June 4th 2021

Dear Parents, 

My apologies for the gap in between blog entries, between the at home learning and time just screaming by lately, it got away from me.  

I was very pleased with how the two weeks at home went. I had lots of engagement during my meetings, and it seemed the kids understood the work mostly. I have my fingers crossed it’s the last time we have to do that (we’ve almost made it, please continue to be awesome and follow health guidelines so we don’t have a case in our class during these last few weeks!).  

Here’s a peek at what we’ve been up to since we’ve been back and what we’re planning on doing next week: 

Math: We’ve been working hard on division. We’ve spent time making sure we understand what division means, and what are the strategies we can use to solve division problems, such as repeated addition and making equal groups. I encourage you to ask your child about how they solve division problems (basic ones like 12 ÷ 3). Next week we will be combining what we know about multipication and division and solving problems where we need to decide which to use. We will also begin some work with memorizing the basic multiplication and division now that we have a solid understanding.  

French: We have continued with our reading and writing activities with Alphabetik and during our reading periods and practicing our dictées. We’ve spent a lot of time this week working on making sure our noun groups agree in number and gender. It’s a very important part of writing in French and I feel like we’ve made some great progress this week in both understanding and applying the concept. I have updated the dates for the dictees and spelling tests. Next week we will be doing #19.  

English: We’ve continued to work on Fantastic Mr. Fox, and hope to finish it next week or the following week.  

The most exciting things we’ve been working on in English Language Arts has been our work with Mr. Scott and our writing workshops. We started this work during our online time and have continued in the classroom. The focus at the moment is on the students producing lots of writing, using the method of thinking, touch and tell, and quick sketching to plan our writing. One struggle we’ve faced has been moving from the planning to the writing, but we’ve made lots of progress this past week and I look forward to continuing next week as we continue to produce lots of writing and move on to the revising phase of our work.  

Science: We’ve looked at erosion and gemstones and will be finishing the unit next week by talking about the rock cycle. This concept is best illustrated with an activity using a couple small pieces of different coloured plasticine. I look forward to the students experiencing it! 

Social Studies: Since coming back we’ve shifted our focus back to Peru. This week we looked at the 3 geographical regions and their characteristics, and started to look at some celebrations that occur there. The look at celebrations will continue next week and we will use a venn diagram to compare our celebrations with theirs.  

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!