May 23 - 27th

Bike Safety Week

We had a great time during "Bike Safety" week. Thanks so much to Mr. Henderson and the volunteers for setting up the weekly activities and bike courses each day. The students had a great time and learned so much about being safe on their bikes. Also, thank you parents for taking the time to drop off and pick up the bikes during the week.

We really enjoyed our presentation by a public health nurse on the importance of wearing helmets.

You can even drop a raw egg onto the floor and it won't break if it has a helmet on!

The students even got to touch a brain.....well not a real one! 

The bike rodeo was a hit! The students participated in 5 events: 

• zig zag course, 
• figure 8 riding, 
• stop on a dime challenge, 
• the paperboy relay and finally 
• the "slow race"

The students were presented with Bike Safety certificates at the end of the week.

Writing Workshop

Creating a positive classroom community is such an important part of teaching, and I’ve learned that little things go a long way. One of the ways to help build our students up is to help them see themselves (and their classmates) in a positive light. One of the ways I did that this year was by doing an activity called about “The Best Part of Me.”

I began this lesson by reading poems from The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald. This book combines black-and-white illustrations with real children's words describing what they love most about their bodies. It makes for a fun, insightful read and never fails to get kids talking and writing about the best part of themselves.

After reading the poems, the students were asked to identify a positive physical feature of themselves. They used a graphic organizer to plan out a paragraph about the best part of themselves.

 Reading Workshop

We continue to work on comprehension during our reading workshop. The students have been reading passages and answering comprehension questions to identify main ideas and to make inferences.

Math

We completed our division unit and started fractions this week. The following goals were covered:

• Equal Parts - verbally express fractions given as diagrams or numerical notation
• Model Fractions - name fractions given as diagrams or in numerical notation
• Understand that parts of a whole must be equal to determine that one or more parts represent

Science

Our "Painted Lady" caterpillars have arrived! As part of our Life Cycle unit in science, the students have the opportunity to witness the life cycle of painted lady butterflies in our classroom! The caterpillars (larvae) arrived on Wednesday. Each student will be given their own caterpillar to name and to keep a journal about during the course of its life cycle.

Social Studies

This week the students presented their Ukraine slides to the class. They did a great job with their presentations!

Congratulations to our Student of the Week!

Our students continue to fly around the world in our Amazing Race challenge. Keep up the great reading!