Don't worry! This little classroom blog is still up and running. Things just seem to be flying by and our schedule has been jammed packed with so many end of the year events and celebrations. So I'll let the photos do most of the talking.

 

The weather has definitely improved, so we have been taking advantage of the warmer afternoons with some outdoor quiet and buddy reading opportunities.

 

 

Way back in May, our school celebrated our version of Rodeo Days which coincided with our local Coverdale Rodeo.

Some of our school rodeo events included the Rootbeer Chug,

and the Marshmellow Stuff.

 



 

While all these fun events were going on, some of us managed to relax in our western gear.

 

Other events included Clown Face Painting

 

and the Bubble Gum Blowing Contest.

 



Western Relays,

and finally, our favourite, the Chuckwagon Race!

 



 

One of our recent Math units focused on statistics and probability. We constructed and interpreted concrete graphs and pictographs to solve problems.

 

Here are some silly photos from one of our activities called:

 

I "Mustache" You A Questions

 

 

 Our most recent Math study focused on measurement. Here we are completing a measurement activity which included measuring our head, hands, legs and feet with our favourite unit of measurement.

 

 

That's a quick look at just a few of the things we have done over the last month. Unfortunately, I was unable to take any photos of our school's Sports Day. I would love it if someone would be willing to share their photos and post them on our blog.

 

Don't forget that tomorrow is our Parent and Volunteer Appreciation Tea.

We hope to see all of you there to say "Thank You" and show our appreciation for all your help and hard work this year.

Place Value, Penguins and Hula Hooping

SNOW DAY!

 We spent a few extra minutes outside today to enjoy the small amount of flurries that accumulated on our school field. Wow, was it ever cold outside. Don't forget to bring your snow gear to school tomorrow,this includes your mittens and toques, just in case the cold weather keeps up.

Last week, we started making some New Years goals. They are all on display outside of our classroom. We will be working hard to accomplish these goals throughout the year.

In Math, we have been working on place value. We have been completing many hands-on activities to help us strengthen this important skill. One of our favourite and engaging activities we have completed are creating our initials with base ten blocks and recording the value.

We have also been learning a whole lot about penguins and non-fiction text features.

We are also creating our own non-fiction penguin reports. So far, we have written about how penguins look, where they live, what they eat, and about penguin families. My students favourite part has been learning about how the adult penguins regurgitate into the penguins chick's mouth to feed their baby. Totally gross but awesome at the same time!

Our non-fiction reports should be completed by next week and I can't wait to display all their learning and hard work.

Along with our study of penguins, we've been reading some works of fiction from the Tacky Penguin series. So far we've completed a Tacky the penguin craftivity, a Tacky descriptive writing assignment (adjectives) for the stories Tacky the Penguin and Tacky in Trouble. Tomorrow we'll be reading Three Cheers for Tacky and completing a few more writing activities based on the series.

Finally, in gym, we are learning to improve our hula hoop and skipping skills. I  was able to capture a few short videos that showcase some of our amazing hula hooping accomplishments. These kids are ROCK STARS!

The next two are some of the awesome tricks we have been practicing. The first one is hula hooping around the knees and the second one around the neck.

I cannot figure out how to change the position of the last two videos so you will have to view them sideways. If anyone knows how I can change this please let me know. I have tried everything.

Enjoy your evening. See you tomorrow!

- Mrs. Singh

Place Value, Penguins and Resolutions

Welcome Back! It was great to get back into the swing of things at school. We started the day off with a little New Years fun. Every hour on the hour we opened up a brown paper bag with a message, treat or activity for all of the students. It was our way of celebrating and counting down the day since we could not be could all be together on New Years Eve. At 9:00 we found new erasers for everyone in our first paper bag. At 10:00, our paper bag contained a silly message stating that we could work with our shoes off (this was, by far, our favourite). At 11:00 we found 20 sets of sparkly stickers to share with each other. At 12:00 we found another message encouraging us to chat with our friends. At 1:00 our paper bag contained sour keys for everybody to enjoy and finally at 2:00, another message giving us 20 minutes of free centre time. Not only was it fun and exciting waiting for each hour to roll around, it also gave us a little practice and review with telling time.

 

We also wrote some personal and school resolutions to work toward as we start the month of January. We read the story Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller, to help us better understand what is a resolution and why we make them. I found this video link of the story if you would like to hear it again.

 

 

In Math, we started learning about place value. We will be learning about the ones, tens, and hundreds place values for the next couple of weeks. This can be a difficult concept for some students to really grasp but we'll continue to practice it everyday. Here is a great place value song and video to reinforce what we will be learning in class.

 

 

Finally, in the afternoon we started our study of penguins. This theme unit will be part of our Science curriculum, however it will provide us with a ton of opportunities to learn about non-fiction text features and complete a whole lot of non-fiction informational writing. It should be a lot of fun since I also have some fun craftivities planned to incorporate as well.

 

Well, that's a little snapshot of our first day back.

See you tomorrow!

-Mrs. Singh

A Pizza Party and A New Reading Program

Our pizza party was a delicious success. Thank you so much to the PAC for organizing this fun and delicious lunch for our class. It looks like the PAC initiated Save Around coupon book fundraiser was a huge success. Thank you to everyone for supporting our wonderful school!

 

 

I am so happy because we officially kicked off our school and home reading program this week. All the student's now have access to hundreds of eBooks using the school's subscription to Raz-Kids.

This website provides students with a variety of books to listen to and read. They can even record themselves reading. Afterwards the students can take a quiz to check for comprehension.

To access your child's assignment, log in at:

 

 http://www.raz-kids.com/main/Login/teacherUsername/AngelaSingh

 

Each student was given their password today and this information was stapled into their planner.

Raz-Kids, SpellingCity, and Starfall are just a few of the teacher approved websites that we will be accessing during our computer lab times to help improve our reading skills.

Have fun reading!

-Mrs. Singh


Using our WITS

Today we had our first WITS assembly at school. The WITS Programs brings together schools, families and communities to create responsive environments that help elementary school children deal with bullying and peer victimization. The WITS Primary Program teaches children to make safe and positive choices when faced with peer conflict. The WITS acronym - Walk away, Ignore, Talk it out, and Seek help - provides a common language that children and the adults in their environments can use to talk about and respond to peer victimization. If you would like to learn more about this program you can click here.

Our assembly was approximately 30-minutes long and involved all students, Kindergarten to Grade 7. In this special assembly, the WITS program was introduced by our school's Officer Liaison. The students recited a WITS oath, received a WITS badge and were deputized as WITS Special Constables. Throughout the course of the school year, the students will continue to engage in a number of lessons and stories related to the WITS program. Additionally, community leaders such as our school's Officer Liaison, may make follow-up classroom visits. The students enjoyed the assembly and were excited about making safe and positive behaviour choices. Here are a few photos from today's assembly.

 

 

 

On another note, I came across a great website today. It is called We Give Books. It has a number of free online books! The Editor's Picks are free for anyone to read, anytime, anywhere, and on any device - without logging in. What a great way to encourage reading. I will definitely be using this resource at our computer centre and computer lab times. If you would like to check it out, just click on the link below.

 

http://www.wegivebooks.org/

- Mrs. Singh

 

 

 

 

 

A Turkey For Thanksgiving

Today I read one of my favourite Thanksgiving stories to my students - A Turkey For Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting.

Two moose (husband and wife) are preparing their table for Thanksgiving dinner. They have all the places ready for all the animals to join them (rabbit, goat, sheep, etc). The only thing missing is .... you guessed it -  the turkey!  Mrs. Moose is extremely sad that they will not have a turkey, so her husband sets off to find one. Along the way he picks up all the animals that are going to join them for dinner and they attempt to find the turkey they want. They finally find one and the turkey takes off running in the other direction. Mr. Moose grabs him and takes him back in preparation to make Thanksgiving dinner complete. When they all get back, Mr.turkey is shocked to see an extra chair for him to sit in. He realizes that they weren't going to eat him, they wanted him to join them as a guest and he is very thankful for that.

After reading the story, the students were given a set of sentence strips. They placed the sentence strips in the correct sequence to practise retelling the story. Once they were done, the students read the sentence strips and "story" back to me.

On another note, thank you to everyone for getting their field trip permission slips in to me. I appreciate it. Have a nice evening.

 

-Mrs. Singh

Oh my gosh! It's a squash!

This week we have been and will continue to complete a number of reading, writing and art activities based on the book The Ugly Pumpkin by Dave Horowitz.

At the beginning of the week we read the story and discussed how the Ugly Pumpkin changed from the beginning of the story to the end of the story and completed a character change chart. Today, we continued our discussion, focusing on how the pumpkin must have felt not being picked from the pumpkin patch (sad, left-out). We followed up by making some text-to-self  connections and wrote about a time we felt squashed or sad and left out. Later this afternoon, we reviewed our school rule "Be Positive", and created a list of positive adjectives to show how he must have felt about himself at the end of the story. Tomorrow we will, complete our book study with a cute squash art activity and display all our hard work and learning on our classroom bulletin boards.

During the remainder of the week, we will learn more about squash as part of our Life Sciences curriculum. I have already brought one interesting looking squash into the classroom and tomorrow  I will be bringing in a few more.  Can anyone tell me the types of the squash pictured below?

 

 

-Mrs. Singh