Wednesday, November 6

 Hi parents,

We had a good day today, especially in the morning. The kids worked on their Calgary in Motion workbooks, and answered reading comprehension questions about a separate workbook on the Invictus Games and Remembrance Day.

In math, we played "Classroom of Doom". Multiplication has been added to the game to make it more challenging!

In the afternoon, we did Daily LA, and then wrote sentences for our spelling words.

We ended the day by looking at the data for how students travelled to school. The students made observations about it.

The spelling quiz has been post-poned until next Friday, November 15, just because this week is short, and next week only has two schools days so it would be pointless to start new words.

Tomorrow is our Remembrance Day assembly. Please consider sending a donation with your child.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Friday, October 18

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today with a tiny class. 

In the morning, the students went off in pairs to survey every class in our school about how they got to school today. We're going to go over the data tomorrow and make observations and predictions.

In math, we learned the "noodle and bowls" strategy for solving multiplication problems. This strategy is only slightly less 'concrete' than the Montessori materials, as it involves drawing circles (bowls) to represent groups, and then filling each bowl with a set number of lines (noodles) to represent that quantity of each group. So for example, you could solve 3 x 4 by drawing 3 bowls. adding 4 noodles to each bowl, and then counting up the total number of noodles to find the product.

In the afternoon, the students worked in groups to read, and re-read, specific paragraphs from "Trapped in Transylvania", that really showcased the narrator's personality. For example:

We talked about how the narrator, Devin, is able to take a scary story like Dracula, and actually make it pretty funny.  It'll be interesting to compare Devin's narration style to the one we're about to experience in "Wish Tree" (the narrator is a tree).

We ended the day with Music.

Tomorrow is School T Shirt Day! The Shirts went home today! If your child was away, they can get their shirt tomorrow and wear it on top of whatever else they wore!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Monday, Nov. 4

 Hi parents,

Today we finished reading Trapped in Transylvania! Only two school days behind schedule, that's pretty good. The students were pretty engaged by this book from start to finish and I really enjoyed reading it and talking to them about it.

In math, we worked with the coloured bead bars on multiplication basic facts. The students have definitely got the hang of making groups, and counting up totals, so now we can turn our focus to building skip-counting skills to make the whole process more efficient.

We started talking about remembrance day and how buying and wearing a poppy can help veterans. We also talked about why veterans may need support - the students had a good understanding of the mental and physical trauma that can come from fighting a war, and how these obstacles can make it harder for veterans to support themselves when they come home.

On Thursday, our school is having a Remembrance Day assembly, and all students will be given a poppy. Please consider sending a donation with your child.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Spelling Words! (Week of Nov. 3)

 Spelling List A ( Nov. 1 - Nov. 7)

only	very	many	body	copy
ugly	pony	hazy	city	duty

 

Spelling List B (Nov. 1 - Nov. 7)

cherry	story	enemy	dairy	mercy
weary	abbey	shiny	fancy	really

 

Spelling List C (Nov. 1 - Nov. 7)

thirty	deputy	injury	entity	costly
theory	steady	worthy	guilty	comedy

The theme this week is -y endings. I don't anticipate these words will be very difficult, but each list has at least a couple that students might not be familiar with, so think of it as a vocabulary building opportunity as much as an opportunity to practice an incredibly common spelling pattern.

Good luck!

Zac

Wednesday, October 30

 Hi parents,

We had an excellent day today. In the morning, the students wrote eerie Halloween poetry.

After that, we had a brief overview of another Montessori material for multiplication - the Decanomial Coloured Bead Bars (Coloured Beads for short).

In the afternoon, we had Daily LA, and then did an art lesson on 'perspective'. We talked about how perspective can be used to trick your eyes into thinking certain aspects of a picture are closer or further away. The students applied this knowledge to draw their own Dracula castles.

At the end of the day, we took apart our community. It was sad, but its nice to have the desks back.

Tomorrow is Halloween! The parade starts at 1:00pm (doors at 12:45pm) and parents are welcome to come and watch!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Tuesday, October 29

 Hi parents,

We had another good day today. In the morning the students finished up their maps of our community. We also learned about streets and avenues, and about how many roads are named in honour of important people, places, or events.

Blog Homework - Important Roads in Calgary (+3 table points!)

Choose a road in Calgary. Work with an adult to research who / what it is named after. Write 3 sentences about that person, place, or thing.

            example: Deerfoot Trail is named after... They lived in... They were important because.... 

For writing, we wrote sentences for our spelling words. We talked a bit about alliteration, and how it can be used to make a sentence more interesting, or to create poetic effects.

We met up with our buddies and played a "Get to Know Each Other" board game. The students made Venn diagrams to showcase their similarities and differences. 

In the afternoon we did some multiplication work using the Montessori Multiplication Bead Board material. This can feel like a tedious way to solve multiplication problems, but its the best way I know of to build foundational multiplication and array skills. It pays off in the long run!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Monday, October 28

 Hi parents,

We had a good day today all around! In the morning, the students made maps of our cardboard box community. This proved to be a pretty difficult task and we're going to have to keep working at it tomorrow. The hard part was choosing a scale so that everything could fit on two pages of a sketchbook. 

In math, we officially started learning about multiplication. We watched this classic episode of Numberblocks, which introduces it better than I ever could:

Then I introduced the Multiplication Bead Board material. It's another great material like the stamp game that forces kids to slow down and model the process of multiplication carefully. It builds the foundational understanding that needs to come before we start memorizing facts and building fluency.

In the afternoon, we did Daily LA, and then met with younger students from Mrs. Green's class, to showcase our community project and explain the steps we took to make it. Some kids even volunteered to share their writing work from last week.

We ended the day with Spelling Practice. Tomorrow is spooky socks day.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Halloweek at LBS

 

Halloween Parade - October 31 at 1:00pm

 

Spelling Words! (Week of Halloween)

 Spelling List A (Oct. 25 – Nov. 1)

black	broom	boo	spook	goblin
monster	cape	cobweb	dark	grim

 

Spelling List B (Oct. 25 – Nov. 1)

morbid	beast	broomstick	bones	frighten
ghost	howl	haunt	pumpkin	troll

 

Spelling List C (Oct. 25 – Nov. 1)

zombie	ghastly	specter	potion	ogre
ghoulish	graveyard	eerie	coffin	dreadful

The theme this week is spooky words. Good luck!

Thursday, October 23

 Hi parents,

I'll keep this very brief as conferences are starting soon - we had a great day today. We worked on the project and added street signs and crosswalks. We did the spelling quiz. We did a writing task where the students wrote a persuasive paragraph about how a tourist in our fictional community should spend their day. We read Trapped in Transylvania and ended the day with Music.

If you have not booked a conference yet, please email me at zalink@cbe.ab.ca to set one up. I have lots of availability tomorrow.

Have a nice night,

Zac