Dear Parents,

We had a very lovely day today, the students earned their final cupcake coloured in which means they get an extra DPA tomorrow 🙂 Great work to them!

This morning, we watched the last Drama presentation and explored in Math making change for large bills. We worked on figuring out how to subtract four-digit decimal numbers e.g. $19.49, where the dollar sign vs. cents sign goes in preparation for when we are creating our own shops to sell things in and compete to make the most profit. We also reviewed borrowing in subtraction e.g. $20.00 – $18.50, and what to do since there are no more pennies anymore (rounding to the nearest 5/10). We worked with plastic money to model change and used an online website. I also challenged the students to make change with the most amount of coins, the most variety of coins, the least amount of coins and how to check their work with addition as the reverse operation.

We had library today as well and our first introductory lesson for basketball. We practiced dribbling, avoiding the lines in the Gym, defending against steals, and practiced shooting in the nets. We also had a riveting round of benchball, which is the kids’ favourite.

After recess, we read the story of “Turtle Island”, which is an Indigenous story of the creation of North America. The students are tasked in class to create a comic strip depicting the story with their own illustrations. I emphasized how important it is to take this activity seriously and not add in goofy illustrations/elements in order to be respectful to First Nations culture. Then, Ms. Belcourt came in to do a lesson on being a Social Detective and being able to differentiate expected vs. unexpected behaviours in various settings.

No homework today, just that the Winter Break writing + pictures + presentations are going to be on Monday!

Sincerely,

Ms. Wilks