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

Wednesday, October 23

 Hi parents,

Today we had our first big quiz of the year, and the students did a fantastic job all around. I was so impressed by how quietly and attentively they worked. I think we're definitely ready to move on to new things in math, but we'll keep the addition and subtraction skills alive through morning math problems. Also, students will have an opportunity for a rewrite down the road if they're not happy with their scores (different problems, same concepts).

In the afternoon we finally built the city. 

Students made such an amazing contributions to the planning process! We talked about conservation spaces, walkability, pollution reduction, convenience, safety, and efficiency.

Parent Teacher Conferences

The city display will be up tomorrow for conferences too. Please email me if you have not booked yet. I have lots of availability left. Online Conference Booking has closed already for some reason but I can still book you in manually.

Have a nice night,

Zac

 

Tuesday, October 22

 Hi parents,

We had another busy day today with lots of building. The students finished their buildings for our community project, and painted them too. Tomorrow we're going to put it all together!

In math, we did some addition and subtraction word problems, in preparation for our quiz tomorrow. Based on what I saw today, the class is ready to go! I told the class I'd put some homework up, so here it is. These are questions the kids made up.

BLOG HOMEWORK (+1 TABLE POINT per question (max 3 per person))

Mac has 12,345 cookies. She eats 3,492. How many does she have left?

A pizza costs $3.75, and a BIG Pizza costs $5.30. How much would they cost together?

The Pink Power Ranger has 44 Math Books. She writes in 22. How many books did she not write in?

The Giant has 7,502 pens, and he finds 88 more. How many pens does he have now?

Mr. Link has 4,936 books. He drops 1,956. How many books does he still have?

Thankfully the students are not being marked on 'realism' for this one.

We did an experiment to show how a glacier melts to form rivers and lakes. We brought some hard packed snow into the classroom and put it on a slanted board, to represent a glacier high in the mountains. As it melted, it was interesting to see how it had picked up pebbles, and 'dropped' them off along the slope.

In the afternoon we did more work in math, and students who finished early wrote sentences for their spelling words.

We ended the day with Music.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Monday, October 21

 Hi parents,

We had a busy day today. We spent most of the morning working on our Community Building project. Check out these creations!

We also worked on subtraction using five digit numbers. The ten-thousands place usually throws kids off for some reason, even though it's just more of the same thing. 

In the afternoon, we learned more about glaciers. We addressed the question, "Where do rivers come from?" and had a great discussion about how rivers always flow from higher to lower elevation, and as such, they often begin high in the mountains, often as a glacier melts.

We also finally went over our Spelling words.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Friday, October 18

 Hi parents,

We had a great end to our week today.

We finally started building structures for our community project. The students had a great time with this. We talked about the importance of creating everything to scale, and they took that to heart. We'll keep on working next week.

We went outside and practiced football skills for gym. The kids thought they would hate it, but it turned out to be pretty fun.

We're more than halfway done Trapped in Transylvania now! We've met a couple new characters and entered a brand new setting.

In math, I am thrilled with how well the kids are doing with subtraction. Grade 3's worked on four-digit addition and subtraction problems today, and Grade 4's did decimal addition and subtraction. 

We didn't get to Spelling at all this week, so last week's words are going to carry over till next Thursday.

Have a nice weekend!

Zac