Dear Families,

We had another fantastic week at school! Below you will see just how amazing it was :) Thank you for taking the time each week to read, support, and celebrate your child's learning!

The blog serves as a vehicle that helps drive learning from school to home!

Student-Led Conferences:
It was a true pleasure meeting with all my students' families this week.  Thank you for taking the time to attend and help celebrate and enjoy all your child's achievements thus far in the school year.  

I am extremely proud of each student as they clearly, confidently, and calmly led his or her conference by sharing their self-assessment (Progress Report), personal goals, and their "Star" and "Arrow" pieces of work.  It was their chance to shine and they certainly lit up our hearts and minds!

Throughout the conferences, I experienced many heart-warming moments with parents and I really appreciate and value all your positive and constructive feedback.  I will use it to continue to provide my best as an educator for your child's academic, social, and behavioural needs.  Meeting the needs of my students is of utmost importance to me and I will always work hard to ensure they receive a compassionate, caring, and safe environment to learn in.  

Again, thank you for your continued support, cooperation, and understanding.  If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at the school or via email pgill@scdsb.on.ca

Balanced Literacy & Balanced Math Workstations:

Perhaps you’ve heard your child share about our workstation experiences in class?!  If not, I will explain now and you may wish to ask your child about this over the weekend as well.

During workstations, students are collaborating in small groups to reinforce and practice learned concepts.  In this case, the workstations have a math, reading, and writing focus.  They get very excited about these experiences!  

Below, I have listed the workstations with its accompanying learning goal (see pictures) so you have an idea of what your child will be doing and what his or her expectations are when they're working in their small group.  There is a daily emphasis on the learning skill of collaboration.  They must work together to get the job(s) done!  They’re having a blast working with their groups and we will continue these guided groups throughout the year!  Here they are in workstation action!

Math Facts

Shared Problem Solving

Tech Time

Math Game

Guided Math

Math Learning:

Our next math unit focuses on Patterning & Algebra.  Your child will be learning about repeating, growing, and shrinking patterns.  The goal will be for your child to identify, describe, extend, and create patterns.  For repeating patterns, the focus will be on naming attributes of patterns and how those attributes change.  The focus for growing or shrinking patterns will be on the start number and the amount that is added or subtracted each time.  Please ask your child what an attribute is and to give you the 5 types we learned about in class this week.  HINT: an attribute is how a pattern changes (by colour, size, shape, position, or number).

Writing:

One of my most favourite writing forms to teach is a procedure!  The reason being, there's many fun, creative, and interactive ways to teach this.  When we cook or bake it involves a procedure and we may do some of this in class in the coming weeks!  

Please read the anchor chart below, and have your child share with you the success criteria and all the things that need to be included when writing a procedure :) 

Forces & Motion:

Did your child enthusiastically come home Wednesday evening and share with you that "Today, we made paper airplanes in class and flew them!"  I know what you may be thinking, "Really?"  Not to worry, it was all linked to our procedural writing and science learning!  Students worked in pairs and had to follow a procedure (how to make or do something) to create an airplane.  We then talked about how different types of force were involved with this when flying them (E.g., muscle force, push, and gravity).  At the end of our lesson, we had a friendly contest to see which team's airplane flew the furthest.  They had an absolute blast with this!! Congratulations to Bailey and Zach N.W. for the win!  Check out below some students creating their planes!  This was a challenging task for many, but they did it!  It required patience, perseverance, and optimism!

    

Character Recognition Assembly & Spirit Day:

Next Friday November 24^th , Mr. Plater and Mme Wylie along with their students will be leading the Courage assembly.  The spirit day for this event is to dress up in GREEN to represent our school’s GREEN TEAM.  Please encourage your child to wear their green attire to support school spirit!  As always, parents are welcome to attend this assembly.  

Holiday Concert News:

This year’s Holiday Concert will take place on Wednesday December 13^th

It will take place in our school gym.

·         dress rehearsal @ 11:30am 

·         evening performance @ 6:30pm  

Mr. Morin and my students will be working hard in music classes to prepare two songs for this event.  I’m excited to see what they will come up with!

Thank you:

I would like to share a wonderful moment with you that I experienced this week.  I truly have the BEST students whose hearts are SO BIG!  On Wednesday, I had some students come in after second break with a big and bright smile on their faces and I wondered what they were up to?!  You’ll be just as thrilled as I was when you read on what they did. 

Thank you to Zach, Grace, Sydney, Abby, and Aurora for taking the time and their OWN MONEY to purchase books, book marks, and a poster for our classroom library at our book fair.  They all knew these were books that were on my personal wish list and they wanted to make me happy so they gifted me these!  They did this all on their own.  How sweet of you guys, thank you from the bottom of my heart!!  You made my week!

Growth Mindset:

“Just be YOU!”

Thank you Bailey for this meaningful quote!

Namaste,

Miss Gill