off outside. Students are encouraged to bring warmer clothes to make outdoor recess a more comfortable play experience!

Have a wonderful, relaxing, yummy Thanksgiving weekend! I'll see you all on Wednesday as I am off to Sioux Falls, SD to visit my brother's family (and remind him of Canadian Thanksgiving traditions!)

Mrs. Eby

Vintage video of "Christopher Columbus" by Mel Blanc

2008-10-03T14:10:00.002-05:00

After our fun Social Studies class, researching the "different perspectives" of how Christopher Columbus came to discover the western world in 1492. I thought it would be fun to see yet another perspective (in cartoon!). Enjoy!

...ON TO OCTOBER!!

2008-10-03T13:06:00.002-05:00

We're in to our second month of Grade 5 and we're still excited and enthused about what each day of learning has to offer! As you can see from my last post (the podcast practice), my learning is continuing as well. I had a lot of fun playing with podcasting on my "dayoff" this Friday and think it would be a great way to have the students sharing their learning. It's like having your own personal radio show! It's a hoot! So enough about me...here's what 5E has been up to and what is coming up...

LANGUAGE ARTS:
Our first book report for the year is almost complete. The students Canadian Book Floats look fantastic! The class was buzzing with energy and creativity on Wednesday as they began their creations. We will be having our Canadian Book Parade on Monday so everyone's float must be completely finished first thing Monday morning! The parade is an opportunity for the students to share their books (and floats) with their classmates. Our floats will be on display in the bookcase across from the library beginning Oct.10th - Oct.24th. Be sure to drop by the school to check them out!
This week we have also begun our novel study of The Birchbark House. We've only read the prologue and first chapter but I could overhear the students talking about their predictions and feelings about the book in the hallway already! This will be our main focus in Language Arts over the next month and the majority of the work will be done IN CLASS!
On Wednesday, I had the students hand in their Daily Reading Logs as we discussed our TARGETS for their logs as a class. Every day in school they are given time to silent read and respond in their logs. Only one entry is required for homework (on the weekends) and requires your signature. Thank you for supporting our reading program this year!

MATHEMATICS:
Our unit on Data management is almost complete. The "Favorites" double bar graphs look great! We celebrated our hard work with a Smartie graph activity on Thursday to review what we've learned about making a simple bar graph and drawing conclusions from the data. Next week we will be discussing first and second hand data and preparing for a quiz on this unit for Friday, October 10th!
Problem Solving also began this week. The students were introduced to the key strategies we will be focusing on throughout the year and the 5 main steps to follow when solving any problem. Our first problem comes from a Mathematical Folktale called "One Grain of Rice". As I explained to the students, this problem is just a fun introduction to problem solving...we will never work with numbers this large in our 'regular' problem solving program! Have your child explain what the story was about and what problem they needed to solve! We will be going over the answer as a class on Monday!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
We reviewed our understanding of history and historical events. To emphasize their understanding of DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES when learning about history, I had the students work in groups to research the famous historical event...Christopher Columbus's discovery of 1492. Each group was given a different source of information and asked to find the 5W's of this historical event. We shared them as a group to observe the different perspectives that each source portrayed of that event. We found a few surprises!
This weekend, the students are asked to look at their own personal history and choose one key event and write down the 5w's. After, they will be asking YOU (their parents or siblings) to write down their account of that event. Finally, you will examine the similarities and differences of perspective in everyone's version of the same event. You can find this assignment in your child's S.S. duotang entitled "Oral History". We will be sharing our "findings" on Monday.

SCIENCE:
Our study of Nutrition this week had us looking at the new vocabulary we will be exploring throughout this unit and viewing our favorite Science guy, Bill Nye as he shared his knowledge of Nutrition in a funny DVD! We discussed and made some suggestions as to how we can make our "Healthy Snack" time after morning recess a bit "healthier". Thank you for your support!
Next week we will be examining Canada's Food Guide more closely and creating collages of the four main food groups.

FRENCH:
We are continuing to review the "everyday" vocabulary that the students will be using in our French classes all year. They have been working on a personal "pictionary" of terms to use as a reference throughout the year.

ART:
The students' Group of Seven reproductions look remarkable! I hope to have them all finished by Friday and up on display for your viewing pleasure. Our next Art activity will be looking at the "darker side of 5E" (I'll keep you in suspense with that hint!).

OTHER:

Library is on Day 1 (Monday).
Scholastic Book orders are due for Friday, October 10th!
Happy Birthday to Sarah Sl. (Oct.1) and Melanie (Oct.9th)!

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Eby

PODCASTING PRACTICE

2008-10-03T11:45:00.001-05:00

Welcome to a Tour of "What's up in 5E?" through podcasting!

HUNKERING DOWN AND HAVING FUN!

2008-09-26T12:51:00.009-05:00

What a beautiful week of weather! I imagine many of you have been outside enjoying those last few warm evenings before the cooler days of fall set in. The students have been working very hard in their first four weeks of school. I can't say enough how impressed I am with their enthusiasm and eagerness to learn. Thank you so much for your support during Strong Beginnings. It's such a great opportunity to sit down with your children one-on-one, not only to assess their learning strengths and needs but also to engage with them on a personal level. With the Terry Fox Run wrapping up our week, we've started in on some new "Grade 5" work (as the students like to say!)at the beginning of the week.

So here's what we've been up to and what is coming up:

LANGUAGE ARTS:
In preparation for our novel study on "The Birchbark House", the students have been learning about how to RESPOND to literature. We had fun on Tuesday learning the difference between RETELLING and RESPONDING using Oreos (AGAIN!!). It was yummy and effective. Please ask your child what they had to do! Today, the students were introduced to our TARGETS when responding and we practiced using the class read aloud, "There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom" by Lois Sachar. I thought it would be fun to allow the students to show you what responding looks like by posting their responses onto the blog. Over the weekend, I've asked the students to send a "comment" to the blog (which goes to my e-mail address first) and then I will choose a few to post to the blog.
Many students are almost finished their Canadian author novels and are ready to begin the book report and float. Next week, we will begin the writing of the book reports and designing our floats. I've asked the students to try to finish their books over the weekend and bring in an empty shoebox by Tuesday.

MATHEMATICS:
This week, we continued our work on graphing. The students played "What's in a Name?" and graphed the values of the names of their classmates. It was a great review of designing a bar graph.
If you haven't already been surveyed, your son or daughter will be approaching you this weekend with their survey questions about your "FAVORITES". Our next target in Math is to learn how to create a double bar graph. The students will be comparing the results of their questions between their female and male participants. We should have some interesting conclusions to draw from the results as we graph them next week!
Daily conditioning has also begun this week! At the beginning of every math class, the students are given a set of 15 questions orally. We have begun by reviewing our addition facts and will move into multiplication shortly. Have your child explain how conditioning works. I call it our "warm up" for math class!

SOCIAL STUDIES:
"What IS history?" was our topic of discussion this week. The students brainstormed their thoughts and ideas about what history means and tried to answer the question "How do we know about the long ago past?". An important concept to understand when learning about history is DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES. Ask your child what that means and what lesson did Mrs. Eby do to make them understand?

SCIENCE:
We had fun exploring the website links on the side of our blog to review the different systems in our body and viewed a funny video about making wise nutritious food choices to introduce our unit on Nutrition. Thank you for the food flyers that you have brought in. We will be using them in a hands on activity next week to explore Canada's Food Guide.

ART:
Our first study in Art will be exploring the work of the Group of Seven. We began by viewing and discussing their paintings and learned a bit about the artists themselves. They were famous for their interpretation of northern Canadian landscape and the mysterious death of their "eighth member" Tom Thompson! The students will be working with oil pastels to reproduce one of their favorite paintings of the Group of Seven. Their final reproduction is always quite a masterpiece!

OTHER:

What a beautiful afternoon for the Terry Fox Run! Thank you for all your generous donations! Did I capture your legs in action in the photos on the sidebar?

Book orders should be in soon as the October flyers have just arrived on my desk!

Have a great weekend!! Let's pray that sun is here to stay for a little while longer!

Mrs. Eby

Welcome to 5E's Classroom!

2008-09-20T14:41:00.001-05:00

WE'RE OFF TO A "STRONG BEGINNING"!

2008-09-19T20:05:00.002-05:00

(Did you notice the pun in my title?) teehee!!
Welcome to our second official blog posting for 5E! I received a lot of positive feedback regarding the blog so I hope you enjoy it this year and feel free to let me know if there is anything more that I could add to help make our year together the best possible.

So what have we been up to and what is coming up...

I want to begin by thanking soooo many parents and family members for coming out to Open House night on Tuesday. It's so nice to see the support network behind this great group of students. The next time I will be meeting with you is the first week of November for our first round of tri-conferences. If you have any questions or wish to drop me a line about ANYTHING, please feel free to e-mail me (heby@pembinatrails.ca) or phone me at school.

As you can see around the classroom, a lot of our time this week was spent preparing for Open House as well as beginning new units in our core subject areas.

LANGUAGE ARTS:
We've begun learning a bit about paragraph writing (we will have a more intense look at paragraph writing later in the year!). The students were asked to put their new Olympic sporting event into a paragraph using the "hamburger method" ( introductory sentence and concluding sentence are the "bun" and the supporting sentences in the body are the "meat and fixings"). They will be putting their paragraph writing skills to test again in their September book report. The students were asked to bring home their first book report outlines this weekend so parents could preview it and sign it. Our theme for this month's book report is "Canadian authors"! In Thursday's library class, each student was instructed to find a book written by a Canadian author that they would be able to finish before the end of September. After that, they will begin working on their book reports and float presentations! Along with their personal reading, we will be starting a class novel study. The book is entitled, The Birchbark House. The book will be read aloud by me each day and the students will be required to answer questions, respond to the "reading" that day and make visual representations (drawings). It's a historical fiction novel that ties in beautifully with our Canadian history curriculum outcomes in Social Studies.

MATHEMATICS:
As you could see from our Open House, the students are having a lot of fun learning about data management. They've mastered the art of creating a graph using excel (even adding some "fun features"). Our Math Olympics on Monday was a huge success! Each event had the students estimating, measuring and collecting their data. The torch relay around the school definitely got them into the Olympic spirit. We are continuing to learn about analyzing data and creating an effective graph. On Thursday, the students experienced their first round of daily math conditioning. At the beginning of each Math class, the students are given a set of 15 questions to answer and self-correct. We are beginning with addition facts and moving quickly to mastering those multiplication facts with speed and accurate recall.

SOCIAL STUDIES:
We haven't begun our look at history just yet but we watched an excellent video Tuesday afternoon (when our X-country runners were absent!) that takes the viewer on an aerial tour of Canada. It's a beautiful montage of our country. The students were asked to choose their favorite scene...sketch it and write a small paragraph describing it and why they would like to visit that part of Canada. We will begin our look at "What is history?" next week.

SCIENCE:
Our first unit in Science is looking at "Maintaining a Healthy Body". Our main focus will begin with nutrition and how we feed our bodies to stay healthy. We've begun the unit with a brief overview of the nine organ systems that make up the human body. I've attached a few fun websites to help review and add more information to what we have already learned about how our body works.

FRENCH:
We've had a slow start this week but I hope to jump into our "Bienvenue a l'ecole" unit next week. The students will be learning french expressions to use in the classroom, school supply vocabulary and play some fun games to review their new knowledge!

OTHER:

Thank you for returning your volunteer forms so promptly. Pam Beazley has graciously offered to be our classroom rep this year! Thank you, Pam. In the past I have not used a weekly volunteer. In grade 5, I appreciate volunteers to join us in Literature Circle groups, special activities in the classroom, party organizers and field trip supervisors. If you have not had a chance to fill out the form and still wish to volunteer, please feel free to return your form to the school next week.
Strong Beginnings has been terrific! I love this opportunity to sit down and work with your child one-on-one to learn more about them both personally and academically.
Terry Fox Run is on Friday, Sept.26th! If you are available, feel free to join your child on our schoolwide run/walk for cancer research.

It looks like another warm weekend...YEAH! The autumnal equinox is this weekend which takes us officially into the fall season. Start taking out those rakes!

See you on Tuesday,

Mrs. Eby

BACK TO SCHOOL AND BLOGGING AGAIN!

2008-09-09T09:41:00.004-05:00

Our 5E class blog is up and running again. I hope you have all received this through our google group e-mailing reminder system. Please check out the AUTHENTIC blogspot using the highlighted link at the bottom of this e-mail "WHAT'S UP IN 5E?". The official blog contains pictures, fun surveys, educational websites and my introductory header.

So here's what we've been up to since school began last Wednesday (WOW, it's been over a week already!). As with the beginning of any new school year, we've slowly been establishing our classroom routines and getting to know each other through various fun activities.
Here are just some of the routines we have begun:
Daily edit (first thing every morning...except Monday!)
Journal writing (every Monday)
Reading logs (Daily silent reading time)
Read aloud (at the end of the day)

As a HUGE Olympics fan, I couldn't help but continue with the Olympic theme as we began our new year together. It's been amazing how well the qualities and ideals that come with the Olympic Games also tie into our beliefs as to how we see our class working as a team and caring about each other . We've been discussing mottos, creeds and oaths that the Olympic athletes take before they participate in their respective competition. The insights and perspectives of your children are well-thought out and show the signs of being a very mature and caring group of individuals. I really look forward to a fabulous year working with this class!!!
Along with all our "deep thinking" we've been having fun matching the official Olympic pictograms with their correct sport. This week, the students have been coming up with their own "event" to represent for the 2012 Olympic games. These will be on display the night of Open House (along with other surprises!) What an imaginative and creative group!

We've also begun our first math unit of the year, Statistics (graphing!!). I thought it was the perfect tie in with the Olympics as new records are made and many statistics need to be managed. As you've probably already heard, we had a yummy math experience last Friday as we graphed the different ways we like to eat our Oreo cookies! This week the students have been taught how to use Microsoft excel and Create-a-graph programs to make their graphs on the computer. Watch for some survey questions coming your way as we continue to practice our graphing skills. On Monday, the students will be participating in Math Olympics!

You're probably wondering what those Pringles cans were all about as you were munching away on your child's first "homework" of the year! The students are creating time capsules about themselves which they will be opening at the end of the year. The time capsules include such things as their "Favorites", the outline of their hand size, a picture of them on the first day of school with some first day thoughts, and much, much more!! The students have a good laugh in June as they compare themselves to those first few days in grade 5.

Next week, we will begin to follow our timetable a little more closely as we start to tackle our core subject areas more directly! Mrs. Rappaport was very excited to be working in our classroom this year to share her expertise in Health, Language Arts and particularly with the "Roots of Empathy" program. I, too am excited to bring what I learn during my course work with Web 2.0 tools into our classroom learning experiences this year!

I look forward to meeting you all at the Linden Meadows Open House on Tuesday, Sept. 16th. In grade 5 we have an informal agenda layed out for the evening. Your child will walk you through some of our daily routines, show you around the classroom and introduce you to me!

Thank you so much for a great start to the year by checking your child's agenda daily. Although the blog is an excellent communication tool, the agenda of your child remains a great source for personal dialogue between parents and myself.

Have a great weekend! Enjoy the warm weather.

Mrs. Eby