Wednesday, January 25

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty cool day today! One of our students brought in a Lion Dance costume, so we spent a lot of time learning about the lion dance, and just studying the costume in general, which has loads of intricate details and moving components. We did a little tour around the school too!

We had attended another special presentation too - this one was put on by the Calgary Public Library (virtually). It was an interview with an indigenous elder, who spoke about her family history, and the ways in which indigenous peoples weave (sometimes literally) their family's stories into certain important artifacts, such as drums, or moss bags, which are used to carry babies around. It was really fascinating! 

We did a math assessment today, which tested the students on their multiplication skills. All around, I was super impressed. The expectations for multiplication have changed quite a bit this year with the new curriculum - its basically shifted up a whole year, in that what was previously expected of Grade 5 is now expected of Grade 4s, and the Grade 4 expectations are now placed on Grade 3s. 

The students have absolutely risen to the challenge though. They did such a good job of effectively applying multiplication strategies to solve the problem, and although some errors did occur, they were mostly just minor computation errors. This is completely to be expected, since the students have only had a couple weeks to practice counting by 6's, 7's, 8's, and 9's! The fact that they were able to set up equations to represent the word problems is an achievement on its own, and I am very proud.

That being said, if you want to start practicing times tables at home, it would surely be a great confidence booster. :)

 In the afternoon, we had Music, and worked on write-ups for the sacred teaching of 'Courage'.

Have a nice day!

Zac