Week in review: October 24 - 28

Whoosh...and just like that the month of October is in the books and the fun and excitement of Halloween is quickly on the way!  This week was another productive one with all the kids continuing to give me their best efforts in class. 

As a class we have talked at length about the importance of respecting others and how our actions are representative of the people we are wanting to be.  With that said, we had a great health class earlier this week where we talked about the concept of respecting ourselves, and how important it is that we feel proud of the things that we are learning, saying and doing - this week was definitely one of those respecting ourselves moments!  It was a week where the "learning lights" were constantly popping on as concepts became clearer and the work suddenly became easier although the questions hadn't really changed.  

It was a week where the social side of the classroom blossomed and interactions became more genuine ad purposeful - a personal highlight was watching 2 guys, who may have been considered underdogs, team up and then proceed to rock the Science unit review game (our Waste kahoot).  It was great to see their spirited teamwork and excitement bubble over to the other teams and inspire them - if only to make them work harder to try and catch them! Simply a great week!

And now onto the curricular stuff...

In Math this week we continued to build our base of knowledge with basic multiplication facts.  It is this base that will allow us to tackle more challenging concepts a little further down the line so we are really working on getting down the rules and "quick tricks" that can help us increase both our accuracy and comprehension.  Thus far we have tackled all the fact tables between 0 and 6, and are consistently using these facts to tackle the creation of arrays, standard problems, and picture problems.  Whenever possible check out the websites I had posted last week to give some extra drill and kill practice with the basic facts - the more they use the facts in problems, the quicker they will develop the desired immediate recall of the products.

In Language Arts we continued to work with the parts of speech - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, suffixes and prefixes. In conjunction with our weekly spelling words the class is able to use their words in a variety of different games/activities throughout the week that help them apply their knowledge to identify each of these features.  Exciting news is that this week also marked the move to the premium account for our Spelling City account (letter came home on Wednesday with the new login information) meaning the kids now have access to an even greater number of activities that support of studies in class. 

In Science we concluded our study of Waste and our World this week with a couple of at-home assignments which I hope reinforced many of the concepts we had been discussing in class with regards to hazardous waste and recycling. It has been a great unit of study, and watching how many of the students attitudes have changed and observing how many of them are now active classroom recycle'rs (i.e. even reminding their classmates to recycle), reinforces the intended unit message that ever generation plays an important part in helping to change people's thinking towards protect the environment for future generations.

Beginning next week our new unit of study will be Wheels and Levers, involving the study of Simple Machines and how they can be used to make work easier and more efficient.  This another great unit will plenty of hands-on learning for our kinesthetic crew!

Social Studies this week has been all about the presentations and our Alberta Regions Project.  We are just a few days into the presentations and those students who have had an opportunity to share have done a good job at presenting their slide shows.  A hint of advice for future presenters would be for them to be able to summarize their slide's information so that they can give their audience just the main, important points quickly and concisely.  

**  To those students who who were still missing some of their information, a reminder that all presentations given the extension are due on Monday, October 31.  Any presentations still missing information after this date will be marked as incomplete and graded accordingly.  So use the extra time wisely and get the projects finished. **

Finally to wrap up the week on a spooky note...a little Halloween Art as modelled by the students of 4H!

Halloween Information
With Halloween just days away here is some classroom information with regards to the big day. Come Monday the 31st it will be classroom business as usual in the morning with regular classes being held as per usual until noon. 

Students are welcome to wear their costumes in the afternoon and will be given time to change during the lunch hour recess.  Much like other schools and as with every year, costume accessories that could be considered violent and/or weapons (i.e. guns, swords, axes etc.) should be left at home.  We will be holding a school-wide costume parade in the afternoon so everyone will get a chance to show off their creative costumes!

Finally a huge thank you goes out to those families that are supplying the treats for our afternoon party - the treats are always a hit with the class and definitely help make the event more memorable.  If you were one of the "treat families" selected this first round, please do remember to send your treat on Monday with your child.


Upcoming Important Dates and Events

Friday, October 28 - WHPS Family Halloween Dance  6:00pm - 8:00pm @ WHPS
Monday, October 31 - Class Halloween Party (PM)
Tuesday, November 1 - PD Day: No School
Wednesday, November 2 - Early Dismissal @ 2:30pm