Developing our 'Character'

Last year our school-wide 6 C's focus was 'Collaboration.' While we continue our discussions and activities in order to support developing our collaboration skills, our focus has shifted somewhat to 'Character.' We have been talking a lot as a school community and within our classrooms, about what 'Character' means and how we can develop it within ourselves.  Growth Mindset (versus Fixed Mindset) and developing 'Grit' are huge aspects of character development as we learn to see challenges and obstacles as opportunities for new growth and development rather than catastriphic events. We watched a video on mindset and read the book 'When Sophie Thinks She Can't' by Molly Bang. The 'Y' chart above is what students thought character 'Looks Like', 'Sounds Like' and 'Feels Like.' 

Supporting Your Child's Reading with the 'Raz-Kids Reading Program'

Your child has been set up on the 'Raz-Kids Reading Program.'  The 'Raz-Kids' icon is in their 'Student Portal' and the link to the Portal is on the left side of the blog homepage under 'Helpful Resources.' Yesterday your child came home with a parent letter and a yellow login card which they glued onto the back page of their agendas. I suggest that each child attempt to log into 'Raz Kids' from home.  Your child's participation in 'Raz Kids' is entirely up to you.  You may even choose to use the program for 'Daily Reading' homework! It is a progressive program which means that the books increase in complexity as they move through the program and build upon their reading skills.  Have fun exploring this electronic resource designed to support your child's reading development!

Picture Day News

Your child is bringing home their picture day card (agenda pocket) which has all the information you will need in order to access their photos and place orders online.

If your child missed picture day or you are not happy with their photos, PICTURE RETAKE DAY IS NOVEMBER 7th. Since  we DID NOT take class photos today, the class photo will be taken on November 7th.

Classroom Wish List!

Thank you to all parents who have sent in donations of tissue and ziplock bags in the past few weeks. If you wish to donate items to the classroom, below is a list of items that would be greatly appreciated:

-tissue (we can always use more)
-headphones
-hand sanitzer (unscented)
-Sticky Tack (to adhere items to the wall without nails or tacks)

Weekly Word Study - Weeks #1- #30

This is a list of our 'Word Study' words for the year. Should your family be taking a vacation or your child is ill, you can find the words here!  

Week #1: rough, grudge, stunt, thumb, once, another does, trouble, cousin, began, until, which
Short 'u' sound, other short vowels, two-syllable words

Week #2: afraid, explain, laid, raise, straight, freight, height, they, favourite, able, station, relation
Long 'a' sound, word with open syllables 

Week #3: fifteen, eager, easily, ready, please, ecology, maybe, been, only, universe, future, beautiful
Long 'e' sound, long 'u' sound 

Week #4: obey, ocean, wrote, goal, owner, tomorrow, program, broken, potato, throat, followed, spoken
Long 'o' sound, present and past tenses 

Week #5: I'll, they've, don't, we're, didn't, isn't, couldn't, haven't, you're, it's, doesn't, I've
Contractions

Week #6: myself, lying, apply, knight, quite, buy, inquire, higher, variety, smiling, rhyme, python
Long 'i' sound and 'ing' endings 

Week #7: gloomy, choose, loose, route, clue, truth, ruin, Tuesday, usually, threw, could, should
Words with 'oo' sound spelled as: oo, ou, ue, u, ew

Week #8: spoil, choice, avoid, oyster, employ, annoy, ground, allow, ourselves, somehow, amount, boundary
Dipthongs of 'oi' and 'oy'

Week #9: first aid, flashlight, high school, goalkeeper, airmail, one-way, something, birthday, everybody, everyone, anything, themselves
Three types of compound words: one word, two words and hyphenated, 

Week #10: stalk, because, brought, called, awful, lawyer, daughter, fault, author, already, although, office
Words with the 'aw' sound 

Week #11: swimming, loving, carried, bragged, worried, beginning, exciting, finished, laughed, quickest, tiniest, lonelier
Words with the endings: ed, ing, er, est

Week #12: countries, women, lessons, people, friends, calves, flies, lives, businesses, families, leaves, pictures
Plural forms of words

Week #13: urgent, Thursday, purpose, thirsty, camera, remember, surprise, dollar, colour, collar, mayor, doctor
Words with the 'er' sound and two-and three-syllable words

Week #14: square, dairy, January, daring, beware, partner, guarding, orchestra, ordinary, important, force, before
Words that have 'r' controlled vowel sounds 

Week #15: about, quiet, other, compare, thousand, happen, different, dozen, animal, second, quarter, again
Two-syllable words

Week #16: where, thought, athletes, thruthful, purchases, though, children, friendship, together, watches, arithmetic, length
Words with consonant digraphs of wh, ch, tch, sh and th

Week #17: regular, generous, bridge, genius, dangerous, figure, country, circle, peaceful, since, dancing, decided
Words with the variant sounds of 'g' and 'c'

Week #18: eagle, example, towel, special, legal, whole, several, terrible, question, telescope, celebrate, address
Words with the final 'l' sound spelled: le, el, al

Week #19: tried, weigh, piece, receive, their, neither, field, receiving, hurried, writing, tired, worries
Words with 'ie' and 'ei'

Week #20: happiness, loneliness, exactly, honestly, speedily, angrily, happily, teacher, actor, liar, biologist, assistant
Words with the suffixes: -ness, -ist, -ant

Week #21: scene, they're, through, aloud, cruise, crews, principal, principle, knew, two, write, reign
Review of long vowel sounds

Week #22: thoughtful, successful, wasteful, plentiful, government, amusement, excitement, punishment, fearless, careless, useless, reckless
Words with the suffixes: -ful, -ment, and -less

Week #23: sugar, musician, patience, mission, physician, tension, conclusion, caution, constellation, fiction, official, glacier
Words with the sound of 'sh' spelled; sh, s, ci, ti, ss, si

Week #24: wrong, dough, knapsack, listen, climb, half, island, talking, design, tonight, limb, knot
Words with silent letters 

Week #25: rewrite, reappear, rebuild, dishonest, disagree, disappoint, misbehave, misunderstand, misspell, misuse, illegal, illegible
Words with the prefixes: re-, dis-, mis-, il-

Week #26: paragraph, trophy, enough, cough, fourth, Friday, roughest, fragile, fluid, festival, stuffed, telephone
Words with the 'f' sound

Week #27: imperfect, impolite, impatient, inactive, incorrect, inconsiderate, preview, prejudice, prevent, uncomfortable, unaware, ungrateful
Words with the prefixes: im-, in-, pre-, un-

Week #28: geology, geometry, geography, geologist, transport, import, portable, bicycle, cyclone, automatic, autobiography, photograph
Words with Greek and Latin root affixes

Week #29: decorate, decoration, divide, division, populate, population, infect, infection, punctuate, punctuation, attend, attention
Multisyllabic verbs

Week #30: temperature, vertical, equation, currency, environment, agriculture, civilization, manufacture, characterisitic, atmosphere, representative, substitute
Multisyllabic words

Math Update

This past month we have been working our way through our first 'Math Up' Unit: Representing Whole Numbers (Number Sense and Numeration). 

Throughout this unit students have been learning to:

1) Represent numbers using units of thousands, hundreds, or tens.

2) Represent and rename numbers using combinations of units of 

    thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. (e.g. 310 is the same as 3 

    hundreds and 1 ten)

3) Represent numbers to 1000 using number words. 

4) Recognize that certain respresentations fo a number can reveal

     particular characteristics of that number (e.g. when we see the 

     representation of 1240 as the number sentence 620+620 we know 

     it is an even number 

     because there is a zero in the ones place).

5) Make inferences about numbers from given information/figure

    out numbers based on a set of clues.  

Our next 'Math Up' unit will be: Patterns (Patterning & Algebra).  

The learning goals of the unit are: 

1) To describe how a repeating pattern continues and create repeating patterns. 

2) Describe how growing patterns continue, and create growing patterns. 

3) Describe how shrinking patterns continue, and create shrinking patterns. 

4) Accurately follow a pattern rule and make predicions based on that rule. 

5) Propose a pattern rule that describes a given pattern and make predictions 

    based on that rule. 

Your child is assessed in math based on daily work and 'your turn' 

questions from the unit, participation in 'Minds-On' activites and 

'Number Talks', teacher observations, summative assessments of 

learning, etc. From time to time there are also math tests and pop quizzes. 

'The Best Part of Me' Opinion Paragraphs

In Language Arts, we are learning all about the important components of a good paragraph: topic sentence, at least three supporting ideas and a strong closing sentence that links back to the original topic sentence. Then we read the book 'The Best Part of Me' by Wendy Ewald. In the book, children talk about their bodies in both pictures and words. We read and discussed the book together as a class and brainstormed with each other our favourite body parts and the reasons for our choices. Students shared their opinions by writing paragraphs about their favourite part, following the paragraph writing format taught. 

We learned all about the important components of a good paragraph: topic sentence, at least three supporting ideas and a strong closing sentence that links back to the original topic sentence. Then we read the book 'The Best Part of Me' by Wendy Ewald. In the book, children talk about their bodies in both pictures and words. We read and discussed the book together as a class and brainstormed with each other our favourite body parts and the reasons for our choices. Students shared their opinions by writing paragraphs about their favourite part, following the paragraph writing format taught.