Monday, December 4

 Hi parents,

We had a bit of an unruly day today. The students needed a lot of reminders about working quietly, and not calling out during class discussions at the carpet. We have also been having a lot of things go missing - small toys, special pencils and erasers mostly - and I have asked the kids to leave all that stuff at home just to be safe.

In the morning, we worked on the preliminary steps of our final paragraph task. The students will be writing 1-2 paragraphs about a planet other than Earth. They will be incorporating all the techniques we've focused on over the last few weeks - sentence variety, topic and concluding sentences, engaging vocabulary words, writing flow, and editing. But before we get to any of that, we're scanning through pre-written jot notes on the planets, and planning what information to include. Tomorrow, we'll complete a 'paragraph planning burger' organizer, and on Wednesday and Thursday, the students will write their final copies.

We learned about a journaling technique called "CSI Journaling". CSI stands for  "Colour, Symbol, Image". When listening to a presentation, or watching a video, students will jot down a colour that connects to the content, a symbol to represent a big idea, and sketch an image too. We'll be using this journaling technique tomorrow when we listen to our Guest Speaker talk about homelessness in Calgary.

In the afternoon, we practiced spelling words, and then did a graph analysis activity in math. Students looked at a line graph, and made observations and predictions based on the information it showed. Feel free to look at this graaaph at home and discuss it further.

Building Materials Wanted!

At the end of the day today, the students started to plan their own 'Mars Rover' models, that they will be building out of misc. loose parts (mostly stuff from a recycling bin). If you have clean boxes, containers, skewers, popsicle sticks, tape, etc. that might be good for a project like this, please send them to school with your child! I'd like to start building the rovers next week if possible.

Please also talk with your child about their own plan, and help them make sure its feasible. :)

Thanks and have a nice night!

Zac