Swim to Survive

Learning to swim is not only fun but it is  a critical safety skill that they may need one day. Students are taught the basics of surviving in water; rolling in, treading water, front crawl. Check out some of the pictures from our first day.

Fractions of a Set

We are using counters to explore fractions of a set. If I have 20 candies and I want to give three fourths to my friends how many candies is that. I have 6 pets at home and two thirds are cats, how many cats do I have. Try these types of questions out at home to see how they do. We use counters in order to help the students visualize the problem. 

Mental Health Presentation

A very timely and informative presentation today. Students were given a variety of strategies that promote good mental health. Talk to your kids today about what they learned. This is a great way to address a difficult subject.

Math Games

We are playing a fun little game to practice our money counting skills. All you need is a die, the instructions (see below) and some loose change. 

Healthy Eating at Zehrs

We went on our Healthy Eating Field trip this morning. We learned how to be smarter and healthier consumers. We made our own delicious calzones and sipped on healthy smoothies. Check out our pictures. 

Telling Time

Measurement concepts are some of the most difficult mathematical skills for students to master.  Time is one of those concepts that students have great difficulty with. I know that more and more we are seeing time on easy to read digital clocks but to understand time kids need to know how to tell time on an analog clock as well. I'm including a few videos below that the students can view to help them with this skill. The videos an be used to help clarify the parts of telling time and they can use them for review as well. The last one is a fun little hip hop song that they can sing along to. Please remember you are an integral part of your child's education. Make telling time part of their everyday routine.
ASK THEM: How much longer till dinner tonight?  How long did it take you to finish that game (task, chore, homework) ? What time do we have to leave the house to go to school?

Journey to Holiness

Congratulations to Makenzie for being our February journey to holiness winner for Kindness. Way to go Makenzie you desire it!

Celebration of Learning at St.James!

Regardless of the wintery weather we had a great time at our celebration of learning. Our room was the robotics and coding demonstration area. My super coders volunteered to show their peers all the wonderful things they have been learning! Look at some of the pictures from our event tonight.

St. Clair College Dental Visit

What a Great  program in association with the School board and St.Clair College!! Kids are learning about dental health and they get a free comprehensive check up. Check out some pictures from our morning.

St.Clair Maker Faire

Very excited to let our St.James family know about an upcoming event at St.Clair College. The University of Windsor and St.Clair College are hosting a Maker Faire this Saturday, Februrary 24th. Check out the flyer below!! Great opportunity to spark your kids imagination and love for science and technology.

 CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE WEBSITE

Sneak Peak into our Mornings

If your kids are anything like mine the sure fire response for, “what did you do at school today ?” Is “Nothing”. Well here is a sneak peek into one of our daily routines. 

Spelling Practice

Bassel and Leyna are busy working on their spelling words. They build the words with letter cutouts, quiz each other with dry erase boards and use the words in sentences.

Listening Centre

Severina and John are on Epic Books. They are listening to a variety of stories read to them from expert readers. They get to hear how an expert reader uses tone, pace and inflection to add meaning to the text.

Vocabulary 

Koltin and Sofia are matching the correct vocabulary word with it’s definition. After that they will create sentences with their vocabulary words. The words come from our  science, social studies, math and language subjects we are currently working on.

Writing Journal

Rebecca and Nicholas are working on their writing journal. We come up with ideas from our daily lives or subjects that interest us. We take those ideas and create 4 or 5 points that we want to share in our story. Once our ideas are organized on paper they write one or two paragraphs about that subject.

Low Floor, High Ceiling

One part of a balanced math program is providing good open problem solving questions that have a Low Floor and High Ceiling. What does that mean? This means that a question can be understood and attempted by both students that are struggling with a concept and students that are proficient at problem solving. The question below is one we are working on today. A student that struggles can still make a simple solution by sharing 2 cookies with 2 friends. A more proficient student may create a problem involving 6 friends sharing 36 cookies. After we look at all the possible solutions we discuss them and create an anchor chart that will stay up in the room to help all the children.

Games to support Math Fluency

I guarantee you that  even Wayne Gretzky had to practice to improve. The problem is that kids don’t usually enjoy completing page after page of multiplication questions. Everyday we incorporate engaging games that allow them to practice their math facts without actually realizing they are practicing their math facts. Interested in  some of these games? Ask me during our interview time on Thursday and I can provide you with some examples to use at home. 

So Proud!!

Headline! Every single student in our class has made gains in their reading level assessment. This is only one measure of achievement but a very critical one for their continued growth. How do we measure reading levels? I’m glad you asked! There are several ways we track this but one way is by using PM Benchmarks. These are standardized reading comprehension and reading fluency texts that we use to assess the students reading proficiency. We’ve been working hard this year and it is such a great feeling to know everyone of our kids has reaped the benefits. If you would like to know more about these assessments please call or make an appointment. 

The N.E.D Show!

We had a great presentation today by the N.E.D show. 

1. Never Give Up

2. Encourage others

3. Do Your Best

What a great and inspirational message! Check out some pictures from the presentation.

Hands on Science

The kids were really excited about our visit from the University of Windsor  “let’s talk science “ volunteers. It’s part of an out reach program to bring curriculum specific science to elementary schools. The students learned all about forces, simple machines and how simple machines help reduce effort when doing work. The pictures below shows them building their own playground. Each play structure is an example of a simple machine.