Friday, October 3

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today. In the morning, students worked on their paragraph writing, and as predicted, the skyscraper schools (see previous post) have grown even taller. We'll finish those up as soon as we're back. 

In math, we played Place Value Bingo. Basically this is regular bingo, but with big 5-7 digit numbers. At first we just played the easy version where I read out the numbers, and students crossed them off their cards. Then we played the more advanced version, where I just read place value clues about the numbers (for example, "there is a 4 in the ten thousands place, and a 6 in the tens place", could be a clue for the number 42,761).

We did Daily LA and then I gave the class an art lesson on drawing scary, weird faces. We ended our day by playing Dr. Dodgeball in Gym.

I'm really going to miss being here next week. We are off to an awesome start this year and I know we'll pick up right where we left off when we get back. 

Have a nice weekend! (let's hope its not plural...)

Zac

Thursday, October 2 (Stuffy Day tomorrow)

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today. In the morning we had our best, most productive work period of the year. A lot of students were able to finish their paragraph writing, and we've started putting them up on display. I'm sure tomorrow there will be even more skyscrapers (you have to open the building up to see the writing)

In math, we did some 3-digit addition w/o regrouping worksheets. Every once in a while it's good to get some repetitive practice in. Based on the way the kids blew through these, I think we're ready for bigger numbers, and of course regrouping too. On that note - if you happen to find yourself looking for math worksheets, this website is great: https://www.k5learning.com/free-math-worksheets

We had Music and Gym too. 

In the afternoon, we rewatched a video that we'd watched yesterday which gave a brief overview of human history. The reason for this is we're going to start learning a bunch of Canadian history content that is brand new to the curriculum  (I'm actually really excited to teach it because it's pretty interesting!), but I thought it would be good to give the students a bit more context. It's hard to understand Canadian history without also having some general idea of indigenous and European history too.

The students used the information in the video to create simple timelines that showed some of the big innovations that led to the formation of modern societies. Things like agriculture, writing, and trade.

We are not going to have our spelling quiz tomorrow because it just wasn't enough time. We'll keep working on these words for the next little while. If your child is blasting through them and wants more of a challenge, learning to spell all of these words would be a great one: https://dolchword.net/by-grade-frequency/ 

Generally kids who are able to spell more high-frequency words accurately have a lot more confidence with writing. They have more time to spend thinking of creative ideas because they're not caught up trying to remember how to spell 'through', 'because' and 'laugh'.

Tomorrow is going to be a 'Stuffy Day' because the students have been fantastic and they've earned it. If your child is bringing a stuffy, please make sure it's small enough to fit in their bag.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Wednesday, October 1

 Hi parents,

I hope you all had a nice long weekend. We had a great day back at school today. In the morning, the students worked on the good copies of their paragraph writing work. We used the Stamp Game some more while also writing the standard algorithm alongside it. We played kickball in gym, and had Music in the morning.

In the afternoon we did Daily LA and looked at this week's spelling words. I think we might postpone the quiz this time, the words are pretty tough and probably require more than 2 days to master. I think I underestimated them when I was putting the lists together.

Have a nice night,

Zac