Dear Parents,

This morning, we started off with a class read-aloud of “Wonder” and then we had our Literature Circles Meeting #4. The kids always get mad when I stop reading because the book ends in so many cliffhangers. It is important that all students are ready for these literature circle meetings as they are being marked for completion and their team all has to be at the same reading stage and ready for the meeting for the meetings to be effective to discuss the book. It’s like a book group 🙂

After, students had snack and Music and then DPA. After DPA, Mr. Anderson came in to do a lesson with a guided meditation/visualization and students were tasked to draw their happy place to “go to” whenever they are stressed or not feeling their best.

Following lunch, I taught the kids the steps of paraphrasing and using paraphrased text as text evidence in addition to direct quotations from the text. We did some practice as a class and individually in making sure that we are staying away from plagiarism and wrote down key steps to make sure we are paraphrasing correctly and not copying – a very important skill for them going forward. The students are doing a wonderful job practicing their paraphrasing so that they are able to use their own words when summarizing research/text/stories.

At the end of the day, I did an intensive review for what will be on the Math quiz tomorrow. Students wrote down what they need to know and we went through some examples. This will count for marks on their third term report card.

Then, students had a bit of time to work on their literature circles roles before home time.

Tomorrow is the Math quiz and Thursday is our next literature circle meeting & spelling test.

Students are also reminded to bring a sturdy, re-usable grocery bag labelled with their name to put their things in to hang on the hooks over March Break as we need to move all the desks out of the classroom for the janitors to clean the floors extensively. Students are encouraged to bring these as soon as possible so that they do not forget.

Have a good night!

Sincerely,

Ms. Wilks