Dear Parents,

Today, we worked more on growing patterns. I also gave students the template for writing a pattern rule when looking at the figure chart. The students explored creating very neat growing patterns with linking cubes today and worked on pages 16-17 #1-5, which are homework if it is not done.

Pattern Rule:

“Start at _____” and “Add/Multiply/Divide/Subtract ___ each time”

So for the pattern 4, 14, 24, 34 the pattern rule is: Start at 4 and add 10 each time. We are not getting into using ‘n’ as a variable yet.

Then, we went to the pancake breakfast, it was so fun 🙂

After, the students had library and we had our Gym time outside playing on the playground today since the Gym is in use.

We worked in our Daily 5 literacy stations and had a classroom meeting. In the meeting, we discussed keeping the insides and surfaces of our desks clean. We also chatted/brainstormed about roles in group work such as a group leader, writer, organizer, illustrator/designer, and a helper who can help out others. I have noticed that there are disputes in group work and am hoping that by identifying the different roles one can take, that this will result in more cooperation and teamwork.

At the end of the day, we explored light energy as part of our energy unit. We explored reflection and how light is reflected back from different objects. We also discussed refraction and how light traveling through a prism can create a rainbow. We see the colours separately arcing because they travel at different speeds. Red is the fastest and purple is the slowest. This is the website: https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/bending-light/latest/bending-light_en.html Some of the kids said they wanted to explore it at home 🙂

The students’ biome pamphlets are also due on Friday and their Drama presentation for their script is due on Monday.

Students are also asked if you have icing and decorations without peanuts to please bring them in, as we will be doing some Christmas baking decorating next week 🙂

Sincerely,

Ms. Wilks