We saw all kinds of weather this week, but unfortunately, we were unable to see the eclipse on Monday, w
ith all the cloud cover and rain, we missed catching a glimpse of the rare solar eclipse however, we did watch some live footage to make us feel more a part of what was meant to be a very special event.
While the weather has been very busy, so have we! This week we were working a lot on our ongoing projects. At the start of the week, 
we had time to finish up our storefronts and prepare for our shopping days with the grade 4/5 classes. We are very impressed with most of your groups as the creativity and style of the storefronts were really eye catching! 
All of your hard work really paid off on Wednesday and Thursday when we welcomed all the Grade 4/5 classes to come shop! Everyone who came enjoyed seeing your creations and many people purchased your products! 
After the two days of customers from other classes, we decided that we wanted to have a private, “in-house” shopping event as well. Stores opened one last time and you all had a chance to shop at each others’ stores. That was lots of fun!
Following all the shopping, we spent some time calculating the success of our stores and whether or not each business made a profit or suffered a loss. For those businesses that made money, congratulations! For those of you who didn’t, don’t be discouraged… many businesses start off a bit rocky before they start seeing a profit. 
What’s important is what you learned and the how you apply that to the future when/if you have a similar challenge. We hope you enjoyed this project– regardless of how your business did– we certainly did! Our stores will stay here at school until the end of next week so that parents can see all of the businesses during our student led conferences on Thursday.
We also spent much of the beginning of the week continuing to work on outlining and writing the body paragraphs for our Extreme Environment Robot essays. For many of you, having a detailed outline really helped you to focus your writing and stay on track. Many of you struggled with writing topic sentences. 
We had some conferences so you could have some one on one time to try to better understand how to write them. We really want all of you to understand that the topic sentence is the sentence in the paragraph that gives your reader the general topic and also the main idea, or what the paragraph is trying to say about the topic. The other sentences in the paragraph are meant to provide supporting facts and evidence to support your thinking. Next week, we are going to learn how to write Introductory and Conclusion paragraphs for essays. If you have not already completed the body paragraphs in class, do not forget to work on them this weekend so you are ready to move on next week!
Our creative poetry writing continued this week with the introduction of the Cinquain poem. 
Cinquains are five line poems that also follow a particular formula. Not only do they use syllables, but each line also has to adhere to specific parts of speech as well. Nouns, adjectives, verbs, are all part of this poem following a 2,4,6,8,2 syllable pattern. Whew! Lots to remember, but, we’re having a great time figuring it all out!
In the gym this month, we have the Trestle Tree equipment set up.
In our gym times, we have been exploring bars, ropes, mats and Bosu balls. When at each station, you are all working on different skills. Some of you are trying out new ways to roll and balance while others of you are trying hard to get to the top of that rope! A lot of our gymnastics unit has to do with controlling our body movements, strength, agility and safety of course. We are always watching how you move on different pieces of equipment and paying close attention to how you challenge yourself to try new movements. We have a few more weeks with the equipment so make sure you are thinking ahead to what you want to work on most, the next time we are in gym!
Looking ahead to next week, there is a spirit day on Wednesday. It is called “Lucky Day”! Everyone is encouraged to dress in green and participate in the fun activities leading up to the day.
There is a “Guess the jelly beans” jar and a “Match” game where students are asked to match teachers to the lucky items on the display board outside the library. On the day of the event, we will be playing school wide bingo as well. It is going to be a fun week for sure!
Your Blog Response Question for this weekend is……..
Do you have an item that you consider “LUCKY”? 
What is it and what makes it lucky for you?
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Gil