Hi All,
WHOA. Where did the time go??? I can't believe we're at December 18th!
This won't be a complete post - will try to post later. I'm trying to squeeze in a few bits of information before I forget:
1) PJ Day Friday - we will be attending our annual pancake breakfast on Friday morning
2) Glue sticks - I'm asking the children to bring in another glue stick or two in the new year.. for some reason, our glue stick supply is almost depleted. I haven't figured out where they've all disappeared to but I hope I can get to the bottom of it soon.. it's left me a bit perplexed!
3) Report cards - signed envelopes are due back to school on Thursday.
4) We are still carrying on with academics.. business as usual!
Happy Holidays!
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Time is flying!!
Yikes! Where did the time go? Tomorrow is December!!!
It's been a pretty busy few days. We started a new unit on Inferring in language arts. On Wednesday, we took our flashlights to the museum (gym). It was "after hours", but we still wanted to see the artwork of Harris Burdick. I shared with them that Harris had donated these pieces of art and was suppose to bring the stories that went along with them, but he suddenly disappeared. It was our job to come up with our own ideas as to what his illustrations are depicting. The class had great fun walking around the gym looking at the pictures, reading the titles and captions that went along with the pictures. We had a brainstorming session about what each of the pictures meant and I can already tell that we'll be getting some terrific stories out of them.
The grade 3's have pretty much finished their Science Unit on the Solar System. We completed a little booklet of constellations which was great fun and also will be a nice little reference for them in the future.
The grade 4's are still working on Weather. Their weather booklets are due next Friday as they've had plenty of time to complete them. We put together a graph to track the data that we will be collecting with our rain gauges next week and also read (while identifying non-fiction text features and highlighting main ideas) about weather vanes in preparation for making them next week.
Yesterday, a fruit/vegetable tracking sheet should have gone home. The students have been playing "What Am I" to learn more about different fruits/vegetables. We also worked on identifying different different coloured vegetables and fruits.
A heads up:
Christmas concert is being held on December 18th. Our class' theme is "rock and roll". I will be asking the children to brainstorm an easy costume (ie. using things you find around the house or from the dollar store) and getting them to write a paragraph about their costume for homework (why not integrate some writing into it? Just for fun! :) ).
No school Monday - the district is closed in lieu of having Easter during Spring Break!
Alright. This post was begun last night and is still sitting here and it's now Saturday morning. I'm hitting publish! Have a great long weekend!
It's been a pretty busy few days. We started a new unit on Inferring in language arts. On Wednesday, we took our flashlights to the museum (gym). It was "after hours", but we still wanted to see the artwork of Harris Burdick. I shared with them that Harris had donated these pieces of art and was suppose to bring the stories that went along with them, but he suddenly disappeared. It was our job to come up with our own ideas as to what his illustrations are depicting. The class had great fun walking around the gym looking at the pictures, reading the titles and captions that went along with the pictures. We had a brainstorming session about what each of the pictures meant and I can already tell that we'll be getting some terrific stories out of them.
The grade 3's have pretty much finished their Science Unit on the Solar System. We completed a little booklet of constellations which was great fun and also will be a nice little reference for them in the future.
The grade 4's are still working on Weather. Their weather booklets are due next Friday as they've had plenty of time to complete them. We put together a graph to track the data that we will be collecting with our rain gauges next week and also read (while identifying non-fiction text features and highlighting main ideas) about weather vanes in preparation for making them next week.
Yesterday, a fruit/vegetable tracking sheet should have gone home. The students have been playing "What Am I" to learn more about different fruits/vegetables. We also worked on identifying different different coloured vegetables and fruits.
A heads up:
Christmas concert is being held on December 18th. Our class' theme is "rock and roll". I will be asking the children to brainstorm an easy costume (ie. using things you find around the house or from the dollar store) and getting them to write a paragraph about their costume for homework (why not integrate some writing into it? Just for fun! :) ).
No school Monday - the district is closed in lieu of having Easter during Spring Break!
Alright. This post was begun last night and is still sitting here and it's now Saturday morning. I'm hitting publish! Have a great long weekend!
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Rainy days...
Hi All,
Just realized it's been a while since I posted. Before I tell you about what's been happening in Division 4, I just wanted to talk a bit about upcoming report cards, particularly, for the grade 4's.
I think I've talked to most of the grade 4 parents about how your child will be receiving grades for the first time in their academic careers this term. The letter grades that will be provided are NOT interpreted in the same manner that we interpreted A's, B's, C's of even F's in school 10-15+ years ago. Here are the descriptors:
A = Excellent or Outstanding performance (ie. exceptional, above and beyond)
B = Very good performance
C + = Good performance
C = Satisfactory performance
C- = Minimally acceptable performance
Particularly in the first (and 2nd) term, most of what we do is highly scaffolded. This means, that the steps in completing an assignment, are broken down and explained, walked through one at a time. A lot of the work we complete depends on adult support and teacher instruction. Teacher instruction will always be there, however, the expectations for completing work independently will change over time. For example:
In socials, the grade 4's have begun to learn about First Nations groups in Canada. They have been working with an information sheet and a map to correlate where each group has been situated in Canada. I had to provide quite a bit of guidance in terms of how to read the map (boundary lines, review of colour codes and legends, directionality, etc.) and how to extrapolate information from the text in order to find answers.
Summing up, I've told the students that they need to drop the idea that they will be "straight A" students. It's absolutely something they should strive for, however, they also need to be realistic at the same time. Balance is key! I told them that they should definitely aim for the B/C+ range and to remember, that a lot of the grade may stem from adult support.
The 2nd piece to letter grades is that students will be assessed for work habits. This means that they complete their work, come prepared for class, exhibit good effort, work cooperatively, stay on-task, etc. The self-reflecting each week has helped to remind the students of the traits of a good learner (emphasis on learner and not student - I like to remind me that these skills are even relevant to adults and how we are always working to improve on these areas, even me!) Work habits are given either a G for Good, S for Satisfactory or N for Needs improvement.
If you have any questions regarding upcoming reports, please let me know!
In other news:
Math - We've been working on place value and patterning. In place value, the emphasis has been on representing numbers in multiple ways. For some students, we need to take it down a level and solidify their understanding of trading 10 units for 1 ten rod (you could also think of it as trading 10 pennies for 1 dime). For others, they have the understanding that 1- ten rods is the same as 1 hundred flat, but are not quite convinced that 10 hundreds makes 1 thousand or that 10 thousand cubes is 10 thousand (and not 1 million!).
The other day, we also had a conversation about the "=" sign. I asked the students if the statement 2+6=4+4 was true or false? Many of them said it was false. It lead to the discussion of what does equals mean? The majority said that it meant "the answer is coming". I have now temporarily banned the words "equals" and "plus". From now on, equals is "the same as" and plus is "and". I reminded them that most of them learned that plus was "and" when they worked with Mrs. Sproul in Kindegarten .. was happy to get the response "Oh yea!! I remember that!".
Sometimes, we go off on Math tangents. I am constantly amazed at how many connections there are in Math. On Parent Math night, Mrs. Bletcher will be sharing some of the activities we do in Math which will hopefully help you to better understand how one hands-on activity can deepen student understanding in so many strands of Math.
Language Arts - The class has been working hard on developing strategies for Reading Comprehension. Last week, we read the story "Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street". This story was about a girl who was asked to write something in her notebook, but felt that she had nothing to write. She discovers that she can use a variety of strategies to help her generate ideas: stretch the truth, make something up, look around her, etc. I asked the students to make predictions based on the cover and then another prediction after I read the first page. The goal with this is for students to understand that a story's characters, problem and setting is usually introduced early on in the story. Students were also asked to respond to the ending (many had difficulty with this - I got a lot of thin summaries rather than responses) and to identify what the author wanted them to remember about the story. This will be a graphic organizer that we will use a few more times until students start to develop a deeper understanding of it's purpose.
This past week we also started practicing connecting. I sent them with a graphic organizer to the library, however, I think we need a review about connections. For some, they've been connecting for a number of years ago. I would say the majority of the class needs to remember:
1. Connections are not one sided. They cannot only state their part, they need to also talk about what part of the story sparked their memories.
2. What is the purpose of your connection? If you say that the character in the story has blue shoes and you have blue shoes too, how does that help you better understand the story?
I touched on that briefly yesterday when I was reading our read aloud. The book had just described how the mother frog was fussing over her son before his departure - many of the children said that they could identify with this. We talked about the purpose of being able to connect with Gilbert's situation - it helped us understand how he felt without him having to spell it out for us!
Science - The grade 3's have finally finished up their little flap books on each of the planets. They are creating a lap book of different components of the solar system. They look fantastic! It will be exciting when they finally get to share it with you. We will be jumping into constellations and meteors next and that will be pretty much the end of the unit. It looks like we're just in time - our field trip to HR McMillan is coming up soon. (The grade 4's wondered why we weren't going on a field trip about Weather - I made the point that none of them had gone on this field trip before and that not all the field trips would be about one particular grade - there will be future field trips that revolve around the grade 4 curriculum, just not all of them!)
The grade 4's are working on their Weather unit. Some of their assignments:
1. Last week, I assigned a weather book - the need to describe the morning and afternoon weather using words (particularly mentioning whether we have any precipitation or not), take the temperature once and record it on the thermometer (ball park it) and draw a picture of the weather. This should hopefully be finished up in 2 weeks.
2. I've also asked them to complete a thermometer worksheet page - they need to find the temperature of 3 different locations in the world and record it on the thermometer.
3. Get a pop bottle (or water bottle) of decent size and cut the top part off (leave about 3/4 of the bottle). Flip the top part over (make sure you take the cover off first). Tape the edges if you can. Here's a picture:
Just realized it's been a while since I posted. Before I tell you about what's been happening in Division 4, I just wanted to talk a bit about upcoming report cards, particularly, for the grade 4's.
I think I've talked to most of the grade 4 parents about how your child will be receiving grades for the first time in their academic careers this term. The letter grades that will be provided are NOT interpreted in the same manner that we interpreted A's, B's, C's of even F's in school 10-15+ years ago. Here are the descriptors:
A = Excellent or Outstanding performance (ie. exceptional, above and beyond)
B = Very good performance
C + = Good performance
C = Satisfactory performance
C- = Minimally acceptable performance
Particularly in the first (and 2nd) term, most of what we do is highly scaffolded. This means, that the steps in completing an assignment, are broken down and explained, walked through one at a time. A lot of the work we complete depends on adult support and teacher instruction. Teacher instruction will always be there, however, the expectations for completing work independently will change over time. For example:
In socials, the grade 4's have begun to learn about First Nations groups in Canada. They have been working with an information sheet and a map to correlate where each group has been situated in Canada. I had to provide quite a bit of guidance in terms of how to read the map (boundary lines, review of colour codes and legends, directionality, etc.) and how to extrapolate information from the text in order to find answers.
Summing up, I've told the students that they need to drop the idea that they will be "straight A" students. It's absolutely something they should strive for, however, they also need to be realistic at the same time. Balance is key! I told them that they should definitely aim for the B/C+ range and to remember, that a lot of the grade may stem from adult support.
The 2nd piece to letter grades is that students will be assessed for work habits. This means that they complete their work, come prepared for class, exhibit good effort, work cooperatively, stay on-task, etc. The self-reflecting each week has helped to remind the students of the traits of a good learner (emphasis on learner and not student - I like to remind me that these skills are even relevant to adults and how we are always working to improve on these areas, even me!) Work habits are given either a G for Good, S for Satisfactory or N for Needs improvement.
If you have any questions regarding upcoming reports, please let me know!
In other news:
Math - We've been working on place value and patterning. In place value, the emphasis has been on representing numbers in multiple ways. For some students, we need to take it down a level and solidify their understanding of trading 10 units for 1 ten rod (you could also think of it as trading 10 pennies for 1 dime). For others, they have the understanding that 1- ten rods is the same as 1 hundred flat, but are not quite convinced that 10 hundreds makes 1 thousand or that 10 thousand cubes is 10 thousand (and not 1 million!).
The other day, we also had a conversation about the "=" sign. I asked the students if the statement 2+6=4+4 was true or false? Many of them said it was false. It lead to the discussion of what does equals mean? The majority said that it meant "the answer is coming". I have now temporarily banned the words "equals" and "plus". From now on, equals is "the same as" and plus is "and". I reminded them that most of them learned that plus was "and" when they worked with Mrs. Sproul in Kindegarten .. was happy to get the response "Oh yea!! I remember that!".
Sometimes, we go off on Math tangents. I am constantly amazed at how many connections there are in Math. On Parent Math night, Mrs. Bletcher will be sharing some of the activities we do in Math which will hopefully help you to better understand how one hands-on activity can deepen student understanding in so many strands of Math.
Language Arts - The class has been working hard on developing strategies for Reading Comprehension. Last week, we read the story "Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street". This story was about a girl who was asked to write something in her notebook, but felt that she had nothing to write. She discovers that she can use a variety of strategies to help her generate ideas: stretch the truth, make something up, look around her, etc. I asked the students to make predictions based on the cover and then another prediction after I read the first page. The goal with this is for students to understand that a story's characters, problem and setting is usually introduced early on in the story. Students were also asked to respond to the ending (many had difficulty with this - I got a lot of thin summaries rather than responses) and to identify what the author wanted them to remember about the story. This will be a graphic organizer that we will use a few more times until students start to develop a deeper understanding of it's purpose.
This past week we also started practicing connecting. I sent them with a graphic organizer to the library, however, I think we need a review about connections. For some, they've been connecting for a number of years ago. I would say the majority of the class needs to remember:
1. Connections are not one sided. They cannot only state their part, they need to also talk about what part of the story sparked their memories.
2. What is the purpose of your connection? If you say that the character in the story has blue shoes and you have blue shoes too, how does that help you better understand the story?
I touched on that briefly yesterday when I was reading our read aloud. The book had just described how the mother frog was fussing over her son before his departure - many of the children said that they could identify with this. We talked about the purpose of being able to connect with Gilbert's situation - it helped us understand how he felt without him having to spell it out for us!
Science - The grade 3's have finally finished up their little flap books on each of the planets. They are creating a lap book of different components of the solar system. They look fantastic! It will be exciting when they finally get to share it with you. We will be jumping into constellations and meteors next and that will be pretty much the end of the unit. It looks like we're just in time - our field trip to HR McMillan is coming up soon. (The grade 4's wondered why we weren't going on a field trip about Weather - I made the point that none of them had gone on this field trip before and that not all the field trips would be about one particular grade - there will be future field trips that revolve around the grade 4 curriculum, just not all of them!)
The grade 4's are working on their Weather unit. Some of their assignments:
1. Last week, I assigned a weather book - the need to describe the morning and afternoon weather using words (particularly mentioning whether we have any precipitation or not), take the temperature once and record it on the thermometer (ball park it) and draw a picture of the weather. This should hopefully be finished up in 2 weeks.
2. I've also asked them to complete a thermometer worksheet page - they need to find the temperature of 3 different locations in the world and record it on the thermometer.
3. Get a pop bottle (or water bottle) of decent size and cut the top part off (leave about 3/4 of the bottle). Flip the top part over (make sure you take the cover off first). Tape the edges if you can. Here's a picture:
I asked them to have this ready for next Thursday. We read a page about measuring precipitation and had a really great discussion about the purpose of tracking rainfall. We talked about floods vs. droughts, river levels and what it meant of the wildlife that life in it and how that effects even more animals. Specifically, the idea of salmon in BC and how that caused the fluctuation of the eagle population. (I told them to ask their families to bring them to Boundary Bay if they could - read on the news that there's quite a number of eagles over there right now). If it weren't for reports and this dreary rain, I'd go myself!
Socials - The grade 3's are working on Canada - we finished identifying all capital cities (there will be a quiz on Thursday) and worked on identifying major rivers in Canada.
The grade 4's, as I mentioned earlier, are working on First Nations. They have some homework - complete the page on the different types of tribes in Canada (and the regions they live in) and finish the corresponding map that goes with it. A few of them chose to go to homework club yesterday (and are asking to go again on Monday) to complete it. Please ask them what they decided to do! This is due on Tuesday.
This has been a very wordy post, so I'm going to stop here. Have a lovely weekend!
Friday, November 9, 2012
Scholastic
Hi All,
Another post will hopefully happen this weekend to give you some updates from this week.
Before I forget:
December's Scholastic will go home next week. I know I'm sending them one after another this month, but in order to ensure that orders arrive before holidays, I will be trying to put Dec's order in on November 30th. If any of you want to use the orders as gifts, please send the order in a sealed envelope with a note to me. Let me know how you want to pick them up (I can leave a package in the office or pass it to you if you do pick up/drop off.
Have a nice weekend!
Another post will hopefully happen this weekend to give you some updates from this week.
Before I forget:
December's Scholastic will go home next week. I know I'm sending them one after another this month, but in order to ensure that orders arrive before holidays, I will be trying to put Dec's order in on November 30th. If any of you want to use the orders as gifts, please send the order in a sealed envelope with a note to me. Let me know how you want to pick them up (I can leave a package in the office or pass it to you if you do pick up/drop off.
Have a nice weekend!
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Finally.. pictures!
Am uploading pictures (finally! Only found my camera's charger on the weekend!) from September and October into our class' photo album. Click on the two owls found to your right to view!
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Math & Socials
Hi All,
Some updates tonight:
Math test: haven't finished marking, but the results were not as great as I'd hoped. As such, I'm not sure it's worth sending home because the class obviously needs more instruction/practice on patterning. Since we are already starting on numeracy, I will be "injecting" some instruction on patterning once every few days so that we can also continue working on that strand of math. As such, another assessment on patterning will likely occur before report cards come out in early December.
Meeting with our math coordinator next week to start planning our parent night. Stay tuned for more information! In the meantime, be on the lookout for some Math games to come home. Especially with numeracy, games will help reinforce the concepts we are working on (and hopefully help some students focus on the fun in Math!).
Last thing about Math: shared with the kids that Math is about laziness. We were working on representing numbers in a variety of ways today and got to talking about how identifying numbers by grouping them is much easier than counting one by one (example: 5 unit (or ones) cubes could be identified by seeing a group of 4 and 1 more rather than counting by 1's). The kids think it's absolutely hilarious!
Socials: next Tuesday, the class will have a Map quiz. The focus for the grade 3's will be on the provinces and territories of Canada (won't be particularly picky about spelling, but later, there will be another quiz on capitals, and I will start to get a little more particular!). The grade 4's will be quizzed on all continents, oceans and hemispheres. We had a discussion about it today and have identified it through colour coding on the world map. The maps should come home tomorrow when they complete their work on them.
Remembrance Day - our class will be performing two poems. Hopefully they've been shared with you by now. I've told the children that we will be reciting them by memory. We worked quite a bit on reading chorally and observing punctuation as we read. We started to look at intonation and expression and have also talked about enunciation (particularly with the words humanity, vanity and embrace). We had a good discussion about the meaning of the two poems as well.
HACE (Health and Career Education) - We've continued to work on 2nd Step. As you know from the homework from last week, we've been talking about being assertive (and also talked about passiveness and aggressiveness). We're currently working on developing empathy by trying to understand similarities and differences between people.
Reading - finally started guided reading! I've met with our first four groups this week. The students are getting into the routines and expectations for guided reading and understanding that we meet as a group to discuss the book (predictions, connecting, prior knowledge, text features, vocabulary, etc.) and that is followed by individual "whisper reading" while each person meets (and reads) to me individually. Other than guided reading, we've also started to "check for understanding" by identifying main characters, setting and 3 key events (in sequence). As the students become more comfortable with this, we will start to add different components to our checks.
Writing - finished our Halloween writing!! The artwork they completed really complements the write ups about Haunted Houses or Potions for sale. Some fantastic ideas and words were used! Through this writing activity, I introduced the writing process (aka Writer's Workshop):
1. Brainstorming - ideas, words
2. Drafting
3. Editing - checking for spelling, conventions
4. Conference - they share their writing with me and we talk about what they did well and followed by 1-3 things they need to do to "revise" (improve) their writing
5. Revising
6. Re-conference or Final copy.
Through the individual conferences, I can learn a lot about what students need to work on. Next week, we will be starting an activity on "hooks" (we talked a bit about introductions and conclusions in this past activity as well). The activities/assignments I give will be geared towards a certain write trait (see the class handbook for more info) or a writing feature. The conferences help me and the students narrow in on the individual skills that they need to work on as students are at a variety of comfort/skill levels in writing.
I put out a request for any clean and dry pumpkin seeds that may be left over from Halloween. We are planning a Christmas (yes! I am really not ready to think about it, but it's got to be done!!) craft and it's the perfect time of year to get pumpkin seeds!! If you've got any, we'd be ever so happy to have them sent our way.
Hope everyone had a great Halloween and that your coming weekend is a restful one!!
Monday, October 29, 2012
Math Test Tomorrow
Grade 4:
- addition table
- complete a given picture pattern, fill in the t-chart, describe the pattern.
- complete a partially filled out t-chart
- find the pattern using a calendar provided (word problem)
- Fact family (missing addend). Ex: £+11= 20, 40 = £-10
- describe pattern (decreasing pattern)
- 2 word problems (remember an equation is a math sentence (ex: 2+4=6))
Grade 3:
- given a pattern, continue it. Write the pattern rule (describe it)
- complete a given picture pattern, describe it
- number line pattern to complete and describe
- 100 chart pattern, observations of the given pattern
- word problem
- addition table
- complete a given picture pattern, fill in the t-chart, describe the pattern.
- complete a partially filled out t-chart
- find the pattern using a calendar provided (word problem)
- Fact family (missing addend). Ex: £+11= 20, 40 = £-10
- describe pattern (decreasing pattern)
- 2 word problems (remember an equation is a math sentence (ex: 2+4=6))
Grade 3:
- given a pattern, continue it. Write the pattern rule (describe it)
- complete a given picture pattern, describe it
- number line pattern to complete and describe
- 100 chart pattern, observations of the given pattern
- word problem
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Tonight's homework
Hi All,
Given the number of interruptions we've had this week, we're trying to play a little bit of catch-up through homework. Everything that's being sent home should be in the "finishing up" stage:
- Science (grade 4): I've given them class time to read pages 6-7 (page 5 is new today), highlight main ideas and to make notes on the 4 stages of the water cycle (condensation --> precipitation --> collection --> evaporation&transpiration).
- Math: complete the sheet sent home - we've worked on it for two days. If they've forgotten: we are not doing question #4 and we are using question #3's number line to help us answer the last question.
That's it for now!
Given the number of interruptions we've had this week, we're trying to play a little bit of catch-up through homework. Everything that's being sent home should be in the "finishing up" stage:
- Science (grade 4): I've given them class time to read pages 6-7 (page 5 is new today), highlight main ideas and to make notes on the 4 stages of the water cycle (condensation --> precipitation --> collection --> evaporation&transpiration).
- Math: complete the sheet sent home - we've worked on it for two days. If they've forgotten: we are not doing question #4 and we are using question #3's number line to help us answer the last question.
That's it for now!
Monday, October 22, 2012
Good news!
Hi All,
Hope everyone had a great weekend. I was pleased to be able to meet with all of you last week, thank-you for taking the time to come out. (Was so glad that I managed to stay mostly on schedule!)
The common theme around many of the conferences last week was Math and Homework. Let's talk about homework first. I am not a huge believer in homework because the children have been in school for so many hours of the day and need some "down" time, just like the rest of us. My other biggie is that homework needs to be meaningful for it to have any value, and at times, it's difficult to find work that can be sent home and reinforced in the way that I've introduced it in class. If you are interested in the topic, Alfie Kohn, a well known Education lecturer/author, has written a popular article called "Rethinking Homework" - read it here. (Just a read that gets you thinking!)
That being said, as you've discovered, I do send home some work that has usually been started in class and just needs to be completed. I will sometimes send work home that also helps families better understand what we are working on in class (for example, asking the children to fill in a graphic organizer that talks about connections - after we've done a few in class).
Last thing about homework - anything related to word sorts - you can find the "how to" in that booklet that I sent home during the open house. If you need another copy, please let me know.
Onto Math! I attending a two day conference in Victoria last week.. all on teaching Math. I'll admit, Math is one of my favourite subjects to teach, so it was pretty exciting to be at an all-Math conference with teachers who were all of the same mindset. While I was there, I had the opportunity get our district Math Coordinator to agree to co-hosting a Math Parent night! (So exciting!). In the near future, Mrs. Bletcher and I will be announcing the date in which we will be running a variety of activities that will help you understand how Math is being taught in classes today. Once we hold the first evening, I will try to schedule a few smaller scaled sessions that focus on the strand we are working on. More details to follow!
Quick reminder that we have our field trip to Delta Museum tomorrow. Be on te look out for a Halloween letter this week!
Have a wonderful week!
Hope everyone had a great weekend. I was pleased to be able to meet with all of you last week, thank-you for taking the time to come out. (Was so glad that I managed to stay mostly on schedule!)
The common theme around many of the conferences last week was Math and Homework. Let's talk about homework first. I am not a huge believer in homework because the children have been in school for so many hours of the day and need some "down" time, just like the rest of us. My other biggie is that homework needs to be meaningful for it to have any value, and at times, it's difficult to find work that can be sent home and reinforced in the way that I've introduced it in class. If you are interested in the topic, Alfie Kohn, a well known Education lecturer/author, has written a popular article called "Rethinking Homework" - read it here. (Just a read that gets you thinking!)
That being said, as you've discovered, I do send home some work that has usually been started in class and just needs to be completed. I will sometimes send work home that also helps families better understand what we are working on in class (for example, asking the children to fill in a graphic organizer that talks about connections - after we've done a few in class).
Last thing about homework - anything related to word sorts - you can find the "how to" in that booklet that I sent home during the open house. If you need another copy, please let me know.
Onto Math! I attending a two day conference in Victoria last week.. all on teaching Math. I'll admit, Math is one of my favourite subjects to teach, so it was pretty exciting to be at an all-Math conference with teachers who were all of the same mindset. While I was there, I had the opportunity get our district Math Coordinator to agree to co-hosting a Math Parent night! (So exciting!). In the near future, Mrs. Bletcher and I will be announcing the date in which we will be running a variety of activities that will help you understand how Math is being taught in classes today. Once we hold the first evening, I will try to schedule a few smaller scaled sessions that focus on the strand we are working on. More details to follow!
Quick reminder that we have our field trip to Delta Museum tomorrow. Be on te look out for a Halloween letter this week!
Have a wonderful week!
Monday, October 15, 2012
Follow by Email
Hi all,
Just a short post on this rainy Monday night:
If you are interested, you can enter your email address in the "follow by email" box on the right hand tool bar. I've never tried this before, but I'm assuming that they email each time there is a new post.
Stay dry!
Just a short post on this rainy Monday night:
If you are interested, you can enter your email address in the "follow by email" box on the right hand tool bar. I've never tried this before, but I'm assuming that they email each time there is a new post.
Stay dry!
Friday, October 12, 2012
Set and Self Evaluations
Hi all,
A busy week, but I feel like we got quite a bit accomplished in Math and Science. Hopefully we can start squeezing even more in as we get more and more familiar with routines and expectations.
First off - as requested, I've posted the link to the game SET on the side bar under Links. (HN - See! I remembered! Just for you! :))
Yesterday, we began our home reading logs. I asked the class to record what they read each night so that they may start to be a little more accountable with their nightly reading homework. I will be doing a "homework check" each Monday to see how much they've recorded on their logs.
Today, we added another component to their homework duotangs - A oral language/self awareness assessment. We will be completing this once a week, on the last instructional day of the week. Students are to reflect on their own participation and listening in class and from there, share this information with you and decide on one area that they are going to focus on in the coming week. We briefly talked about the importance of being honest with themselves on their evaluation because it really doesn't effect anyone except yourself - that this is meant for their own self-improvement! Since it's all about self improvement, we also discussed the meaning of reflection and also shared with them that it was meant to help each of them improve themselves and explained how I am continuously reflecting on how I am teaching them. For example, I will sometimes completely scratch an activity even though we first start it because I might notice that it's not working or I might go back and re-teach a concept in another manner because most of the class isn't understanding. Each Monday, I will also be checking these self-assessments to make sure that they've shared them with a parent and had their parent "autograph" (they were absolutely thrilled to get to autograph their own).
We had a quick Math quiz today on patterning. Students were asked to build (with tiles), their own growing or shrinking pattern, transfer the pattern onto grid paper, create a t-chart and finally, describe the pattern using words. The quiz will hopefully be returned to them on Monday and will be sent home for a signature.
Grade 4's began a unit in Weather yesterday. Some of what I will expect them to do will be a little more independent - for example, read pages from the textbook and highlight key ideas. We will be focusing on identifying important facts and non-fiction text features this term as we work on Science. Next week, we will conduct a simple experiment that will demonstrate the water cycle and create a flap book that identifies the 4 phases on the water cycle and what each phase does.
The Grade 3's continued to work on their unit on the Solar System. We have finished talking about the phases of the moon and have completed a book about the phases. This will get sent home next week for them to share. In the last two days, we've been learning about the sun and found 6 or more interesting facts about the sun from watching short clips from Bill Nye the Science Guy and reading about it from the Magic School Buses' tour of the Solar System. The children wrote down the facts they learned and then transferred them onto a "flower" foldable which will become part of their lap book on the Solar System (basically, as we learn different aspects of the solar system, they will add something they've learned to their book).
Hope that was not an overload of information on a rainy Friday night! Have a great weekend and see most of you next week at PT conferences!
IT
ps/ at the conference, to help me stay on time for appointments, I will be posting a notice asking you to knock when it's 1 minute to your appointment! I hope this helps eliminate too much wait time because 15 minutes just flies!
A busy week, but I feel like we got quite a bit accomplished in Math and Science. Hopefully we can start squeezing even more in as we get more and more familiar with routines and expectations.
First off - as requested, I've posted the link to the game SET on the side bar under Links. (HN - See! I remembered! Just for you! :))
Yesterday, we began our home reading logs. I asked the class to record what they read each night so that they may start to be a little more accountable with their nightly reading homework. I will be doing a "homework check" each Monday to see how much they've recorded on their logs.
Today, we added another component to their homework duotangs - A oral language/self awareness assessment. We will be completing this once a week, on the last instructional day of the week. Students are to reflect on their own participation and listening in class and from there, share this information with you and decide on one area that they are going to focus on in the coming week. We briefly talked about the importance of being honest with themselves on their evaluation because it really doesn't effect anyone except yourself - that this is meant for their own self-improvement! Since it's all about self improvement, we also discussed the meaning of reflection and also shared with them that it was meant to help each of them improve themselves and explained how I am continuously reflecting on how I am teaching them. For example, I will sometimes completely scratch an activity even though we first start it because I might notice that it's not working or I might go back and re-teach a concept in another manner because most of the class isn't understanding. Each Monday, I will also be checking these self-assessments to make sure that they've shared them with a parent and had their parent "autograph" (they were absolutely thrilled to get to autograph their own).
We had a quick Math quiz today on patterning. Students were asked to build (with tiles), their own growing or shrinking pattern, transfer the pattern onto grid paper, create a t-chart and finally, describe the pattern using words. The quiz will hopefully be returned to them on Monday and will be sent home for a signature.
Grade 4's began a unit in Weather yesterday. Some of what I will expect them to do will be a little more independent - for example, read pages from the textbook and highlight key ideas. We will be focusing on identifying important facts and non-fiction text features this term as we work on Science. Next week, we will conduct a simple experiment that will demonstrate the water cycle and create a flap book that identifies the 4 phases on the water cycle and what each phase does.
The Grade 3's continued to work on their unit on the Solar System. We have finished talking about the phases of the moon and have completed a book about the phases. This will get sent home next week for them to share. In the last two days, we've been learning about the sun and found 6 or more interesting facts about the sun from watching short clips from Bill Nye the Science Guy and reading about it from the Magic School Buses' tour of the Solar System. The children wrote down the facts they learned and then transferred them onto a "flower" foldable which will become part of their lap book on the Solar System (basically, as we learn different aspects of the solar system, they will add something they've learned to their book).
Hope that was not an overload of information on a rainy Friday night! Have a great weekend and see most of you next week at PT conferences!
IT
ps/ at the conference, to help me stay on time for appointments, I will be posting a notice asking you to knock when it's 1 minute to your appointment! I hope this helps eliminate too much wait time because 15 minutes just flies!
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Grades and PT Conferences
Hi All,
Just a heads up - parent teacher conference schedules are going home tomorrow. If the time does not work for you, please give the office a call to re-schedule. To add more excitement to my day, next Thursday the 18th, I'm headed to Victoria for a 2 day Math conference on the 19-20th. This means that I need to catch the ferry early and will not be holding any interviews past 4pm. Since I'm not sure what time we'll be back from WE day, I am hoping to hold all conferences before the 18th.
In other news, I've started to "grade" some of the entries in our Writer's notebooks. I spoke to the children last week about how they'll be graded and what the grades mean (more to come on this). I will be (or have) included a stapled in copy of the matrix of the Language Arts Writing outcomes in their book with a grade at the bottom. Since it's only first term, the grade 4's will be using a matrix that is based on the end of the grade 3 year and the Grade 3's will have the same but using the end of year grade 2 matrix. This will last until early 2013 when we will switch over to next matrix. Reason being - the tool was designed to evaluate students in the Spring and it would therefore be unfair to expect them to already meet expectations that may not yet be developmentally appropriate.
Just a quick reminder:
- Field trip next Tuesday - please send the form back if you have not already done so!
- Early dismissal next Thursday the 18th (As of now, Mr. D will be taking my class while I'm at WE day)
- Pro-D day on Friday, the 19th
Thanks!
Just a heads up - parent teacher conference schedules are going home tomorrow. If the time does not work for you, please give the office a call to re-schedule. To add more excitement to my day, next Thursday the 18th, I'm headed to Victoria for a 2 day Math conference on the 19-20th. This means that I need to catch the ferry early and will not be holding any interviews past 4pm. Since I'm not sure what time we'll be back from WE day, I am hoping to hold all conferences before the 18th.
In other news, I've started to "grade" some of the entries in our Writer's notebooks. I spoke to the children last week about how they'll be graded and what the grades mean (more to come on this). I will be (or have) included a stapled in copy of the matrix of the Language Arts Writing outcomes in their book with a grade at the bottom. Since it's only first term, the grade 4's will be using a matrix that is based on the end of the grade 3 year and the Grade 3's will have the same but using the end of year grade 2 matrix. This will last until early 2013 when we will switch over to next matrix. Reason being - the tool was designed to evaluate students in the Spring and it would therefore be unfair to expect them to already meet expectations that may not yet be developmentally appropriate.
Just a quick reminder:
- Field trip next Tuesday - please send the form back if you have not already done so!
- Early dismissal next Thursday the 18th (As of now, Mr. D will be taking my class while I'm at WE day)
- Pro-D day on Friday, the 19th
Thanks!
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Back again!
Good evening!
I've got a little more time to write tonight.
In Language Arts, we have been working on reinforcing and solidifying the concepts of selecting appropriate books and learning to "read to self". The reason why we are spending so much time ensuring that the class understands these concepts is because I will be running guided reading groups at this time and it's critical that the students are able to read independently and use their time wisely in practicing their decoding skills, reading fluency and comprehension. The books that students chose from our class library should be at their reading level - studies have shown this is the best way to improve their reading fluency. In the coming days, we will begin to work on traits of reading - looking at visualizing and lifting great "lines" from the books that we are reading. (The intention is not to deepen understanding, but to also get them to connect what great authors do to enhance their writing).
In Writing, we have started the process of using our Writer's notebooks as an outlet to our ideas and thoughts. Each morning after word sorts, students are asked to "empty your head". This means that they can write down whatever they are thinking - be it something they did last night, something exciting that is coming up, or even things that are bothering them (like the tiresome homework that they have to complete!). The purpose in providing this time is so that students will be ready to take in and write about the things that I may present in the mini-lesson that follows this time in our schedule.
We have also begun to generate lists in our Writer's notebooks: Expert Lists, Best Lists and Worst Lists. We will spend another few days generating ideas for writing and will follow that up by activities that help to build writing fluency (again, based on reading-writing connections).
We officially began our first round of Word sorts this week. So far, the Red and Blue groups have had their word sorts introduced to them and by the end of the week, the Green and Orange groups will also be ready to dive into the sorts that we've been "trained" for.
Solar systems will be our first unit in Science. We will follow that very closely with a unit on Weather. A field trip is tentatively planned for the end of November/Early December to the Space Centre in Vancouver. By that time, Division 4 should be experts on the Solar System!
Last week, we began to look at the various geographical forms last week by reading a book called "Me on the Map". We came up with a sentence to help us remember (hopefully you've seen this already -- asked the students to take it home to practice):
Super - Street
Cats - City
Put - Province
Cup - Country
Cakes - Continent
Everywhere - Earth
We began to work on our own "Me on the Map" pieces which will hopefully be completed this week. In the coming week, we will also start to look at the significance of maps and the various components that you need in order to properly read a map. The students will be asked to draw their own maps with the grade 4's requiring greater details. The grade 4's will also soon be assigned a "mini project" which will mostly be completed in class but may require some work at home. A short oral presentation will follow the completion of this project - more information to come!
A last little note before I finish off for the night: On October 18th (Parent-teacher conference day #2), I will be attending the WE day event with PG's WE team. Since it takes place at Rogers Arena, I will most likely not get back to school until about 4-5pm (fingers crossed that traffic cooperates on that day). Since PT conferences begin at 2pm on that day, I will be needing to schedule some make up times - most likely the additional times will be (on top of Wednesday, October 17th):
Tuesday, October 9th
Monday, October 15th
Tuesday, October 15th
Time slots are:
3:15-3:30
3:30-3:45
3:45-4:00
4:00-4:15
4:15-4:30
If you prefer any of these times, please let me know soon.
Until next time!
IT
I've got a little more time to write tonight.
In Language Arts, we have been working on reinforcing and solidifying the concepts of selecting appropriate books and learning to "read to self". The reason why we are spending so much time ensuring that the class understands these concepts is because I will be running guided reading groups at this time and it's critical that the students are able to read independently and use their time wisely in practicing their decoding skills, reading fluency and comprehension. The books that students chose from our class library should be at their reading level - studies have shown this is the best way to improve their reading fluency. In the coming days, we will begin to work on traits of reading - looking at visualizing and lifting great "lines" from the books that we are reading. (The intention is not to deepen understanding, but to also get them to connect what great authors do to enhance their writing).
In Writing, we have started the process of using our Writer's notebooks as an outlet to our ideas and thoughts. Each morning after word sorts, students are asked to "empty your head". This means that they can write down whatever they are thinking - be it something they did last night, something exciting that is coming up, or even things that are bothering them (like the tiresome homework that they have to complete!). The purpose in providing this time is so that students will be ready to take in and write about the things that I may present in the mini-lesson that follows this time in our schedule.
We have also begun to generate lists in our Writer's notebooks: Expert Lists, Best Lists and Worst Lists. We will spend another few days generating ideas for writing and will follow that up by activities that help to build writing fluency (again, based on reading-writing connections).
We officially began our first round of Word sorts this week. So far, the Red and Blue groups have had their word sorts introduced to them and by the end of the week, the Green and Orange groups will also be ready to dive into the sorts that we've been "trained" for.
Solar systems will be our first unit in Science. We will follow that very closely with a unit on Weather. A field trip is tentatively planned for the end of November/Early December to the Space Centre in Vancouver. By that time, Division 4 should be experts on the Solar System!
Last week, we began to look at the various geographical forms last week by reading a book called "Me on the Map". We came up with a sentence to help us remember (hopefully you've seen this already -- asked the students to take it home to practice):
Super - Street
Cats - City
Put - Province
Cup - Country
Cakes - Continent
Everywhere - Earth
We began to work on our own "Me on the Map" pieces which will hopefully be completed this week. In the coming week, we will also start to look at the significance of maps and the various components that you need in order to properly read a map. The students will be asked to draw their own maps with the grade 4's requiring greater details. The grade 4's will also soon be assigned a "mini project" which will mostly be completed in class but may require some work at home. A short oral presentation will follow the completion of this project - more information to come!
A last little note before I finish off for the night: On October 18th (Parent-teacher conference day #2), I will be attending the WE day event with PG's WE team. Since it takes place at Rogers Arena, I will most likely not get back to school until about 4-5pm (fingers crossed that traffic cooperates on that day). Since PT conferences begin at 2pm on that day, I will be needing to schedule some make up times - most likely the additional times will be (on top of Wednesday, October 17th):
Tuesday, October 9th
Monday, October 15th
Tuesday, October 15th
Time slots are:
3:15-3:30
3:30-3:45
3:45-4:00
4:00-4:15
4:15-4:30
If you prefer any of these times, please let me know soon.
Until next time!
IT
