Week 15

This week we had Christmas Store and lots of us got some good Christmas shopping done.

We finished reading City of Ember this week and then we got to watch the movie! We got to eat lots of popcorn because our teachers thought we were so responsible this week and thought we earned a special little treat! We did a compare and contrast of the book and the movie. There were lots of things that were different in the movie compared to the book.

  

We are still doing volleyball in gym with Mr. Collins. On Thursday though, Mr. Collins came into our classroom and we did some Star Wars yoga, it was so fun!

Our friends in Division 1 (Kindergarten to grade 2) had their Convention of Learning this week. We got to go around to a few of the classrooms and see what they have been learning about so far this year. Some teachers from last year even came for a visit during convention, it was so nice to see them!

This week we had 3 caroling assemblies! We got to sing our hearts out and watch some really funny "JibJab" videos that Mr. Southworth made of the teachers.

In science we talked about "what is light?" and we went around the school looking for as many sources of light as we could find. We then made a T-chart and sorted what we found into "natural sources" and "man-made sources" like things that need to be plugged in or use batteries and then things that can make their own light like the sun and some animals and insects like fireflies. 

     

    

In writing this week we wrote some letters to Mayor Nenshi about implementing a city wide snow day because it has been so cold and we are tired of inside recess! We came up with lots of creative and good ideas about why a snow day should happen. Then we wrote about what we would do if we were given a snow day. We practiced our persuasive writing skills further when we wrote letters to our teachers and principal about why we want to do certain things at school.

Today is our last day of school before the winter break and it was Pajama Day! We get two weeks off and we will be back at school Tuesday January 3, 2017! We have homework packages that our teachers sent home with us. These are due back on the first day back at school.

Can't wait to see you all again! Have a wonderful break!

Love,

Room 7 & 8

Week Fourteen!

In science this week we made tinfoil models and then we made a shadow behind it. We got flashlights and a partner. One person had to hold the flashlight and the other person had to trace the shadow then we coloured the shadows in. It was pretty hard but they turned out great!

  

      

  

      

We explored shadows even more by testing materials with flashlights to find out if they were transparent, opaque, or translucent. We used paper, parchment paper and plastic as materials to test. We turned off all of the lights in the classroom and put the flashlight on our materials to see if the light went through to the wall or not. That's how we could figure out how much light went through and if the materials were transparent, opaque or translucent. Next we got a piece of paper and had to record the definitions of transparent, opaque and translucent as well as our observations during this experiment. 

  

  

  

It was Miss Tan and Miss Smaili's last week with us  :(   They were so generous and gave us new pencils, erasers and mini candy canes! We will miss you, thank you! We made them a beautiful thank you card that we all got to sign and write a nice message.

This week it was SO COLD we had to stay inside allllllll week for recess AND lunch! It was alright though because we got to watch The Lorax, half of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, AND Finding Dory over our lunch breaks. We also got to do lots of movement breaks to shake and dance out our sillies!

   

This Friday we had a candy cane sale - yum! And we earned our free choice Friday :) Lots of students made beautiful pictures for their teachers today that will be proudly hung on the wall for all to see! Wow! We even shared our love for our teachers in our free writing time by writing nice letters to them, it really warmed our teachers hearts!

In gym we started volley ball. We have played games to practice our volley ball skills. One of these games is called Balloon War! We had to get into partners and defeat another pair using balloons and volley ball skills such as bumping, setting, and serving. When you are bumping it is important to NEVER link your fingers together because you might break them!

In math we used ipads to explain how to solve addition problems using the strategies we have learned. The app we used was called "Explain Everything." Ms. Paull even joined us for this lesson and some of us got to explain our thinking to her and show her how to use the app. It was so cool to get to spend time with her in math.

  

     

We got two new students with us this week, we were very welcoming and are happy to have them join us!

We had clubs this week too. In Environmental Club we got cameras and took pictures around the classroom using flashlights to make the pictures much more realistic. Ms. Downing wanted us to make a picture of a leaf that was not hydrated at lots of different angles and zoomed in, you will make it look more interesting.

It was a great week! Until next time,

Love,

Room 7 & 8

Week Thirteen!

We played basketball and next week we are moving into volleyball! On Wednesday we had a big basketball match, Mr. Collins let us choose if we wanted to play girls with girls, boys with boys, or grade against grade, or class against class. We chose class against class. It ended in a tie 6-6 we are super duper basketball players!

Our grade 1/2 buddies came in to watch our recycling videos! They turned out great! Check out some of them here!

Ms. Smaili and Ms. Tan came in and we learned about how the First Nations used buffalos. We learned that they used everything, even the poop! They used it for fueling fires. They used the buffalo brains to make leather softer. They used their skin to make teepees. They used to eat the heart, tongue and liver right away so it didn't go to waste. Basically we learned that the First Nations used to use every single part of buffalos so that nothing went to waste. They were able to find a use for everything! We got a print out of a buffalo and we had to guess what we thought each part of the buffalo was used for. Then we watched a video to see if our guesses were right and then if they weren't, we marked down the actual use with a different coloured pencil. After we did that we coloured our buffalos (most of us did...) brown!

In math we continued to learn about addition. We learned some more strategies and we also learned how to pull out the important information from word problems.

Because there is no school on Friday due to parent teacher interviews, we are having "Fun Friday" on Thursday! How wild!

See you all at parent teacher interviews this Thursday and Friday!

Until next week, love,

Room 7 & 8

Week 12

It was a short week at school for week 12 but that certainly doesn't mean it wasn't full! So much to learn and only so much time!

This week we continued to read "City of Ember" and we got to draw what we think the main characters look like. We figured out that the main characters are Lina, Doon, Poppy, Grandma and the Mayor. We also got to draw what we think the settings look like. It was really neat to see what everyone pictures while Miss Kolb is reading the story.

In gym we played real basketball games! We played 5 on 5. We have some very talented basketball players in our class.

We had Roots of Empathy twice this week. We had a pre-baby visit with our instructors and we learned about babies healthy development. We also had baby visits this week with baby Michael and baby Lena.

In writing we wrote about our weekends and spent the week editing them with all of our new knowledge of what makes a good writing piece.

  

We also did free writing, some of us didn't finish our free writing because our stories are getting so long, detailed and interesting! It is always fun to do free writing!

On Wednesday Ms. Tan and Ms. Smaili came in and read us a story called "Over There" after they finished reading the story we got to write about it. We wrote about the characters and the beginning, middle, end and the setting.

We continued with our guided reading this week. We also started partner reading this week as well.

  

  

In science we made an action plan about how we are going to make responsible decisions about our waste. Our goals are to become less wasteful so we made decisions about what we will do so that we can make the school a better place.

We finished our week off with a peace assembly. To start the assembly the whole school sang "Hello World" a song about peace. It was very cool to see the entire school singing this song about peace and kindness. The advisory group was very important in putting on this assembly, we can even thank two of our very own for being involved, Pary and Aatif, we loved to watch them from the audience! The advisory group will be working hard this year to help make our school a better place. Mr. Southworth read us a story in the assembly called "Be the Change" about Ghandi and how important it is to not be wasteful and to practice peace. Ghandi has said "be the change you wish to see" which means make the world a better place by starting with your own actions.

 

Until next time, peace and love,

Room 7 & 8