Dear Parents,
What a fun week! Our Halloween Spirit Week was fun and we did a number of activities to celebrate the event. It is such a different Halloween this year, so we wanted to do as much as possible to make it a fun time for the children.
In Language, we did some Halloween reading in Readworks, and did an EQAO sample as well. We will be looking at examples of reading responses next week, so that students can work to “bump up” their answers and improve their ability to respond to short answer questions when reading. This is a difficult skill for many students at this age, and it is one we work on the entire year. The most important thing we try to teach students is to 1) Restate the question in their answer, 2) give their own opinion (or general answer), 3) give 2 or more examples directly from the text and 4) make a connection if possible. Students often struggle to provide all of that detail! It is a skill that we teach throughout the year.
In writing, we learned about writing procedural text (instructions, recipes, etc). We started with a teacher led model, so that students would see how a procedural text is written. We wrote the text for the pumpkin that we carved last week (which melted over the weekend! We did another one…), and posted it as a model on the bulletin board so students can look at it when they are writing their own. On Thursday, we learned about how to roast pumpkin seeds and then developed an organizer all together. Once the organizer was complete, students were asked to write their own procedural text about how to roast pumpkin seeds. In general, students had some difficulty organizing the text on the page so that the instructions were clear. I reminded them to look at the anchor chart sample that we had on the bulletin board to assist them. We will continue to work on this form of writing next week, and then will begin learning about writing a narrative, or a short fiction story.
In math, we have begun learning about adding and subtracting numbers less than 100, using both mental math strategies (doing it in your head), manipulatives (blocks), and the standard method. So far, we have only focused on mental math strategies. This is a very important skill for students to develop their sense of adding and subtracting, so we will be working on this over the next couple of weeks. When we use mental math strategies, I ask students to try to find a “friendly number” (usually a multiple of ten) to help them. For example, if we are adding 34 +48, I would ask students to make one of the numbers a multiple of ten. In this case, I might choose to add 2 to 48 to get it to 50. If I add 2 to 48, then I have to take away 2 from 34 to balance it out. So in my head, I would add 32 + 50, which is way easier, it equals 82!
It works differently when subtracting. If I wanted to find 67-23, then I would have to add or take away the same amount from both in order to get to the closest ten. In this example, I would take away 3 from 23 to make 20. If I take away 3, from 23, then I also have to take away 3 from 67 to balance it out. So….it now becomes 64-20, which is easier to figure out. The answer would b 44. As you can imagine, this is very difficult for many children, and so we will be practicing for much of next week. One thing that I often have them chant to help them remember is “Addition is the opposite, ssssubtraction is the sssssame”.
In science, we continued learned about strong and stable structures by learning about the different types of bridges (Arch, Beam, Truss, Suspension, Cable-Stayed), and we began building our own out of popsicle sticks and glue. We will be having a little contest next week to see how much eight they can hold! I hope students will enjoy this.
I hope all is going well with the structures projects at home. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. A reminder that they are due on November 9th. We will be doing the presentations that week, and will have our final structures test that week as well. I will send home some study notes next week so that you can assist your child in studying for the test.
In addition to all of this, we carved a new pumpkin on Thursday, and melted crayons on it to make “hair”. The students seemed to enjoy this. We also watched a little movie during 4th block on Friday as a little Halloween treat.
As I mentioned in last week’s update, I will be sending the assessment folders home on Monday so that you can get a small glimpse of your child’s progress so far this year. I don’t rely solely on their marks for the progress report, as this year is a very different one, so I also rely on my own observations of their daily work as well. When it comes to report card time, where there is an actual letter grade for each subject, then I rely on their assessment folders much more for their marks. Thus, if you see your child getting a lot of Level 3’s, you can guess that they will have a mark in the “B” range on their report card. If they have a lot of level 2’s, it would mean they would likely get “C’s”, and so on. Once again, if you ever have concerns or questions about your child’s progress, please reach out to me. If I have serious concerns, then I will always reach out to you.
Here are some pictures from the week. Hope you enjoy!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/A9Uv1b2owkqzeTgFA
I hope you have a wonderful Halloween and a restful weekend. Take good care!
Yours,
Chris Pouliot
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