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.