Another awesome week in room 18 filled with an assortment of shining moments!
The Science Program grade 5's got to participate in a fantastic challenge day with TREC Education this week where they focused on wind energy, renewable vs non-renewable energy and electricity! They used their knowledge to then create wind turbines which they were very proud of. Beakerhead Ingenuity Challenge - Our class is one of a few that are taking part in the Ingenuity Challenge. Many schools throughout the province of Alberta participate in this creative Science challenge every year. This year's theme is "There must be a better way" and students were sent a box of cardboard to use for their creation. We have already generated some excellent "out of the box" ideas and I am looking forward to seeing what we come up with together as a class. Our completed creation will then be entered into the Beakerhead challenge by December 1st and the link to our entry will be made available on our class blog -- Stay tuned! :) Our Arcade Game project is in full swing and we are finally in our small groups of 3-4 to begin brainstorming and collaborating our ideas! Our next step is to complete a blueprint of what we think our first prototype is going to look like and then to build! We have begun discussing our Business Plan portion of this project, including decimal numbers, what a decimal number is, where do we see them in every day life and how this knowledge will help us plan our projects. Next week we will be adding and subtracting money (decimal numbers) in hopes of creating a successful business plan for each game. We are still in need of LOTS of hot glue sticks for this project -- any and all donations are appreciated as right now we have none! Math coach - Our school is one of 25 CBE schools to have a Math coach working in our building! Our Math coach, Mrs. Thomas, will be working in our school 2 days a week to help support our students and staff on building mathematical reasoning skills and strengthening problem solving skills. We are so lucky to have her and we hope you will join us in giving her a warm welcome! Upcoming important dates: - Cookie dough orders for Parent Council are due December 1st. Our parent council are amazing supporters of our school, especially our grade 5 students when they go off to Outdoor School in May. This trip normally costs around $300+ per child however, parent council pays for most, leaving parents with a bill of only $20. I love to support our council and I hope you will all join me in doing the same. I have 13 tubs of cookie dough sold already --- can anyone beat that number by the end of next week? :) -We are hoping to have our arcade games finished so that we can transform our gymnasium into a real life Arcade on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 12th! Keep this date marked in your calendars because all parents and families are welcome to come! -- Stay tuned for an invitation :) -Division 2 Winter Celebration: December 13th from 6-7pm - All welcome! -Ralph Klein Park field study on Monday, December 18, 2017. Parents, please let me know if you are available to join us and have valid CBE clearance. -The CBE Modified Calendar is slightly confusing in regards to our last day of classes before winter break. So to clarify -- Our last day of classes for all students is Wednesday, December 20th. Teachers will be in school on the 21st and 22nd working on professional development! Classes resume on Monday, January 15th, 2018.
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Thank you so much to everyone who I met with at our parent conferences. It was so lovely to have such great conversations with you all and I have a really good feeling about the second half of our year!
We started this week by going on our 5th field study to Fort Calgary! We spent our morning exploring our past and how waste has changed the way we live and have lived in the past. We then became archaeologists for the afternoon and uncovered artifacts from settlers, first nations and missionaries! Continuing on with our Arcade game project, grade 4’s finished their research on simple machines and Grade 5’s finished their research on circuits and electricity. We will now be moving into our group work to begin blue print development, business plan production as well as persuasive speech writing. We have PLENTY of boxes and cardboard now —Thank you all SO much for your donations! What we need now is an abundance of hot glue sticks! :) We are very luck to welcome a Math Coach to Valley View School starting this coming Monday. She is one of 25 Math Coaches across the CBE and she will be working with the grade 5’s across the school to help bridge the gap between elementary school to middle school! The dates for our Winter Celebrations have been announced. There will be two nights which are divided into grade groups. Night 1: Grade 3-5: Wednesday, December 13th 6:00pm - 7:00pm Night 2: Grades K-2: Thursday, December 14th 6:00pm - 7:00pm Celebration Assemblies will be presented in the Valley View School Gymnasium and doors will open at 5:45pm each evening. Thank you all and have a wonderful weekend! Good Morning Everyone!
A few updates from Room 18 this week: In Math, We have decided that we needed to continue working on our 2 digit x 2 digit multiplication skills for just a bit longer, but are very eager to get started on division, perimeter and area! Our literacy time this week was spent discussing how we can create detail in our writing and using that detail to "paint pictures" in our readers minds. We ended our week by putting ourselves in the shoes of soldiers and writing detailed letters home to our families. We discussed the emotions that these solders would have felt and how important it was for them to write about their experiences so that we, later on in life, could know more about our history. We watched the following video "Behind the Lines" to help us see for ourselves how important letter writing is. Click here to watch the video In Science, the grade 5's moved on to relating magnetism to electricity and finding the commonalities between each. The grade 4's learned about Inclined Planes as well as beginning their knowledge of kinetic and potential energies! We have about 1 more week left of research before we have a quick quiz on these topics, and then get to the planning, blueprinting and building of our Arcade projects! Thank-you so much to everyone who continues to bring in cardboard for our projects -- you are all amazing! We have lots, but will never turn supplies down such as hot glue sticks, guns and any other building materials we may need! In Social Studies, we were so lucky to have Mrs. Stoesz come in and talk to us about the Treaties of Alberta along with the importance of Acknowledging the Land we live on. We used this knowledge in our Remembrance Day assembly, run by all 4/5 classrooms in Valley View School. I was so proud of everyone who had a part in this assembly and I hope they enjoyed their experience as well -- Well done, everyone! :) Our trip to the Jack Singer Hall to hear National Geographic Primatologist Mireya Mayor speak was amazing! She sparked our interest and fed our hunger for adventure during this talk. We all left with lots of "I love, I wonder, I wish" questions for her and spent a lot of time discussing her adventures! Parent Conferences will be this coming Thursday 4pm-730pm and Friday 8am-11:30am. (Thursday will be a half day - dismissal at noon and it is a PD day for students on Friday) Please log into your CBE My Account to book a conference will me. Alternatively, you can call the school office and they can schedule you in or you can e-mail me personally and we can work together to find a time that fits you. I look forward to meeting with you all! :) Reminder that we will be heading on our 5th field study of the year this coming Monday at Fort Calgary. Remember to send some healthy snacks, a water bottle and some warm clothes! We still have some outstanding money owed as well as some forms that have to come back for this trip -- if you have not sent in money or forms for your child, please do so on Monday morning or else they will unfortunately have to stay behind. Thanks! Have a wonderful Remembrance day weekend and I will see you all next week! Good Afternoon Everyone!
This week in Room 18 we continued our addition, subtraction, place value and multiplication work. Next week we will be diving into the wonderful world of Division! In Science, the grade 5's continued their work with circuits and electricity by researching short circuits, Kilowatt Hours, resistors and the symbols scientist and engineers use when drawing diagrams of circuits. The grade 4's continued their work with simple machines and completed research on wedges and levers! We are nearing the end of the research portion of our Arcade game project and will be moving on in the next couple of weeks to group works and planning! Thank you so much to everyone who has brought in the enormous amount of boxes and recyclables for us to use! On Tuesday, we spent our day completing a Pumpkin study (thank-you to all of the wonderful volunteers who donated pumpkins to us!). Who would have guessed we could complete math, literacy, science, food studies and art all with a pumpkin! As your child how we calculated the weight of each pumpkin and what the insides of a pumpkin tasted like! :) Just a reminder to parents that the weather is now getting cold so students should be coming to school dressed to be outside. If the temperature is -20 with the windchill or lower, then we have "blue days" where the students stay inside. However, anything warmer than that and we will all be outside trying to keep warm. The kids in Room 18 know that the expectation is -- Whatever you come to school dressed in, is what you are expected to wear outside all day! Next Friday, November 10th, the grade 4/5's of the entire Valley View School will be taking part in a Remembrance Day assembly. This is a short assembly with some speakers and sharing of work. Because of the vast amount of students in Grade 4/5 in the school, not everyone will be taking part in the assembly itself, however ask your child how their class will be contributing! All parents, guardians and family members are welcome to join us at 10:30am in our school gymnasium for this special event. I just wanted to remind parents and guardians that a requirement of your child being in the science program is that each student has an adult volunteer on a school trip a minimum of 3 times. We have had some fantastic volunteers so far, so thank-you to those people! To make it easier for working families, I am going to list below all of the Field Studies that we have booked for the year. Next to each field study is the date and the names of the teacher who's classes are attending on that day. PLEASE NOTE: these dates and locations are subject to change and we will make you aware of any changes as we hear of them. This list is simply to keep you informed and to ensure you have ample time to book time off work in order to get your 3 volunteer days in! Please understand if and when changes occur -- we are trying our best to keep it the same! Thanks :) Field studies completed in Aug/Sept/Oct: Valley View Park Niitsitipi Learning Center (NLC) Science Center November: 6th - National Geographic Live: Miss Paddon & Mrs Kear 13th - Fort Calgary: Miss Paddon & Mrs Kear December: 18th - Ralph Klein Park: Miss Paddon & Miss Miao 19th - Ralph Klein Park: Mrs Kear January: 24th - Glenbow Museum: Mrs. Kear & Miss Miao 25th - Glenbow Museum: Miss Paddon February: 1st - National Music Center: All 3 Classes 20th - Calgary Humane Society (In School): All 3 classes March: TBA (Awaiting confirmation from NLC) - NLC: Mrs. Kear & Miss Paddon TBA (awaiting confirmation from NLC) - Nose Hill Park with NLC: All 3 Classes April: 12th - Aggie Days: All 3 Classes 16th - Ralph Klein Park: Miss Miao & Mrs Kear 17th- Ralph Klein Park: Miss Paddon 23rd - National Geographic Live: Miss Paddon & Mrs. Kear May: 8th - 11th - Outdoor School (Grade 5’s Only): Teachers TBA 14th - Calgary Zoo: All 3 Classes 29th - Fort Calgary: Miss Miao June: 5th - Grow Calgary: All 3 Classes 13th - Jumpingpound Forest: All 3 Classes 19th - Fish Creek Park: All 3 Classes Thank you and have a wonderful week-end... stay warm! Miss Paddon |