Tuesday, September 7

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today - it's amazing how quickly the students have gotten into the swing of things. 

In the morning, we did our usual Morning Math / Explore and Play routine, and then had our first Social Studies lesson. We watched the first episode of the PBS series "Molly of Denali", which is about a girl living in a small indigenous community in Alaska. Although the show is not set in Canada, I feel it can still help the students make a lot of meaningful connections to our learning about Canadian indigenous peoples. Also, it approaches topics like residential schools at an age-appropriate level, which I really appreciate. 

Here's the link to the episode we watched today (just part 1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSkJRXl2DDQ

The students wrote in their journals about their weekends. We talked about how, when writing, it's important to try to expand on simple sentences by adding specific details. This is a good habit to get into, even if the details aren't particularly exciting. As a class, we transformed the sentence "I ate breakfast." into a lengthy paragraph that described that breakfast in excessive detail. Having too much detail is a good problem to have.

The students familiarized themselves with this week's spelling words, and we talked about weekly spelling practice expectations. Students chose lists and got their first practice session completed.

In the afternoon, we went to Gym, did some buddy reading, and did a quick math activity around representing numbers. We're going to be covering some pretty complicated topics in math this year, but I want to make sure the students have a solid understanding of their numbers to 100 before we move on to those. 

Have a nice night!

Zac