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

 

September 19th- 23rd

     We are getting into the swing of things with our independent reading and I love how kids are taking  the initiative to sign up for conferences to talk about what they are reading and clarify how they will choose to respond to their novels. We have been working our way through various writing strategies to improve the quality of writing and have also begun our work with Quickwrites. It was great to have so many willing to share their writing with their classmates! We reviewed the paragraph structure and the kids were asked to show me what they know in a descriptive paragraph assignment.

Sharing writing after our first quickwrite

    We talked about the importance of setting academic, personal and health goals for ourselves and visualizing those goals with vision boards. We experimented with Canva, a fantastic digital communication tool last week and now it's time to put it to use with the creation of their own vision boards for Media Literacy. 

    We finished off the week by making sure that we were caught up on all our assignments and then took some time to play word games and then made our way to the ball diamond to cheer on the MDHS baseball team to another victory. We seem to be good luck charms for our secondary teams!

     In History, we started to look at the Inquiry Process and specifically how to ask better questions when doing research.  We learned about Bloom's Taxonomy and higher-order thinking. I shared a critical thinking skills tool with them so they know how to ask rich questions that will drive independent research in the future.  We also began to watch episode 4 of CBC's Canada the Story of Us and learned how the creation of the Welland Canal and the invention of steamships impacted growth in Upper and Lower Canada's economic strength and population.

Learning how to ask better questions collaboratively.

https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/07/a-quick-guide-to-21st-century-critical.html

    In Science, we did a doodle note about the Scientific Method so that we are ready to become young scientists and carry out experiments. Students will have the opportunity to run their own experiments during our first unit on Water Systems. 

Reminders for Next Week:

Wear orange on Friday, September 3oth for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation