6 weeks of school left - May 20, 2019

Hope all our wonderful moms had a wonderful Mother's Day!  I heard some even got breakfast in bed :).

This will be a short update with just a few reminders of what's coming up really fast...


In math we continue to work with decimals and practicing our multiplication basic facts daily.  Students have improved a great deal in the past few months and we will continue to build on that in the remaining weeks of school.

In French we continued working on "Les bas du pensionnat" and we will continue to do this next week again.  We continue working on our book reviews / critiques that we received from Mme Adeline.  In preparation for the Gala Oratoire, we have also selected (or written our own) poems to recite.  While only one person had to be chosen for the Gala, I think everyone deserves to feel like they attended, so we will host our mini gala in class.  I am finalizing the details, but I would like to organize it such that even parents can come and watch, so more details coming soon.  In the meantime, we will polish out our poems and will need to learn them by heart as much as we can.  The students will be allowed their sheets with them, but mostly for sneaking a peek :).  More coming soon!

Choosing the person to represent our class at the Gala Oratoire was not an easy task as we have so many talented individuals in the class, but I am pleased to say that our representative this year will be: Isla Quintin.  Congratulations Isla!  All others, you will still get to share your amazing talent with our great audience in our class and your amazing parents.  Again, more to come on our classroom gala.

For Science / English, we recently had the Science coordinator for CSSD visit us in class to see how we are doing our Planet Protectors Academy program. The class was very welcoming.

Once again, this past week, we focused on our Scratch coding and now we are very close to being ready for SAIT.  The excitement is overflowing, but Thursday May 23 is a day we have all worked real hard to get to and it's almost here. The fun will have been well-earned!  PARENTS, PLEASE COME SEE US THERE. 

In Science, we started working on our plants unit where we started our Tomatosphere study of tomato plants from seeds grown on earth compared to the growth of tomato plants from seeds that spent time on the Space Station in 2016.  Very cool to be growing space tomatoes :).  We also had a most amazing (though a bit cold and wet) field trip to Weaselhead Reservoir / Glenmore Park.  We learned an incredible amount while walking a good 5 km.  I hope everyone recovered.  Here are some photos.  Thank you to the volunteers who came with us!

Homework: 

No homework pages this week.  Students need to finish their work for Coding Quest as well as start learning their poems (French), finally, the books that they took home from Library (for critique task) need to be finished and critiques need to be written.

No spelling test this week - spelling tests will resume next week. 

Upcoming Important Dates:
Monday, May 20 (Jour 0) - PD Day

Tuesday, May 21 (Jour 5)
- School Photo @ 10:00 AM

Wednesday, May 22 (Jour 6)
- Library
- Gym

Thursday, May 23 (Jour 1)
- Field Trip to SAIT (Coding Quest!!!)

Friday, May 10 (Jour 6)
- Hymn Sing
- Gym

LOOKING AHEAD:

- Thursday May 23 - SAIT Arcade (Coding Quest)
- Saturday May 25 - Gala Oratoire @ the New Public Library
- May 27-31 - Scholastic Book Fair
- Thursday May 30th @ 6:00 PM - SCHOOL BBQ
- June 3-7 - SoundKreations Dance Residency
 

Have a wonderful evening!

Welcome May, and don't leave so fast - May 10, 2019

Almost two more full weeks behind us with only seven more to go.  Time flies/

In math we finished fractions and we have now moved onto decimals.  We will revisit the topic of fractions, just as we will be soon embarking on multiplying with numbers using many digits.  As a result, we have been practicing our multiplication basic facts non-stop using daily quizzes, game cards and now Kahoot as well.  I think the latter method is the favourite :).

In French we have been working on "Les bas du pensionnat" and we will continue to do this.  We have also started reading as groups some French books.  Mme Adeline has also given to us some book reviews to create of books that the students could select from the library.  Although some of the books are in English, the reviews will be done in French.  And, while the students don't know this yet, these reviews will be turned into review/recommendation videos in French.  I will be providing more details soon.  We will also have work coming up for the Gala Oratoire.  Information will be coming home soon.

In English we have been working on many things, including our Autobiographies (many awaiting my feedback), Planet Protectors Academy (please send back the mission files - students earn points for those for their teams) and have also now started our second book study of the Wrinkle in Time.  Do not watch the movie at home :).  Each student now has a book to read from.  I have allowed them to take home their books but only if they bring them back every day (they are allowed to read ahead.)  If they forget their books, they will no longer be allowed to bring them home.

These past weeks we focused a lot on our games for the Coding Quest program.  All students will be able to attend the event at SAIT on May 23rd.  We still have tons of work to do to be presentation ready but I think the excitement is building now.  Some of the students have also been bitten by the "Coding" bug.  YAY! :)  Scratch is an easy way to get started down that path.  Lots of material can be found on their website (https://scratch.mit.edu) and the Coding cards that I use in class can be found at Indigo and possibly other stores as well.

In Science we also started working on Plants and will be incorporating it with lights and shadows as light is an essential component for the life of a plant.  We will also be building vehicles that move with solar panels, thus touching on how essential light is to many things (not just plants) and how we can use light as a viable solution (one of many) to our many environmental problems as well.

In Religion we explored how God has gifted us with the planet that we live on and we explored how to take care of it through the story of The River Keeper: the story of a family who embark on helping the environment and protecting our rivers for future generations to come.  

We continue to explore Indigenous history and culture through our book in Les bas du pensionnat and we will be doing more research in Social Studies on the peoples of Alberta (including les voyageurs and other populations) soon.

ChangeMaker Challenge:

This year, with the Environment at the forefront of our minds, we participated in a ChangeMaker challenge and have submitted a video.  While the video was edited by me (students have not seen the final product yet), the photos were taken by the students.  This is our call to action video which we will try to find time to share with the whole school so that we can encourage everyone to keep our schoolyard clean and help keep our garbage out of our forests and waters.  This is the first time I am sharing this video, so please take a look and be kind :).  With this video we have successfully completed part of the challenge; we still would like to organize some sort of cleanup event for the entire school (or at least with our class).  We will see when and how that unfolds.  Lots of planning to still go into that and the brainstorming has yet to happen.

Homework: 

Home work was Math (S26), English (week 11) and the assigned French Raz-kids books.

No spelling test this week.  The test will take place next Wednesday (May 15).  Words are already posted.  Sentences will be posted soon as well.

Upcoming Important Dates:
Monday, May 6 (Jour 2)
- Healthy Hunger

Tuesday, May 7 (Jour 3)

Wednesday, May 8 (Jour 4)
- Chess Club @ lunch
- Library

Thursday, May 9 (Jour 5)

Friday, May 10 (Jour 6)
- Gym

LOOKING AHEAD:

- Thursday May 16 - Weaselhead Glenmore Park Field Trip with Gr. 5,6
- Friday May 17 - PD Day - NO SCHOOL
- Monday May 21 - Victoria Day - NO SCHOOL
- Thursday May 23 - SAIT Arcade (Coding Quest)
- Saturday May 25 - Gala Oratoire @ the New Public Library
- May 27-31 - Scholastic Book Fair

Have a wonderful evening!