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

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