Services

Services.
What services are provided in our community?
We talked about services, their characteristics, examples and the hard part - non-examples of services.  We will expand this into services that are provided in the four countries we are learning about.

Some of us were using Mathletics this morning to work on subtracting two and three digit numbers while others were solving story problems that involved more than one step.  We sure were busy!

We wrapped up our mini unit on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a tree map of who he was, what he wanted, and things that he said.  We read 'Viola Desmond Won't be Budged!' for a Canadian perspective on civil rights - ask your child about Ms. Viola and her claim to fame.

Pillars of Care assembly Friday 8:15
Scholastic Book orders due Friday
Student Led Conferences Thursday,  January 25 from 6 -8 pm

I can subtract two digit numbers and explain my strategies

I can subtract two digit numbers and explain my strategies.

We reviewed rounding (4 or less let it rest, 5 or more raise the score) and then we started to estimate numbers.  Estimation is a strategy that can be used for subtraction.  Some of us found it to be very simple and easy to use.  With our elbow partners we turned over four playing cards to make two 2-digit numbers.  We estimated the difference between the two numbers by rounding each number to the nearest ten and subtracting mentally.  Everyone was able to do this 10 times over.  We've created an anchor chart to help us to remember the various strategies we could use for subtraction.  Everyone has a method they prefer.

We are working on breaking down big, unfamiliar words for reading with various strategies.  We know the names of the vowels and the sounds they make so today we worked with syllables by clapping the parts of a word or putting our hands under our chin and counting how many times our chin moves when we say a word.  We counted the syllables in everyone's name and then went to books looking for bigger words.  We found words with 14 syllables, but my word won with 19 syllables.  An exit ticket was written with what we learned about syllables today.

Scholastic book orders due Friday
Pillars of Care assembly Friday
Brown report card envelope needs to be returned
Still missing A LOT of homework

Gymnastics is upon us

Gymnastics is upon us in the gym but there are some very important safety rules that must be followed:

• no hoodies
• no draw strings on tops or bottoms
• no jewelry
• no dresses/skirts/loose clothing
• hair to the shoulder and down must be tied back
• shirts are tucked into pants

Thanks for helping out with the details it just helps with the safety if we all follow the guidelines.

Math homework check - ask your child only 8/24 students had their math done and handed in.

Cold Weather Inventory

I have more mitts, gloves, hats, snow pants and scarves in my coat room then children in my classroom!!  Inventory your child tonight and see what you are missing.  If this cold snap continues they will run out of things to put on at home.

Math homework tonight can come back to school on Monday.  Students are showing me various ways to add larger numbers.  They are decomposing, using number lines, and breaking apart addends.  Get them to explain to you what they are doing - see if they make a good teacher.

We experimented with pitch and frequency today.  We found out that without vibration there cannot be any sound.  I introduced the idea of a musical instrument project for the end of the month.  We will talk more about that in the classroom and instructions will be sent home later.

Please make sure you have sent me your brown report card envelope.

Treat everyone like it is their birthday!

"Not everybody has been treated like a somebody," Kid President told us today.  He wants us all to treat everyone like it is their birthday and we love that idea!  A biography is the story of someones life so we have been reading about Martin Luther King Jr. and his life trying to change the way people think.  We found out a lot of key facts about him and have had a history lesson in the process. We used the dictionary today to find the meaning of the word freedom and its antonym.

Everyone has science homework tonight to listen to the sounds around them in the house, in the yard and on the street.  We walked through the school this morning and just listened to all the sounds in this building and it was amazing how many sounds we heard.  We watched a quick video "How Old Are Your Ears" that showed us that our hearing ages and it certainly does because students heard a lot more than I did during their test.  Might mean something for me!  Science homework needs to be back at school tomorrow please.

Reminder that Mr. Sadowsky wants us all to be stretching every night for five minutes to get us ready for gymnastics later this month.

I can give examples of vibrations.

Vibration was the vocabulary word we looked at today in science.  Many examples were given of things that can vibrate and then we looked at The Slow Mo guys examples of vibration which was kind of fun to see paint vibrate on a speaker and the colors mix together in slow motion.   We came to realize that all things that vibrate make a sound.

Strategies are most important in math - arriving at the right answer is just step one.  To explain how you got there is even more important.  We repeated yesterday's lesson using 1001 Things To Spot and talked further about strategies for adding larger numbers.  Students are now showing me that they can use a variety of strategies to solve questions.

Please sign and return the brown report card folder.  You may keep all the papers that were sent home inside for your personal files.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We had a great first day back everyone was rested and ready to work -

1001 Things to Spot  is a much loved series of books in any classroom.  We used In the Sea today to provide a context for using place value to add with regrouping.  We began by estimating the number of items to be found on the page and then used interlocking cubes to build the number of items to be found on each page.  We were left with 10 'trains' of blocks to add together which helped us to focus on strategies for combining the numbers.  Several different strategies were put forward and we worked through each one to determine there were 63 items under the sea.  We will continue this work tomorrow with a different page.

Sound and Hearing is the science unit we started before the break.  Today we worked with a partner to flip through books we have in the classroom and find some interesting facts.  Ask your child what they may have found on their own.

We used 'My Fantastic Elastic Brain' and Benny the Bookworm to talk about how our brains work while we are reading.  We found many facts about the brain that were very interesting, but bottom line, the most important, was that making mistakes allows the brain to grow!!  Must be why we all have erasers.  Students wrote in their journals what they learned about their brain and drew a picture of the the body parts they use while reading.