The last 2 weeks have been a wonderful whirl-wind of adventure!
In Math, we have started focusing on a lesson-style called "3-Act Math" where the students are put in a position to find out missing information and to really start using their problem solving and mathematical reasoning skills. As your child how we solved the "Indie 500" and "Tomato, Tomato" problems! Also, if you are wanting your child to gain more practice with problem solving, feel free to go to our links page and find the "3-Act Math" link under "Math" and click on any of the questions! Good Luck! :) Our Social Studies and Science projects were due this week! As a reminder of what the projects were: Science: Students were in mixed grade groups where they had to study a type of storm/natural disaster (tornado, hurricane, flooding, mud slides etc.). Grade 5's focused on the science behind how their type of storm is formed and the grade 4's focused on the environmental impacts of their type of weather. Together, they then came up with a science experiment that helped back up their research. Social Studies: The Grade 5's independently researched a Province in Canada of their choosing and the Grade 4's researched in small groups a region of Alberta. They were looking for information such as: Plants, animals, climate, languages spoken, landmarks, landforms and physical geography of each place. They then had to become teachers and confidently teach their class about their place. Ask your child how their presentation went and how they think they could improve next time! Stay tuned for a grading sheet that will come home after Spring Break letting you know how your child did! This week, we also welcomed our 2 wonderful student teachers for their first week! Ms. Malhi and Mr. Elrafi are going to be with us full-time learning about the Science-School methods and beliefs as well as immersing themselves in the teaching styles associated with our program. We are so luck to have them until the end of April and I know you will all join me in welcoming them to our team! :) Unfortunately, we have to announce that our Aggie Days Field Study which was scheduled for Thursday, April 12th is no longer going ahead. Fortunately, no paperwork or money was collected so there will be no refunds or rescheduling of volunteers needed. Luckily we have an abundance of exciting things happening over our last few months of school and I'm confident we will be just fine with one less study! :) One of out last days together this week, the grade 5's were off at their TREC education in-school study which had them discovering solar power and creating solar powered cars! The grade 4's who were back in class took full advantage of their time without the 5's and learned more about potential and kinetic energies all before creating functioning rubber-band powered lego cars and testing them out down our race track (hallway)! Ask your child about what Potential and Kinetic Energy is and how it helped power our rubber band power cars. Field study forms and money for our Field Study to Ralph Klein Park are due when we return back to school after the break. We have enough volunteers already confirmed for this trip so if you still need to get your volunteer days in, please feel free to contact me and book yourself in ahead of time if you wish! :) I wish you all a safe, happy and beautiful Spring Break and I look forward to hearing of your adventures when we return on Tuesday, April 10th! All the best, Miss Paddon Upcoming Important Dates: April: 13th- Earth Rangers in School 16th - Ralph Klein Park: Miss Miao & Mrs Kear 17th- Ralph Klein Park: Miss Paddon 19th- Math Fair at Valley View School 6:00-7:30pm 19th- Subway Fun Lunch 20th- PD Day - No School for Students 23rd - National Geographic Live: Miss Paddon & Mrs. Kear 24th + 26th- Diversity Cup Practice 2:45-3:45pm
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I can't even begin to tell you how thankful I am as a teacher for having such a fantastic week together with our class.
On Tuesday, we spent our morning exploring Nosehill Park with Elder Randy Bottle (Saa’kokoto) where we hiked through thick snow, played outdoor games and listened with our hearts to Saa'kokoto as he showed us many connections between our land, animals weather and life. This morning left us feeling so fresh and happy to continue our day of journaling when we got back to school. We began discovering what Natural Disasters are and how some of them occur. We specifically started talking about Oil Spills and the history of oil spills in Alberta. We then began completing research and inquiring about the Dawn initiative and how they help wildlife during oil spill disasters. After lots of discussions and research, we spent Thursday and Friday completing experiments on the effects of 3 different types of soaps and how they clean oil from the feathers of birds. We then expanded our experiment scenario of our "Valley View Oil Spill" and started thinking from the perspective of an Environmental Engineer. As Engineers, each group had a budget of $120 to buy materials and build an effective solution for removing oil from the water. Ask your child about their methods, observations, and conclusions about their prototype and what they would change if they were to tackle this challenge again. Our class has been doing a wonderful job of continuing to water our plants and rotate the planters to ensure optimal sunlight. Because of this, we have seen sprouts in our lettuce, kale, carrots, cucumbers, peas and bean plants! We are very excited about this and can not wait to see what growth happens over the weekend! On Thursday evening we had a great outdoor school meeting for our grade 5 parents. Thank-you so much to everyone for coming to the meeting, filling in your forms, handing in the $20.00 fee and having wonderful conversations about our upcoming outdoor school field study! I am very excited to be joining in on the fun for our 4 day adventure in May! Our Artist in Residence, Leah Donald, wrapped up her 2-week residency with the students and staff of Valley View. Thank-you so much to all of our wonderful volunteers who came in and helped with this massive art project for the school. The art piece looks incredible but still will not be completely finished until late April -- stay tuned to see the incredible artwork that was created during this time! I am blown away! :) Have a great weekend and get ready for the warmer weather next week! :) <3 Miss Paddon Upcoming Dates: - Monday, March 12th & Thursday, March 15th - Diversity Cup Soccer Tournament Tryouts after school from 2:45pm-3:45pm. Permission forms have been sent home :) - Monday, March 18th - We will be welcoming 2 student teachers into our classroom until the end of April. This is an amazing opportunity and we are so excited to see what their time with us will bring! - Thursday, March 22nd - Last day of classes before break -Thursday, March 22nd-Friday, March 23rd - Parent Conferences - You are now able to sign up for conferences! I already see a large amount of parents have signed up so thank-you for thinking ahead and I look forward to see you all again soon! This week we were so lucky to begin our adventure into felting with our Artist In Residence Leah Donald. Our end goal is to take ordinary wool and turn it into a beautiful piece of felt artwork that we will hang in our school lobby. It has already been a fantastic, community-building experience for all! Ask your child what they learned about how we turn wool into felt already! Keyword: Agitation
We spent the vast majority of this week creating blue prints, building prototypes and discussing our observations about a challenging task -- raising the height of our greenhouse heat lamps about 4 inches! We voted on what we all thought was the most successful and realistic choice and it is serving us well so far! Congratulations to Sanjeev for his wonderful design! On Wednesday we re-discovered area and perimeter as each student had to work together to calculate both A and P of the base of both of our greenhouses. We had to find out these measurements in order to buy the proper size pots that would fit perfectly in our homemade and store bought greenhouses! Once we calculated the accurate measurements, we began the planting process! This included potting, labelling, measuring, watering, reading plant-specific needs and instructions as well as discovering where the best place to put our heat lamps within the greenhouse was. We will continue to observe our indoor garden and compare/contrast how the vegetables grow in the store-bought greenhouse versus our homemade greenhouses. We are now the proud owners of some wonderful vegetables which we hope to flourish and share with our Grade 1 buddies before the end of the year! Ask your child which vegetable they helped to plant of the 7 that we have so far! We had Stephanie Bartlett from the Niitsitipi Learning Center join us on Thursday for a lovely discussion about Elders, how to listen with our hearts and an introduction to our field study at Nosehill Park for next week! A big thank-you to her for clearing her schedule to see us! Thank-you so much to every parent who is or has volunteered for our artist in residence -- your extra set of hands has helped and will help so much! :) Upcoming Important Dates: - Tuesday, March 6th - Nosehill Park Field Study - Please dress for the weather as we will be outside from 8:30am-12:00pm. Any students who are not properly dressed for a crisp winter day will not be able to join us for safety reasons. (please note that this has been changed to a half day field study) - Thursday, March 8th - Outdoor School Parent Meeting (Mandatory for all Grade 5 parents and students.) There will be information regarding the details of this exciting adventure as well as a question time for parents to get any answers they are looking for! - Monday, March 12th & Thursday, March 15th - Diversity Cup Soccer Tournament Tryouts after school from 2:45pm-3:45pm. Permission forms have been sent home :) - Thursday, March 22nd - Last day of classes before break -Thursday, March 22nd-Friday, March 23rd - Parent Conferences (Details to follow) Have a lovely, snowy weekend and try to stay warm! <3 Miss Paddon |