February 29 to March 4

Happy "Snow Day" Monday!

This year, our grade 6 school Lenten project is two-fold. We have a local and a global focus. Locally, money raised will help support Syrian refugee families who have come to live in Ottawa. Globally, money raised will also help bring clean water directly into villages in areas such as Africa. Last Thursday, the grade 6 students did an excellent job letting us know why it is important to help others in need. We are so incredibly fortunate to live in a safe and free country with easy access to clean water, shelter and food. Our class will come up with advertisements to help promote this wonderful Lenten project. We will make this part of our media studies. Students will have a choice in how they deliver informative messages by making posters or using IPad Apps such as Tellegami, Green Screen and Chatter pix. Our goal is to create an advertisement that is informative and persuasive in order to help the campaign raise money for these two important causes.

Since we do just about everything with Mrs. D'Ettorre's, class we decided that instead of making a class goal we will make a team goal for raising money. The students said they think we can raise $300 between both classrooms. If we reach our goal the students will earn something special.... they are still trying to decide. :)

Here are the new word wall words for this week:

1. was

2. pushed

3. off

4. do

5. were

In Language, we have been talking about how to BUMP UP our writing. This means adding details and describing words to our sentences to make them longer and more complex. It would be beneficial to sit with your child at least once or twice a week and see if they can write a sentence, then BUMP IT UP. We have also been talking about chunks that will help us read and write. For example, knowing that “ed” has three sounds (“d”, “t” and “ed”) will help your child read and write words that end in “ed”. We also use words we know to help spell new ones. For example, knowing how to spell the word “all” which is on our word wall will help you to spell the word “fall” in a sentence. We will continue to focus on these strategies and bump up our writing for all of March. There should be a difference in the recounts they write each Monday as they learn strategies to help them read and write.

In Math, we will study 3D solids and how they differ from 2D shapes. 3D solids are not flat like 2D shapes. They have different names to describe their properties (e.g. 2D Shapes: sides and vertices, 3D Solids: edges, vertices and faces). We will explore which 3D solids can slide, roll and stack. We will also do walk around the school looking for examples of 3D solids and create a pic collage of our findings. Students will have a choice to show their knowledge of 3D solids through a variety of activities (e.g. IPad Apps and games).

In Science, we have started our unit on Materials, Objects and Everyday Structures. Students were given a tray of materials and ask to explore, make observations and discuss these with their group. When consolidating our findings, students eventually figured out that these objects have a name and are made of different materials. We will continue studying the properties of materials by using our 5 senses. Then we will move into learning about natural and man-made structures.

Lent and Holy Week Presentation

In Religion, we have been talking about the season of Lent. Lent lasts 40 days. It is a time we do extra things for others such as praying, being kind, giving to the needy etc. Lent is followed by Holy Week and the Easter. Our class has been practising the words and actions to a beautiful worship song called “Here I am to Worship” by Tim Hughes.  Our class along with Mrs. D'Ettorre's class be performing this song in a special Holy Week presentation on Thursday, March 24th starting at 1:00pm. Mark your calendars because it would be wonderful if you could come see your child present this beautiful song to the school. The entire Holy Week performance will last about 45-60min. because it starts with the grade 4’s dramatization of Palm Sunday as Jesus enters Jerusalem, followed by The Last Supper then a grade 3 shadow theatre performance of The Stations of the Cross and then it ends with our grade ones singing and doing the actions to our worship song. Caution: This performance may bring tears to your eyes because their voices are angelic and their actions powerful! 

********To make this performance extra special for our children I would like to make a special t-shirt for them. I am not sharing the design with you because it will be a surprise! If you are able to donate a plain white t-shirt for your child to use that would be great! I will buy any that need one after all of the donated ones come in. I usually just get a 5-pack of boys white undershirts at walmart. They will be painted with a special design afterwards and your child gets to keep it as a souvenir. T-shirts can be sent in anytime this coming week. We will design them the week before the March break. Thanks for your cooperation. *******

Waste-Free Wednesdays

Waste-Free Wednesdays are going pretty good. We consistently have about 8 waste-free lunches out of 20. I know we can BUMP THIS UP. It would be super if we could increase the number of waste-free lunches each Wednesday. This initiative helps our children understand the importance of pitching in to help reduce waste in our environment. We talk about where items get put into each day (e.g. paper towel, straws, yogurt containers, plastic wrap, food scraps etc.) I monitor the garbage container daily to ensure our children know where their items go. They are incredible at doing this! I am so proud of our class for their efforts!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Wednesday, March 2nd is Dr. Seuss’s Birthday! Each year, Mrs.D'Ettorre and I celebrate this day with language and math activities all related to Dr. Seuss books. We also have a few fun surprises in store for our children as well. Please have your child wear red, white and or blue that day. These are Dr. Seuss and Thing 1 and Thing 2 colours.

Important Dates:

Wednesday, March 9th - Library Exchange

March 14th to March 18th - March Break

Thursday, March 24th - Holy Week Presentation 1:00pm **Our worship song performance

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Tiffany Lawless

February 22-26

Hello everyone!

Last week was Kindness Week! We talked about kindness but we didn't just start this conversation last week. We started it last September when we met. Kindness is fundamental no matter how old you are! Kindness matters all the time and if your child has been paying attention to our conversations over the last 5 months then they will be able to tell you how to be kind and why it's important to be kind to people at school, at home, in our community and to people around the world!

Last Thursday all the Grade 1 students participated in our Catholic Values assembly and sang their religion song, "Growing in Faith, Growing in Christ" and they did an AMAZING job!! They should be very proud of themselves.

The children had a lot of fun during our outdoor play day Friday morning! They showed a lot of team spirit during all the activities they did.

Here are the new word wall words for this week.

1. put
2. make
3. did
4. their
5. who
6. why

In Language, we will write a recount each Monday in our journals.

Earlier this year I posted a blog entry about what we as teachers look for when your child is writing. I showed you different examples of levels 1-4 (1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest). Starting this month we are going to put a really big focus on bumping up our work to see how far we can go!  

We will begin with learning to write a simple sentence and answer the 5 W’s (who, what, why, where, when) in order to “Bump It Up” and make the sentence more detailed and more interesting.

An example of a sentence: I went to my friend’s house.

They could bumped it up and add detail by answering the following:

Who did I see? my friend’s name was Janice

What did we do? we watched a movie together

Why did I go? we got together because I haven’t seen her in a

long time

Where did I go? I went to Janice’s house

When did I go? on Saturday

This could be the resulting sentence:

On Saturday, I went to my friend Janice’s house to watch a movie together. I went to see Janice because I haven’t seen her in a long time.

You can support your child’s writing at home by spending some time and going through the steps above.

We will also spend time each week studying strategies to decode and write new words. For example, knowing the three sounds of “ed” (“d”, “ed” and “t”) will help children decode words that end in “ed” as well as write words that end in “ed”. Also, knowing the sound “tion” is spelled t-i-o-n will help them read and write words such as addition, subtraction and presentation, etc. We will study various blends (e.g. bl, st, gr, br etc.) that will help them read and write as well. With your child learning all these strategies, we should notice a difference in the quality of their writing in the next couple of weeks.

In Math, will continue finish up our study of 2D shapes and then proceed to study 3D solids. Students are learning how to describe and compare these shapes and solids using math language (e.g. 2D shapes: sides, vertices and 3D solids: vertices, edges, faces). They will also be asked to sort and classify 2D shapes according to an attribute (e.g. number of sides, number of vertices, quadrilaterals). Students will also continue to work on solving math problems using pictures, numbers and words.

In Science, we are working on our unit on Materials, Objects and Everyday Structures.

WASTE-FREE WEDNESDAYS

Just a reminder that Wednesdays are Waste-Free! Let's try to be especially eco-friendly that day! Thanks

Important Dates:

• Waste-Free Lunch - Wed. Feb. 24th

• Library Book Exchange -  Wed. Feb. 24th
• Skating at Minto - Wed. Feb. 24th 1:00-2:00pm (Fingers crossed it is not a snow day!!)

I hope you all have a great week!

Tiffany Lawless

Feb 16-19

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a fabulous Family Day weekend and Valentines Day!

Here are the word wall words for this week. They are the same as last week due to the numerous spirit week and 100 day activities we had last week.

1. boys
2. girls
3. stopped
4. wanted
5. children

In Language, we will write a recount of our long weekend using sequential words. Students will be attempting to add adjectives, detail and use conjunctions in their writing to make it longer and more interesting.

In Math, will continue our study of 2D shapes and then proceed to study 3D solids. Students will learn how to describe and compare these shapes and solids using math language (e.g. 2D shapes: sides, vertices and 3D solids: vertices, edges, faces). Students will also work on solving math problems using pictures, numbers and words.

In Science, we will start our new unit on Materials, Objects and Structures.

WASTE-FREE WEDNESDAYS

Just a reminder that Wednesdays are Waste-Free! Let's try to be especially eco-friendly that day! We average about 8 waste-free lunches right now. Let's try to increase that number. Thanks

Important Dates:

• CGE Assembly 1:00pm - “Love”- POSTPONED DUE TO SNOWDAY
• Pizza day- Wed. Feb 17 because of snowday
• Waste-Free Lunch - Wed. Feb. 17th

• Library Book Exchange -  Wed. Feb. 24th
• Skating at Minto - Wed. Feb. 24th 1:00-2:00pm

If at any time, you have any questions or concerns, please write me a note in your child’s agenda and I will get back to you.

Hope you have a great week!!

Tiffany Lawless

February 8-12

Happy Monday!

I need to start by saying.... DENVER WON THE SUPERBOWL!!!!! I might be just a little bit happy about that!! GO BRONCOS!!!

 

Ok now on to more important things!!

Here are the new word wall words for week 19:

*Note that due to the numerous spirit week and 100 day activities, we will be studying these words for the next two weeks.

1. boys
2. girls
3. stopped
4. wanted
5. children

Valentine’s Cards:

Just a reminder that students are welcome to hand out their valentine cards on Friday morning, first block during French class. Please do not send any baked goods due to children with allergies. Any candy send that is pre-packaged will go home with the children and not eaten at school. Thanks for your cooperation.

KINDNESS IS COOLER - Class Project

Wow! Our classroom door and windows are exploding with kindness hearts! I hope that the children continue their acts of kindness even though we stop adding hearts up in our classroom after Monday.

In Gym, we continue to do fitness stations to help improve strength, coordination and agility. Through these and other activities, we continue to work on our fitness goal of performing an activity for 5 minutes in duration without stopping.

In Music, students were introduced to the four instrument families and we explored the percussion family of instruments. Students also listened to a variety of songs and determined their tempo as well interpreted the mood of the music played. Some songs included: Fur Elise, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Fantasia - The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, William Tell Overture and Flight of the Bumblebee just to name a few. We added a music station to work stations for the next few weeks so the children can practice playing rhythms and further explore the sounds of the percussion instruments in our class kit. We will also continue to practice rhythm and beat to music.

In Language, our main focus is on recounts. Students will write a recount using sequential words such as First, Next, Then, After, Finally. We will talk about using conjunctions to lengthen sentences and how to use adjectives to describe the nouns they use in their writing. It is a good idea to have your child write regularly at home (e.g. shopping lists, letters to grandma, retell a story they read, write their own adventure etc.).

In Math, we started our unit on 2D shapes. Students learned that tri means 3, quad means 4, octa means 8 etc. to help them remember the names of the 2D shapes. We talked about the number of sides and vertices (corners) each have. We will look for 2D shapes in our environment and we will create Chatter Pix of a shape and describe it using this fun and creative IPad App.

In Science, the students are finished their research projects and will be presenting their information to the class next week. They did a great job! Our next unit will be on Materials, Objects and Everyday Structures. This will link up nicely to our math unit on 2D shapes and the following unit on 3D solids.

Spirit Week Activities:

Monday - Mismatched Monday /School Wide Buddy Reading block 3

Tuesday - Rockstar Day/Drop Everything and Dance - 2:30-3:00pm

Wednesday - School Wide Bingo - block 4

Thursday - Cake Walk in the gym all day

Friday - Outdoor Winter Play Day and Movie

Important Dates:

• 100 Day Activities for all Grade Ones - Tues. Feb. 9th
• Waste-Free Lunch - Wed. Feb. 10th

• Library Book Exchange -  Wed. Feb. 10th
• Ash Wednesday Liturgy - Wed. Feb. 10th at 9:45am
• Cake Walk - Thurs. Feb. 11th
• Nanny Sue February Craft - Thurs. Feb. 11th 1:00-2:00pm
• Family Day - Mon. Feb. 15th - NO SCHOOL
• Skating at Minto - Wed. Feb. 24th 1:00-2:00pm

**We are looking for parent volunteers for Nanny Sue’s February Craft. Please write a note in your child’s agenda if you can join us on Feb. 11th from 1:00-2:00pm. Thanks

The 3rd Annual Cake Walk is taking place on Thursday, February 11th all day in the gym. This is a School Council event that raises money for technology in our school. More information from School Council to follow.

If at any time, you have any questions or concerns, please write me a note in your child’s agenda and I will get back to you.

Have a fabulous week!

Tiffany Lawless