WOW assembly winners!!

Our theme for this month was Attentive Listening. If you want to know what that is, go to the homepage of the website for details. Congratulations to our winners.

Childhood Cancer Awareness

We had a really touching assembly today. Representatives from the hospital came to talk to the kids about the different programs for children with cancer. Ron the magician was also here!! He regularly performs for the children in the hospital. 

CLASSROOM 'STUFF'

Good Morning Everyone! Reading Response journals will be going home for parents to review and initial please. This unit we are working on making connections with what we read. Good readers connect what they know with what they are reading. For example, a character in the students novel is about to perform in a spelling bee and can't sleep the night before. The character tosses and turns and just can't fall asleep. Perhaps the student has had a similar situation with performing in a class play, a piano recital or a big hockey game. The student can understand how the character in the novel is feeling and the sorts of thoughts that are going through the characters head. These types of connections give us insight into the character and the writers message. I encourage you to go through their connections and discuss the comments that I wrote. Please just initial at the bottom of the last response so I know the student brought the response journal home.

MATH HELP

I'm re-blogging this information from Mr.Marenchin's blog--I think I just made up a word?! Anyway, useful information for parents to get an idea of how to help kids with math.


Proportional reasoning is an important mathematical way of thinking needed for much of the math that’s used in school and in everyday life. The video explains what proportional reasoning is, why it’s important and what parents can do to support its development in their children.

VIDEO  How Many Nickels Make a Dollar? The Importance of Proportional Reasoning in Your Child s Math Development.”


Overall, talking with your children about 'everyday' math, practicing math facts & playing board/card games are only a few ways to 'stay in touch' with your childs math development.

ODDS AND ENDS

We will be having a science test for both the grade 5 and grade 6 students on Friday, October 4th. I will give the students the information that will be covered on the test on Monday. The grade 6 students will be conducting an investigation with our little friends in the picture below.  A few of the girls are already getting a little squeamish about handling  our 'little friends'.  They are called 'super worms' and we will investigating what characteristics make them an arthropod. If we are lucky, we might get some of them to develop into beetles.

Terry Fox Walk

It was an amazing sight! The entire school walking proud for Terry Fox. The kids raised over $450 dollars for Cancer the last few weeks.  It's inspiring to see the effect 1 person can have on the world.

House league assembly

Blogging live from our house league assembly!!! Wow!! The energy is just overwhelming. Have to have some fun every once in a while.

SCHOOL / HOME COMMUNICATION

I think it's critical that we develop a consistent line of communication between home and school. It's my job to keep you informed on your child's progress and development. With that in mind, I will be sending reading response journals and math journals home for parents to look over and sign. The signature is just my way to make sure that kids are actually bringing these items home.

What do I expect?
Well, as a parent of school aged children I understand how harried and stressful our lives can be. Between sports, homework, family and of course work-we are always on the go. I think it's very important that parents take an active role in their kids education. I would strongly recommend that you take a few minutes with your child to review the work being sent home. Look at the comments, ask them what they think about the work. This will take less than ten minutes but it will make a tremendous impact. Students quickly pick up on the fact that the teacher and parent are on the 'same page' and are in constant communication.  

Gym safety

We are working on  small area cooperative games in physical education. The focus is to get kids communicating and working together to play and create interactive games. As part of this unit we discuss how we have to work together to play safely. Unfortunately, we had a collision during our opening warm-up game and a child received a bloody nose.  We took care of him and made sure he was okay. It was comforting to see the kids step up and help with taking care of our injured student. They helped with keeping him calm and making sure he was okay. A few volunteered to go to the office and get the custodian to help clean up. I was really proud of them, especially how they welcomed him back to class. We went over our safety procedures and the kids came up with suggestions how to avoid similar incidents in the future. 

MEDIA IS ALL AROUND US!

Our kids are growing up in a digital world. Everywhere they turn they are inundated with images. More and more they are the focus of marketers that want them to 'try this', 'buy this' -- 'look like this'. Media literacy is our attempt to teach them the conventions and techniques these media outlets use to attract them. We are looking at book covers in grade 5 and movie posters in grade 6. What techniques are used to separate people from their money. COMING SOON! Our own versions of book covers and movie posters. Once finished we will posted several of them on the blog. Talk to your kids tonight about how their work is going--what are they working on-what's their idea for the book cover or movie poster.

Colour Wheel'n and Dealing

We started our first art lesson yesterday. The grade 5's are learning to blend primary and secondary colours from the 3 primary colours. The grade 6's will take it one step further and blend tertiary colours. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the work and most were very productive. As I told the students, effort and desire go a long way, we are not looking for perfection but an honest effort and willingness to work.

HOPE TO SEE EVERYONE TONIGHT AT MEET THE TEACHER NIGHT!!

"THOSE WERE THE DAYS"

Wondering how to help your son or daughter at night?

Asking where are your spelling words?  Thinking school just isn't the same....
Well you are right. And it shouldn't be.

We are preparing children for the future- their future  -and many of the jobs or careers they will be in have not yet been created.  But we do know one thing- they need to read and there is only one way to get better at reading and that is to read more.  So reading with your child, talking about reading and modeling reading is the best way to start.
When your child is reading at night-snuggle up and chat.

Ask them:

Fiction  
About the character, setting, problem and how the problem was solved.
Look at the similarities and differences between their own lives and the character in the story
Push them to predict, infer, compare, synthesize, and evaluate
Make connections to the text and the characters within the story
What the author's message was?              

Non-fiction
Identify the main topic
Look at the table of contents and talk about how you can find specific information
Discuss things like the habitat, predictors, extinction, environmental impact, materials used ( natural and man made )
Notice time sequences, talk about how illustrations and graphics provide information

Read a wide variety of things - newspapers, novels online, brochures, maps, lyrics to music, how to books, comic books or graphic texts, short stories, poetry and novels just to name a few.
If you can follow this reading with meaningful talk to support comprehension and increase retention  - you have spent time on 'good homework'.  Research also tells us some things about the benefit of reading- children who read have more sophisticated vocabulary, are better writers and will score 10% higher in tests and course grades.

Ideally, we need teachers and families working together as partners to support students' developing literacy.
Children learn from everything in their environment in which they live and work every day.  Be a part of it!

For more tips and information on helping your child with reading and writing, download Reading and Writing with Your Child, Kindergarten to Grade 6 – A Parent Guide. Also, visit our class website for more helpful links to help your child.

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/abc123/eng/tips/


                                       

Nicene Creed

Kids working on turning the Nicene Creed into more kid friendly language. We profess it in church but do we really know what we are saying?? Kids working hard on turning the Creed into something that has meaning for them.

CLASS AGREEMENTS

ALL NEW!! I'VE OPENED UP THE COMMENT BOXES. 

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON ANY OF THE POSTS

OUR CLASS AGREEMENTS ARE NOW UP AND SIGNED!!

We have been working very hard to create a set of agreements that we can all agree on and live with.

MUTUAL RESPECT

ATTENTIVE LISTENING

NO-PUT DOWNS

The goal is to create a safe, respectful environment where we can all learn and grow together. Ask your son or daughter tonight how they feel about the agreements and how they plan to follow them.


WORD PROBLEMS
We are continuing to work on our Super 7 strategies for problem solving. Today we worked on using 'logical reasoning' to organize and eventually solve the word problem. The problems we worked had some very tricky language. We used venn diagrams and matrix boxes to help organize our information and solve the problems. Most students found this very difficult to do. We will continue to work on this till they become more comfortable with logically organizing the information.

WEBSITE INFO

Have you checked out our website yet?  On the homepage I will have important  information related to the math and language curriculum. There is also a page with our class calendar and lots more interesting information.

FOLLOW THE BITLY BELOW AND IT WILL TAKE YOU DIRECTLY THERE.

GO CHECK IT OUT!!
http://bit.ly/15sLI14

THINKING ABOUT MATH

We are focusing on word problems the first two weeks. How do we solve them? What strategies do we use? How do we organize our work? These are all areas that will help the students be active and engaged problem solvers.

TODAY OUR FOCUS IS EXPLAINING WHY OUR ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM MAKES SENSE? ASK THEM TONIGHT ABOUT THE WORLD PROBLEMS THEY WORKED ON AND HOW THEY EXPLAINED IF THEIR ANSWER 'MADE SENSE'.

FANTASTIC 5-STEP PROCESS FOR WORD PROBLEMS

WE ARE WORKING ON A CONSISTENT PROCESS TO HELP STUDENTS ATTACK AND SOLVE WORD PROBLEMS IN CLASS.

5-STEP PROCESS


STEP 1
WHAT ARE THE FACTS JACK??

WRITE DOWN ALL THE IMPORTANT FACTS FROM THE PROBLEM--KEEP IT SIMPLE, USE ABBREVIATIONS, WRITE DOWN THE NUMBERS

STEP 2

WHAT IS THE QUESTION??

SOMETIMES WORD PROBLEMS ARE TRICKY--MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE ASKING YOU TO DO. RE-WRITE THE QUESTION IN YOUR WORDS TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND IT.

STEP 3

WHAT CAN WE ELIMINATE?

ONCE YOU WRITE DOWN THE FACTS AND THE QUESTION--EVERYTHING ELSE CAN BE ELIMINATED. THIS HELP YOU SEE WHAT'S IMPORTANT AND WHAT IS THERE TO CONFUSE YOU

STEP 4

CHOOSE ONE OF OUR SUPER 7 PROBLEM SOLVING STRATEGIES.

THE STUDENTS ARE USING A VARIETY OF STRATEGIES TO FOCUS THEIR WORK. FOR EXAMPLE:

DRAW A PICTURE

GUESS AND CHECK

MAKE A LIST

WORK BACKWARDS

MAKE A DIAGRAM OR CHART

USE LOGICAL REASONING

LOOK FOR A PATTERN

STEP 5

DOES THE ANSWER MAKE SENSE?

GO OVER YOUR WORK TO MAKE SURE IT MAKES SENSE!! IF IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE IT'S CLOSE TO WHAT YOU THOUGHT OR ESTIMATED---THEN IT'S PROBABLY NOT CORRECT.

IF IT IS CORRECT--THEN WRITE A STATEMENT SENTENCE THAT EXPLAINS YOUR ANSWER.

Some Early House Keeping Information

Hello to all the Parents and family members of our Grade 5/6 class this year! My name is Mr. Vince Francia and I will be your child's teacher this year.  We will be using the class blog and website for most communication throughout the year, however we will of course use the agenda as well.  Just a quick note about security and safety on line. The website and blog both fall under the WECDSB umbrella and as such are not strictly considered public. I only share the blog and website with my class and it is not generally available to the greater Web community. It is my goal to have information that is more static on the website and the blog will be used for daily updates and to let you have a peek into our classroom activities. I will be mainting the calendar on the website for important dates that happen throughout the school year.

SOME HOT BUTTON ISSUES (some for kids--some for parents)

• In most cases, sufficient class time will be alotted for completing class work and assignments. When class work is not completed then it is expected to be finished at home.
• Homework can also be considered independent practice of skills learned.

AN ANOLOGY

In sport, young athletes constantly practice specific skills in hopes to perform better in a game situation.  In the classroom, students can apply the same strategy by practicing skills that lead to success in the classroom at home. 

Examples: reading nightly, reading to an adult, practicing basic operations (especially times tables) and even mastering keyboarding skills. 

• students will have flexible opportunities for snacks during the day-of course healthy snacks are encouraged.
• please visit the blog often and post comments whenever you feel comfortable.

OUR CLASSROOM AGREEMENTS

• No child can expect to learn when they feel they are not valued and respected for their thoughts and opinions.
• We cannot learn in an environment that is unorganized and chaotic.
• Please check out our classroom agreements on the homepage of our website.
• We are in the process establishing these agreements and the students and I will be held accountable to these shared agreements.

PLEASE CHECK OUT THE LABEL THAT WAS PLACED IN YOUR CHILD'S AGENDA THAT SPECIFIES THE URL'S (WEB ADDRESSES ) OF OUR WEBSITE AND BLOG. 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT AND PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME ANY TIME TO DISCUSS ANY ISSUES OR CONCERNS YOU MAY HAVE.

MUTUAL RESPECT ROLE PLAYS

Students are creating role plays that highlight our three class agreements: MUTUAL RESPECT, ATTENTIVE LISTENING AND NO-PUT DOWNS. Visit the class website to get a better understanding of our class agreements and what the expectations will be for this coming year.

START OF A NEW YEAR

Here we go!! Our new school year is starting out with a bang! I'm going to post some pictures later today of some of our activities. Check back daily for updates and news from the grade 5/6 class.

Working on our collaborative group skills while we graph some data from our scavenger hunt.

A classroom scavenger hunt that allowed students to get to know their classmates.