February 8 - 12th

VIP

Congratulations to Miss M for being chosen as our VIP this week.  The students really enjoyed getting to know you better!

We had another fun week of skating.  I can't say thank you enough to the wonderful parents who came out again this week to help tie skates!

Student of the Week

Congratulations to Mr. Q for receiving the Student of the Week certificate during assembly!

Thank you to all of the students, family and friends for donating to "Jump Rope for Heart" in support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Valentine's Day Party

We had a great Valentine's Day Party on Friday.  The students enjoyed exchanging Valentine's Day cards with their classmates and playing some fun games.  Thank you to those students that contributed food for our party.  

Curriculum Update

Reading Workshop

This week we read another book from the Miss Smith's Incredible Storybook Adventures. Miss Smith's students know to expect the unexpected when she reads from her magical book. This time, Miss Smith takes her kids to the eerie library down the block and introduces them to the weird librarian, Virginia Creeper. But per usual, storytime is never ordinary when reading from Miss Smith's Incredible Storybook. And what starts out as a run-of-the-mill field trip soon becomes a full-out monster bash!
Using Miss Smith and the Haunted Library as a mentor text I modelled the comprehension strategy of summarizing and retelling the story.

Words Their Way

The students continue to work on their spelling word pattern skills.

Math

The students were so excited to start our Multiplication Unit this week.  I introduced the unit by reading "The Best of Times" by Greg Tang.

The Best of Times gives kids an intuitive understanding of multiplication, encouraging them to arrive at answers on their own rather than memorizing the times tables. A child who can multiply by two, for instance, can multiply by four and even eight! Likewise, times six builds on times two and times three.

This week in math we focused on using arrays to show multiplication concepts.  Students can more readily develop an understanding of multiplication if they see visual representations of the concepts.  For example, they can picture students in a marching band in equal rows or chairs set up in rows in an auditorium.  These arrangements all have something in common.  They are all in rows and columns.  An arrangement of objects, pictures or numbers in columns or rows is called an array.  Arrays are useful representations of multiplication concepts.  

This array has 4 rows with 3 stars in each row.  This is referred to as a 4 x 3 array.  This 4 x 3 array has 12 stars in it, or 4 x 3 = 12

We also worked on thinking about multiplication when attempting to add "equal" groups.  In addition to using repeated addition to calculate the total number of dots below (3+3+3+3+3), we can use multiplication.  The following can be thought of in terms of:

5 groups of 3 or 5 x 3 = 15

Science

Testing Materials Challenge #2:  

We made it safely across the crack in the earth, narrowly escaping the spewing lava.  As we continue to explore the island, we hear the roaring sound of a river nearby.  Approaching the river, we realize that it is too fast and deep to cross.  But we really don't want to turn around and go back to the beach.  We can see banana trees across the river with ripe, delicious bananas hanging from them.  Our stomachs growl at the sight of the fruit.  We decide that we need to cross the river to reach the bananas.  In order to cross the river we will have to build another bridge.  Nearby we see some tree bark that we can use as beams to support our bridge.  Our job is to test a variety of beam designs to see which one will work best for our foot bridge.

Through this challenge the students learned that not all beam designs support the same mass.  The students discovered that the box girder was a stronger design that the accordion or the rectangle.

Social Studies

This week we learned more about the quality of life of the Tunisian culture.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Family Day!  Enjoy the precious time spent with your loved ones!