Week 4 Updates
Dear students and families,
Please read with your child or encourage them to read our weekly blog posts too. This offers a real reason to read, reflect, and respond. It also gives you as a family an opportunity to discuss and reinforce learning. Thank you!
When I reflect on our week, I always have such fond feelings. This past week, we read a story called The Best Story by Eileen Spinelli. 
This story was to reinforce the idea that the stories we write come from our hearts. We all worked on a heart map to show all the things that have a place in our hearts.
For Math, we focused on Place Value last week by having fun with numbers! We used our whiteboards to show what we know, played a class race game called “I have, who has”, practiced representing numbers in a place value chart and learned how to read bigger numbers beyond the millions place! They had so much fun practicing by playing a different version of war. I wish you could be in the room to see how much fun and how engaged they were in their learning! Read my tweet!
How to play Place Value Showdown? Take out the 10, Jack, and King. The A=1 and Queen = zero in your deck of cards. Each player flips over one card at a time on their own game sheet (place value chart), starting from the ones place. The player with the larger number earns one point. Then both players can earn a second point if they each read the number correctly. That way, the other player can also earn a point each time. Each child has their own deck of cards so they are not sharing. Variation game option: Only the player with the larger number gets the point but they have to read it correctly to keep the point!
How to support at home: Students were told they could bring their game boards home to practice. If your child is not ready to read numbers to the millions place, then simply fold the place value chart over to where they can read numbers and then slowly add one more place at a time. They should not say the word “and” when they are saying their numbers. For example, this number shown would be 69 million, 5 hundred sixty-two thousand, (do not say AND here) forty-three. It’s a common mistake that we add “and” when we read numbers!
For Language Arts, we worked on our paragraph writing about gratitude. During our Thursday morning Community Circle time, we shared what we are thankful for. Then watched one of my favourite videos on gratitude:
Next, we dove into the writing process. I wanted students to understand that we only spend approximately 20% of our time writing. The rest of our writing is more about thinking, reviewing, and revising. Click on the image for the full view of the graphic. So we started with making a list of things we are grateful for. Students could choose to write a list or make a web.
We then learned how to write a good paragraph, reviewed how to write a topic and closing sentence, and what goes in between! I always use a magnifying glass (I actually pull one out!) and tell them that’s what they are doing with their writing. They are diving in deeper to offer explanations, descriptions, examples, or reasons. They chose one thing they are grateful for to dive deeper!
Lastly, we learned what to do when we are “finished’. Well, we are actually never really finished but before they hand in their work, here are the steps to take. To make our writing better, I ask them DYRIO? This stands for “Did You Read It Over?” Please click image to view. I loved reading their writing!
This past week, we had a number of students away. It weighed on me that I was not doing more for the students at home so at the end of the week (Thursday and Friday), I started sharing what we were doing in class so that friends at home would not be too far behind when they returned.
I also have more things set up in O365 Teams so your child can continue to work there. If they go to Class Notebook or OneNote in their own section (with their name), click on the Handouts tab. The first page on this tab is Accounts. Here, you will find the class code for Epic (our online book library), their username and password for a typing program called All The Right Type (ATRT) and Khan Academy (online math lessons and review). Click on the hyperlink to go to the website. Students can always work on their Writer’s Workshop stories found in Teams > Assignments. I will continue to set up processes and things to do should your child not feel well and is at home. Of course, getting better is their most important “homework”! These activities are only for when they just have a bit of a cough and have the energy to do some work! I am still figuring out the best way to hand in their work. For now, emailing me is best. Thank you to those who have done just that! I have loved receiving your work remotely!
Our schedule is set! We will go to the Computer Lab on Tuesday and Friday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we go to the gym, have Social Studies, and practice our French with Ms. Paulich!
On Friday, we started working on our Passion Projects! It was a fantastic start! If your child is at home sick, working on their Passion Project is also a great way to learn while at home!
If you plan to keep your child at home due to illness, please inform the office. If you also email Marianna and me, we appreciate too! Thank you!
We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving long weekend! I actually found it a bit hard this weekend not being able to see my extended family like we always do BUT I am still grateful for the many blessings I have. I see every day as a gift. Every person and connection we make is a gift. My year with your children and your family is a gift. Time is a gift. I speak about these things and how gratitude is important to me on podcast that dropped at the beginning of September. If you are interested to listen, click here. I would absolutely love to hear what resonated with you if you listen, please. I am grateful for your time!
Thank you for your continued support at home! As always, please feel free to reach out should you have any questions. Thank you for your beautiful children in our lives. We feel so very blessed to be their teacher this year.
Appreciating you, Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich