I hope you are all enjoying a little bit more time to sleep in this weekend as we have now turned our clocks back one hour for Daylight Savings! Here are some notes on how we wrapped up our week.
We are now using our rounding and estimating skills to check our work in multi-digit addition with regrouping.
In Math, we finished our Rounding unit and students were asked to bring home their quizzes to share with their families. We are now reviewing multi-digit addition with regrouping and using our rounding and mental math skills to self-check our work.
Here is a helpful video tutorial that you can use to review at home.
In Health Ed. this week, Mrs. Murphy has us thinking about what steps we can take to regulate our emotions and energy. She invited students into a creative challenge of designing plans for a new “sensory room” for our school. It was valuable learning time to reflect upon what environmental elements and tools can help us to re-focus.
On Friday afternoon, we enjoyed some time in our little buddies’ grade 2 class. We first watched their lovely singing performance and then had some creative centres time with them.
In Religion class, we reflected upon the ways people may tap into their spiritual connections to draw strength and work towards their goals.
We are keeping “remember” on our spelling list this week—it continues to be a tricky word for some. Students are encouraged to notice the difference between how “remember” and “remembrance” are spelled.
Our grade 5 writers have been hard at work writing, getting feedback, editing and refining their Halloween expository essays and poems. We are delighted to share with you the writing pieces that have now reached the “final draft” phases.
Pleasesee our “virtual bulletin board” below. (Click and hold each writing sample photo to be able to zoom in.)
HALLOWEEN EXPOSITORY ESSAYS:
POETRY & OTHER CREATIVE WRITING:
Students were invited to submit final drafts in either handwritten or typed form. Students had a 1-hour block to type their writing, yet a number of students finished their typing at home.
If you do not see your child’s essay or poem, it means he/she has not yet handed in a “final copy” that incorporated the feedback and corrections I offered on his/her original drafts.
Today is “All Saints’ Day” and in Religion class, we explored the significance of this feast day. Earlier in the term we looked at the question of what a saint is, and today we discussed more about how all people may endeavour to live as saints through a closer relationship with God and striving to embody the virtues and values that Jesus taught and associated with holiness, compassion, and selflessness.
Amazing Field Trip Coming Up: The Raptors Centre, Duncan Friday, Nov. 17th
More information will come home later this week. I absolutely love the Raptors centre and have gone many times with my own sons. This is a wild bird sanctuary and rehabilitation centre—birds are not bread for captivity. Guests need to be at least 16 years old to sign up for the “close encounter” option to be able to hold a raptor, and so no students will do that during our trip. However, I will do an “eagle encounter” during our field trip so that students can observe that process, learn all about eagles directly from an eagle handler, and get closer to an eagle than they would ever normally be able to in life or as a regular guests of the facility. I’m so excited to share this joyful learning experiences with students! All birds are handled by highly trained and licensed professionals and guests are required to follow all safety guidelines and model respect the animals at all times.
Yes, both the Salish Sea Boat Trip & Cattle Point Tidal Pools Trip will go ahead!
More details about these late February adventures will come to you mid-December.
We had a lot of fun today—here are some photos! I hope you have an amazing Halloween night and safe! ***Please remember, we request that students do not bring candy to school as it can become a distraction from learning. Thank you for understanding.
We had a lot of fun with the Halloween dance and playing games in class! So many fun costumes! (A shepherdess and pirate)More Halloween art! We continue to learn and practice rounding…
In our Career Education class on Friday, students sure enjoyed Mr. Watson’s fun presentation about the plumbing profession! He compared historical waste management practices with modern day ones and gave us new appreciation for the convenience of running water.
STEM CHALLENGE: Check out students’ core competencies in action! This video shows Mr. Watson’s apprentices collaborating to determine the best way to engineer a water piping system.
We gained new insight into the complexity of plumbing work that demands technical knowledge, mechanical aptitude, problem solving skills, creativity, teamwork, attention to building codes, physical stamina, and sometimes quick thinking in emergency situations. It was also fun to hearing dramatic stories about working in the field! Wow!
Students examined pipes, fittings, and other gadgets, and they were enthralled with the task to work together to create a waste water piping system, which they tested with a marble. In the processes, they learned first hand about the importance of considering the grade of a pipe! Thank you for an awesome presentation, Mr. Watson!
Looking for More Guest Speakers!
What’s your passion? Please email Tiffany Poirier at tpoirier@cisdv.bc.ca if you have a profession, skill, hobby, craft, sport, area of passion, knowledge area or special experience that you could speak about in our 5B class. Don’t be shy—you are more fascinating than you realize! Hearing from passionate experts about their fields is one of the best ways to inspire learners to expand their horizons, and we thank you in advance for your gift of time and wisdom!
In Art class, students explored their creativity by starting to make Halloween pop-up cards and spooky haunted house watercolour scenes! We will finish these projects on Monday.
Check out these fun Halloween pop-ups in action! Students have been studying hard for our Digestive System quiz, which is happening on Monday. I gave students a “Study Guide” and “Study Prep” sheet that lists exactly the types of questions that will be asked. Students should practice labeling a diagram of the digestive system: see above. What a creative digestive system model, complete with a Cheetoh for a pancreas! Ha! In Religion class, we read aloud from “I Met God Today”, which contains passages by youth who describe times they felt aware of and connected to God. Then, our own 5B students were invited to write about their own such moments. Faith is a personal journey, and students were welcome to share their thoughts or keep them just to themselves. This was some of the most moving and inspiring writing I have seen this year.
Congratulations to our amazing, one-of-kind, caring and brilliant vice principal, Angela McLeish—the winner of this prestigious Premier’s Award for Excellence in Education for her educational leadership!
In Math class, we continue to work on rounding to the tens and hundreds place. Students have been using math manipulatives and reinforcing their understanding with flash card practice and dice rounding games.
Students who need extra practice were invited to take home the “Rounding Study Kits” this week.
In Language Arts, students are putting the finishing touches on their “Five Senses Halloween Poems”. As well, I have assessed and given specific notes on students’ Halloween expository essays on feedback forms. Students are now busy incorporating this feedback into their “good copies”—some are choosing to use the Chromebooks for this.
Students can submit either a neatly handwritten or typed final version.
As of today at 2:30pm, each student now has a working Gmail account and password to make it easy to seamlessly go between working on documents at school and at home.
In Science, we continue to explore the five senses and are getting ready for our final “Digestive System” unit test (happening on Monday, Oct. 30). We will do a full review of that content tomorrow, and students will have a study guide and notes on exactly the same kinds of questions they will see on the test. *Students who believe they would do better showing their knowledge in a non-test format are always welcome to propose a project or to meet with me for a “learning summary meeting” instead.
Today we previewed our next Science unit on the skeletal system with a short video and by doing some “Halloween Skeleton Art”; students were invited to do pencil sketches or paint. The goal was to have fun while starting to notice the ways the parts of the human skeleton fit together.
In Religion class, we have enjoyed some video excerpts from the “Alpha Course: Youth Series (Catholic Context)”. The course presents open-ended questions inspiring students to think, dialogue with one another, and research answers for themselves.
Today in Language Arts our students did a “Five Senses Visualization”, which was a series of open-ended questions inspiring them to imagine what they might experience on Christmas Day. We shared ideas, and I modelled how to organize thinking using a “Five Senses Mindmap”. We discussed how to transform simple descriptions into richer descriptive language. (For example, “I see mistletoe” might become “The freshly plucked mistletoe hangs in the doorway, its green leaves frosted and white berries glistening.”)
BUT WHY CHRISTMAS?!
Well, tomorrow’s challenge is for students to show what they learned exploring when they explore a more timely theme: Halloween. They will independently create their own mindmaps about what they imagine they might see, hear, taste, touch and smell on October 31st. These mindmaps will inspire Halloween poetry writing later in the week.
Exploring Our Five Senses: The Lemon!
In Science class, we continued our focus on the five senses with an inquiry into the properties of lemons. Students were encouraged to discuss and compare their findings and record their sense data again on a mindmap template. We sure had some giggles making sour faces!
In Math, we are focusing this week on the skill of rounding! Although we started with a review of basic rounding to the tens place, we soared up to rounding into the ten thousands with some bonus questions today.
We practiced with a simple dice rolling game using a rounding chart. The tutorial videos below may help reinforce learning at home. (Tomorrow we focus on rounding to the hundreds place.)
In Career Ed., we took some time to discuss and reflect upon our learning with a mid-term self-assessment sheet on work habits, study skills, communication, social interactions, and achievement. Students brought home their reflection sheets to share with their parents/guardians today.
In Language Arts, we have been exploring different types of expository writing.
Our inquiry on Monday afternoon challenged small groups to “think like teachers” and read and assess four different “Halloween How-to” writing samples using a rubric. They were invited to write corrections and advice on the writing samples, evaluate them in the categories of Meaning, Style, Form, and Conventions, and give them each a final grade.
The purpose of this task was to familiarize students with the features of great writing and to reflect upon the ways their own writing is similar and dissimilar to each of the writing samples. We will continue working on these Halloween expository pieces this week through the proofreading and revising stages. (Students looking for extra writing practice and support may always write additional works for me, and I am happy to provide feedback.)
On Monday, we had a very special guest: Vanessa, a registered nurse in the department of endoscopy in the local hospital—this visit was a perfect tie-in to our Science unit on the digestive system! How did we get so lucky!?
Our students were fascinated to see and operate the endoscope and Roth net devices she brought in. We passed around these instruments as she described their functions in various procedures and situations. This was high-level medical learning!
Not only did Vanessa share her rich medical expertise with us, we were inspired by her character qualities that clearly add so much to her success in her profession. We could imagine how a calm, caring, and gentle demeanour and patience would be appreciated by patients, especially during times when they may be nervous about procedures.
The students asked so many excellent practical questions, and we advanced our understanding as a class tremendously! We now have more students interested in work in the medical field. Thank you, Vanessa!
Here is the “Answer Key” from our Social Studies reading/viewing comprehension quiz. It was based upon the Statistics Canada video you can watch here. In Math, we have been working on skip counting, finding missing operation signs, finding and continuing patterns, and identifying pattern rules. Thank you to Baye reading for our morning prayer in the assembly on Monday. Any students who are looking for additional public speaking practice should let me know, and we will find special opportunities for you. We love to nurture leadership skills!In ADST, the paper plane engineering and testing continues! What fun!
Our class has begun an interdisciplinary unit in Science/Art/Religion/L.A. on the five senses, beginning with the sense of sight.
“Open the Eyes of My Heart” 5B students singing this inspiring worship song written by Michael W. Smith“Open my eyes to see clearly the wonders of your law.” - Psalms 119:18
“Look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.” - 2 Corinthians 4:18
“The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” - Proverbs 15:3
In Math class we have been learning about input/output tables and getting creative designing function machines.
This student combined our Science class learning to make a “digestive system”-themed function machine!Our innovative students have initiated an inquiry into aerodynamics and principles that optimize flight machine design. In other words, we have paper airplanes everywhere in class—but it’s fun to work with the next generation of great inventors! Over the next few weeks we will do some flight time tests to assess the merits of different design features and graph the results. Here are the new Spelling words for next week. What creative sentences of your own can you create to show the meanings of these words?
Here is an overview of what we have been exploring lately in our class.
SOCIAL STUDIES: What motivates people to immigrate to Canada? In Social Studies, we began exploring the topic of changing trends in Canadian immigration over time and the push and pull factors. This mind-map shows our whiteboard note-taking of the students’ ideas during our class discussion.
Today we watched the above video, which fleshed out our understanding of push and pull factors even more. Then students began writing short essays on the topic using a structured template. The goal of this assignment was to both capture students’ learning, while also helping them work through a helpful model of a way to clearly communicate their ideas in the social sciences. Above you can see some great examples of draft essays on “Canadian Immigration: the Push and Pull Factors” as well as some summary graphics of the the big ideas we are exploring.
Click here to download KYAK magazine with lots of rich historical information for students about immigration to Canada:
LANGUAGE ARTS/RELIGION: On Friday, we practiced the fifth “High 5!” reading strategy: summarizing!
The practice of transforming what you have read into your own words is powerful because this act of creativity helps you make connections to and within the text and thus remember it more fully and accurately.
After carefully reading a text about saints, as a class we discussed the big ideas.m, and small groups of students identified what they believed to be the main points of the text. Then, I modelled how one could weave together the big ideas of this text into a summary paragraph, distilling 18 sentences of text into just 6 sentences. We discussed that writing a summary is an artful process that involves trying to really understand the author’s purpose for writing and determining the relationship between ideas.
MATH: Keep reviewing place value concepts—we are starting to build upon this understanding with new units of study this week. *Parents/Guardians, please check your email inboxes for a note about homework and a “Math Support Letter” I emailed today with specific tips for how families can support their children with their journey through the grade 5 math curriculum this year. SCIENCE: Students have continued to learn about the digestive system in Science class. Today we did a short “open book” quiz on the topic. Next Monday, we are lucky to have a special guest speaker: an endoscopic nurse who works to help assess and support digestive health. SPELLING: Here are the spelling words for this week. What creative sentences can you write to show the meaning of the words in context?ARTIST SHOWCASE: A lovely portrait of a friend, by artist Gabriela.