October is Flying By!

      I'm keeping this week's blog post short as I am deep in the land of progress report writing and my son has a hockey tournament. The kids have been busy working on finishing up their Memoirs and are about to jump into creating movie trailers using iMovie. We learned how to write up a lab report after completing our first Science lab. The kids were amazed at how many drops of water they could get on a penny!

How many drops of water can you fit on a penny?

Reminders for the Two Next Week:

PD Day: Monday, October 24th 

Tree Planting:  Wednesday, October 26th 9:00-11:00

                           Dress for the weather, bring gardening gloves.

Halloween Spirit Days:

Tuesday, October 25th is Twinning Tuesday

Wednesday, October 26 is Jersey Day

Thursday, October 27th is Ninja Nightmare Day

Friday, October 28th is Dress Up Day

Monday, October 31st is Opposite Day

Photo Retakes: Friday, November 4th

Fall is in the Air

      The mornings are crisper, the fall colours are everywhere and we are trucking along in E104.  In English, many students are finishing up their first novels and have begun to work on their first independent novel responses.  We read Roch Carrier's story "The Hockey Sweater" in preparation for students to write their own memoirs. We went over all stages of the assignment which can be found under the Writers Workshop section of Google Classroom. We picked a due date of October 18th for students to have their best copies turned in. Students also finished up their responses to Gord Downie's The Secret Path and the pieces that they created are haunting.  They also honed their sketchnoting skills by responding to an article of their choice from the website Wonderopolis.

   

In Science, we talked about water from an indigenous perspective and learned about Josephine Mandanim and her niece, clean water activist Autumn Peltier. We learned about the states of water and reviewed the water cycle. 

    In History, students responded to episode 4 of CBC's Canada: The Story of Us. They were asked to give their opinion about which of the 5 stories we watched had the most significant impact on connecting British North America. This question is modelled on the opinion questions that appear in the OSSLT Literacy Test they will have to write in grade 10. Historically this question has caused problems for students in AMDSB so I want to give my kiddos as much experience with this type of question as I can while I have them.

Success Criteria

☑️ Your answer contains part of the question

☑️Your answer contains details from the video

☑️Your answer contains evidence of your own thinking

☑️Your answer is in complete sentences

In Visual Arts, we learned about Norval Morrisseau, the Picasso of the North. Students have begun to create their own pieces of Woodland-style art.  I can't wait to see what they create! We are going to use Flipgrid for art reflections this time. This is a digital tool that allows students to leave video responses instead of writing out their ideas.  Stay tuned for their works of art in future posts.

Reminders for the Future:

Uncle Dad's Pizza Fundraiser Orders

Monday, October 24th is a PD day no school for students

Friday, November 4th is picture re-take day

One Month Down!

     I can hardly believe that we have already completed our first month of school! Independent reading and conferences are in full swing with some kids already working on their first novel responses. I'm loving the initiative that the kiddos are taking to sign up for conferences to talk about their books and set goals for themselves. We have been doing quickwrites to work on the rewriting and drafting stages of the writing process and next week we will dive into our first major writing assessment, the personal narrative. We read an article and discussed the war in Ukraine and students responded to the article using Nearpod a digital tool that we will be using throughout the year. I really love this tool because it allows me to record my instructions so that students who happen to be away can still do work while they are at home. We finished off the week learning about residential schools and watching part of Gord Downey's The Secret Path the Chanie Wenjack story as part of Media Literacy. We had powerful discussions and the students started to work on creating their own media texts in response to the Songs The Stranger and The Swing Set.

     We took time this we to reflect on organization skills and learned how to use the To-Do List in Google Classroom to make sure that we are keeping up with our school work and submitting assignments when they are due. We will be reflecting on our learning skills every week as I truly believe that when students learn how to learn they will be set up for success.

    In Science, we worked on creating our first sketchnote in response to a National Geographic video and started to begin investigating ideas for an independent research assignment that will have the kids look into problems related to clean drinking water.

    In History, we learned about how to search the Internet efficiently and also how to evaluate information that we find online as part of the learning about the Inquiry Process. We also finished watching episode 4 of the CBC series Canada The Story of Us and will be responding to the video next week. 

Reminders for Next Week:

Monday, October 3: Uncle Dad's Pizza School fundraising information comes home 

Wednesday, October 5: Staff Appreciation Day

                                      *Students will be encouraged to dress like staff members.

Friday, October 7: Terry Fox Run/ Walk & School Pictures orders due