Upcoming Events Monday & Tuesday, May 8 & 9 - Fountas & Pinnell Reading Benchmark Testing Read Ms. Munnerlyn's letter here Monday & Tuesday, May 15 & 16 - Spring MAP Testing Please let us know if your child will be out on any of these days.
This week we began our new unit as we inquire into 'Sharing The Planet' Sharing the Planet An inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things; communities and the relationships within and between them; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution. Central Idea Humans live in a web of interdependence where understanding oneself and others is essential for peaceful resolution to conflict. Lines of Inquiry - Causes and consequences of conflict - Strategies used to resolve conflict - Awareness of ourselves and how we collaborate Concepts Causation- Why is it like it is? Perspective - What are the points of view? Responsibility - What is our responsibility? Learner Profile - Caring - acting in a respectful way that shows empathy and compassion towards others - Communicators - expressing ideas and listening to others when working collaboratively - Principled - taking responsibility for own actions and the consequences that accompany them- particularly in resolving conflicts fairly. Attitudes - Empathy - ability to understand another’s perspective and be open-minded - Cooperation - collaborating and leading or following as the situation demands
This week we dug into our new unit by thinking about the 'shades of meaning' for peace and conflict. We discussed how they come in a variety of forms and in different places. We used our knowledge of poetry to express our different ideas about peace and conflict. We had lots of excitement this week with guest readers from Grade 7 who read their own fairy tales to us. And most exciting of all was the Makers Faire!!! We had so much fun learning from the middle and high school students and we got to create many things of our own! In Math we were also creating. We used strips of paper to measure our fractions and create our own mix of equivalent fraction equations - there are so many combinations to make up one whole!! Happy Friday!!! 
This week we worked hard to finish up our final projects - it's been a long, long, road, but we did it and we have some amazing presentations to show. We were left with some questions to continue to discuss, research, and ponder. Check out out presentations on our Google Drive! In math, we continued our investigations into fractions with a Frayer Thinking model to define it, give characteristics, examples, and non-examples. We had not one, but two birthdays to celebrate this week! Happy Birthday Helena and Lucia!!! We loved the cupcakes and our blue tongues ;) Finally, we welcomed our newest member - Wonwoo! He arrived in Poland yesterday from Korea and spent the afternoon with us on Friday. Happy Friday!!! 
Family Reading Night 2017 April 20, 18:00-19:30 Why: To create community around reading by modeling how a great read-aloud looks, sounds and feels. Where: The Atrium! (aka- foyer of the ‘new’ building) Who: ALL ES students are invited! They must be accompanied by a parent-- It’s a family event! How to RSVP: Parents can sign up in the library or via the link in the E-Notes. What to wear: your pajamas and bring your favourite snuggly toy (optional). We’re looking forward to hearing stories read by FIFTEEN members of our faculty! Grade 3/4 Concert Moved! The concert has been rescheduled from 27 April to 8 June at 9AM. Thank you to all parents for your time and efforts to make Teacher Appreciation Day such a wonderful experience!! We greatly appreciated the thoughts, food, and flowers! This week we're bringing our unit to a close by working on our own research project to show our understanding of the different forms on Earth, the way Earth changes, and how those changes impact humans. We hope to finish revising and editing next week. We will practice our presentation skills and invite parents to see our presentations next Friday. In Math, we finished up our Area & Perimeter projects and began thinking about fractions. To get us thinking, the teachers put different amounts of chocolate on each table and had us choose where to sit to get the most chocolate - those were hard choices!! We did lots of reading by learning different strategies to read online postings, we practiced partner reading with our Reading Buddies in 1M, and we also practiced our vocabulary and spelling with different word games. We look forward to presenting all our hard work to our parents next Friday, 21 April! Happy Friday!! 
This week was a busy week as we wrapped up our opinion writing pieces, drafted a counterclaim, gave parnter feedback on our writing, practiced and performed Reader's Theatre, as well as several fun activities practicing our area and perimeter. With our writing we continued the editing and revising process by reading each other's writing. We looked for reasons with examples and thought about what an appropriate counterclaim would be. After we finished our final tweaks, we practiced our handwriting skills by creating our final drafts then we utilized those final drafts to practice our typing skills by creating a soft copy version on Google Docs. To hone our reading, interpretation, and public speaking skills we practiced and presented several skits to our classmates. Our skits were based on topics related to "How the World Works' and we continued our understanding of the Earth's form, how it changes, and the effects of some of those changes. We integrated area and perimeter into our perspective on art, geography, and games this week. We had a little fun by using the dice to create a race to see who could measure out the most area in 15 minutes. We got artistic by plotting out our name on graph paper and calculating the area and perimeter. Finally, we incorporated geography and created our own city planning. Happy Friday!! and greetings from the Learning2 Conference! |
