Highlights from last week in Room 18:
Math: We are continuing on our journey into Multiplication and learning tips and tricks to mentally solve simple multiplication equations easier. We then talked about the word "Multiple" and what it means to have a multiple of a number. We are going to be using these skills to work further into multiplication of 2 digit by 1 digit multiplication next week and discussing what the work Inverse means in mathematics! Science: Grade 4's & 5's took their research from last week (Parts of a flower and mixtures & solutions) and visually represented it in their visual journals using pictures, diagrams and self-written definitions. They used their "looking closely" and varying pencil strokes to create life-like drawings and interactive pages to display their information. This week, we will be transitioning into Plant life cycles/male & female parts of a plant (grade 4) and the 3 types of mixtures (grade 5). We will also be discussing and graphing our ideas for what to grow in our greenhouses now that our heat lamps have arrived! I am hoping by the end of the year we will have some vegetables to eat and some plants to enjoy! Social Studies: We are continuing on our journey into discovering how to sustain life off of the land in Alberta (Grade 4's) and Canada (Grade 5's). We have also touched on the regions of Alberta as well as the Provinces of Canada and will continue our research into the first peoples of Alberta/Canada, and landforms, animals, languages spoken, locations and climates within Alberta/Canada. Language Arts: We are continuing to focus on self and peer editing of our writing this week as well as learning how to write a "hamburger" paragraph about a topic. Each student is learning about a region of Alberta or a Province of Canada and is writing paragraphs about different subtopics of each (animals, climate, landforms etc.) and then editing their work for punctuation, spelling, grammar and overall appearance. Talk to your student about how they are learning to better their writing since the winter holiday. :) This week we went on a wonderful trip (#7) to the Glenbow Museum where we got to enjoy 2 wonderful programs about artifacts, the ocean, fossils and our history. During our lunch hour we took advantage of our time and walked through the +15's to eat our lunch at City Hall and explore what an amazing building that is! We also were able to enjoy a brief trip through the amazing Niitsitipiisini section on the third floor. Each student is coming home today with a coupon for a free adult admission and I would highly reccommend taking your child to the Glenbow and exploring the Niititipiisini section on your own at a slower pace as it is so important to our Social Studies, Science and History learning this year! Thank you so much to our Volunteers for sticking around on a cold, long day but wonderful day! Important Upcoming Dates: - Monday, January 29th: Report Cards to go home. Please sign the brown envelope and send it back with your child. The report card can stay home with you. Please feel free to contact me through e-mail or phone if you have any questions or concerns! -Thursday, February 1st: Field study #8 to Studio Bell/National Music Center: We have all 4 volunteers confirmed already! Thank you to Sanjeev's Dad, Jawairia's Mom, Anthony's Mom and Raiya's Mom this time around! I look forward to a wonderful day exploring this new building with you! -Friday, February 2nd: FYP (Follow Your Passion) Friday's start up again with new passions for the students! As your student what their new passion is this time around! :) -Students are reminded to read at home 20+ minutes each night and writing a short, paragraph summary 3-5 times a week in their home reading logs. Please note that these are summaries and not 2--4 page journal entries. Each entire should take no more than 1 page. Journal's are collected once a week and prizes are given out for milestones! If you have any questions are concerns please don't hesitate to ask! Have a wonderful week full of adventures! Miss Paddon
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This week was a fantastic week of learning, exploring and fun in Room 18!
Math: We decided to go back to basics with our Multiplication skills and practice mental math multiplication of our times tables (up to 12x12). We will be continuing on with this nearly every day to strive for quicker multiplication recall which will help us all to multiply bigger numbers when the time comes! Ask your child about the tricks and strategies we have started to learn about for our 0-12 times tables! Writing: This week Room 18 were introduced to my lovely green pen editing! :) We spent the week learning how to edit our own work as well as how to give constructive feedback to others. We talked about grammar, plurals, punctuation and paragraph skills. We have been trying to remember as a class how important it is to keep organized, well-written notes as we become scientists and document our learning! Social Studies: We continued our discussions of the land and how important plants, animals and landforms were to the First Nations people as well as how they have evolved and are just as important to us today. We discussed pictographs, petroglyphs and began designing our own pictograph story on small canvas'! Science: Grade 4's have begun their journey through plant structures, their purposes and have begun to create a beautiful plant visual journal. They continued their learning of plant structures by dissecting our plants which we have been growing in the classroom and documenting their findings. Grade 5's have put on their chemist hats and begun discussing chemical reactions, solutions, solvents and solutes and spent their Thursday afternoon completing solution experiments and documenting their results! This week we also had 2 special guests in our room! On Thursday we started our day with Cst. Don, our school Liaison officer where he discussed the importance of seeing yourself as a "superhero" and knowing how amazing each individual person is in their own way. We then spent some of Thursday afternoon with a visitor from the French Immersion program here in Calgary who sparked interest in our grade 5's while talking about the options for their future! We have an upcoming field study to Glenbow Museum on January 25th. The fees and forms are due back on Friday, January 19th and I will be contacting volunteers early next week! Thanks in advance! :) Here is an updated list of Field Study dates that are booked. Hopefully having these dates will allow us to see even more of our wonderful parent volunteers :) Field studies completed in Aug-December (Miss Paddon's Class): Valley View Park Niitsitipi Learning Center (NLC) Science Center National Geographic Live Fort Calgary Ralph Klein Park Upcoming: 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 27th - Niitsitipi Learning Center Guests (In School): All 3 classes 28th - TREC Education in Room 18 all day (In School) March: 6th - Nose Hill Park with Elder Randy Bottle: All 3 Classes 20th - TREC Education in school all day for grade 5's 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 attending TBA 14th - Calgary Zoo: All 3 Classes 23rd - Moh'Koh'sis (Fort Calgary) with NLC support: 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 Have a wonderful weekend and I look forward to another fantastic learning experience in Room 18 next week! <3 Miss Paddon Happy Holiday's from the 4/5 teachers of Valley View! :) Click Here
Also, I found a way to share our Ingenuity Challenge video! Enjoy! Click Here I wish everyone a warm holiday season filled with family and chocolate! Remember to read and record your summaries throughout your holiday and be sure to explore the outdoors and go on many adventures! See you all in January! <3 Miss Paddon I want to start by saying how absolutely floored I was with the success of opening our Arcade. We had hundreds (YES--hundreds!) of students, teachers, parents and siblings come into our Learning Commons and play our arcade games! I am SO proud of the students of room 18 and I am extremely grateful to everyone who took the time out of their busy lives to come and join us -- you put a smile on so many faces just for showing up --Thank you! (More photos of all games will be posted next week once I get them uploaded to my computer!)
Thank-you again to the 8 lovely students and their families who showed up to our winter celebration this week and put on a beautiful show for their family and friends. It was such a fun night and it was great to get to spend some time outside of school hours getting to know my awesome students. :) Next week we have a very full week! Monday: Field Study #6 for Miss Paddon & Miss Miao's classes. We have 4 wonderful volunteers who have been contacted previously this week all ready to go! This is an all day field study and the kids will be back to the school in time for regular dismissal. Please remember to dress for the weather as this trip may take us outside in colder temperatures! Tuesday: A math problem was completed by each child this week and will be sent home on Tuesday. This is just a glimpse into what we are doing and a chance for you to see how your child has achieved on this particular problem. Please remember that these problems are not a reflection of how your child is doing as a cumulative math learner, but simply a look into how they did with this particular question. This will allow you to see areas of growth and improvement for your child before report cards are sent home in January. Wednesday: Last day of classes for students! Teachers will be in school the following 2 days (Thursday/Friday) for professional development training. We will see you all on Monday, January 15th for the second half of our school year! Have a wonderful winter holiday filled with family, friends and celebrations of all kinds. <3 Miss Paddon This week was such a lovely week in room 18.
We have been working fast and furiously on our Arcade games and the students of Room 18 have absolutely blown me away with how much they have completed so quickly as we approach our upcoming Arcade opening date! Please see your child's blue folder to have a look at the invitations that they have personally made for you to come and join us this coming Tuesday, December 12th from 1-2pm in the Valley View School Learning Commons for the grand opening of our Arcade! We are so excited to show you what we have been working so hard on -- and the process is far from over yet :) We have completed our business plans where we have been tackling multi-step word problems using adding and subtracting of decimal numbers to the hundredths. It was wonderful to see the budding minds of Room 18 trying to discover new ways to come up with these answers! Well done! We also completed a set of instructions and a written purpose of our games. We have spent a lot of time discussing "purpose" and what it means in multiple situations, ask your child about different purposes, such as what is their purpose in school or as a kid. :) Forms and the $23.00 fee for the upcoming Ralph Klein Park trip are due this coming Friday, December 15th. Our final trip date for 2017 is coming up quick -- Monday, December 18th is our day to head to Ralph Klein Park for a wonderful day of activities! The school Winter Celebration for Division 2 students is this coming Wednesday, December 13th from 6-7pm. Each student in the school has a specific job and important place in this celebration of seasons. If your child is going to be missing for this, can you please let me know so I can plan accordingly with our awesome Music teacher, Mrs. Brown. I look forward to celebrating with you all that night! :) The final day of school for students is Wednesday, December 20th. This will be a full day for students -- teachers will be in the following 2 days for professional development days before the winter break! We are due to return to school on Monday, January 15th, 2018! Have a wonderful weekend everyone! See you for a very full week coming up! Miss Paddon This week at a glance:
We spent the first portion of our week completing our "Beakerhead Ingenuity Challenge" so that we could submit it for today's deadline! It was extremely exciting and rewarding to witness the students of Room 18 come together and complete this massive task! Below is our entry: "Our grade 4/5 class at Valley View School began the Ingenuity Process by brainstorming moments in our every day life that we thought "there must be a better way"! We came up with so many amazing ideas that the students found it difficult to pick just one. Instead - We decided to create multiple inventions which intertwine and work together to make our every day lives easier! Together, we used Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and 21 amazing budding scientists' knowledge to create 6 inventions! An alarm clock that rolls you out of bed, a sink that brushes your teeth for you, a table that feeds you delicious meals, rocket shoes to get you to school faster, a voice activated pencil that completes your homework and an alarm clock that soothes you to sleep after a long day of inventing! We learned that if we use our imaginations we can create anything we set our minds to even if it is just with some simple pieces of cardboard, paint and glue! We also learned how important it is to recycle items and to think of new and ingenious ways to reuse items to make our lives better and our world cleaner!" -- I am looking for a way to share our video with you of this process --stay tuned! :) In math we have been working very hard on learning about decimals, how to add and subtract decimals and making change for money! This will all help us when we complete our business plans for our Arcade Game Project new week! We have begun the building process of our Arcade games and we will be continuing this until December 12th when we plan to have an open house to invite all parents, families and students into our home made arcade! Stay tuned for details in the coming week! Valley View Food Drive: December 4 – 8, 2017 It’s time again for Valley View’s annual food drive! From December 4th to 8th, students will be bringing non-perishable food to school to help address hunger on a local level. Supporting the Calgary Food Bank is the perfect way to participate in the spirit of the season. When making your donation please think about the non-perishable food in your own home. What do you usually buy and use? Those items often make the best donations. It’s helpful for donors to double check the expiry dates on items they bring in. Thanks in advance! Wednesday, December 13th is our Division 2 Winter Celebration from 6:00pm - 7:00pm - All family welcome! We will be talking next week about writing and speaking persuasively, continuing on with adding, subtracting money, speaking of circuits and simple machines as well as using the scientific method to make progress in our games! It should be a wonderful week ahead :) Thanks and I hope you all have a lovely weekend! :) 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. 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 |