Good afternoon everyone. It's kind of hard to believe it is already November. Halloween has come to an end, and, for some, Christmas is already at the forefront. I like to take a moment to reflect, with Remembrance Day coming up, about all those who have made sacrifices in their lives, for the greater good.
We have a very short week coming up. November 11th, 12th, and 13th, there is no school. A little 2 day week for all students and staff. Hopefully everyone can find some time to refresh and reset. Early dismissal is November 4th, at 2:15, for our monthly staff meeting.
Last week, a green paper went home, with at least 1 child in each family. This was the order form for Christmas cards. We do an art project in class, then it gets scanned and printed onto cards that you can send to family. The cost is $6.00/pack of 6. You can put any children from East Elementary on 1 order form.
Here are some learning updates for November.
Language Arts
In writing, the students are continuing to craft their skills. We are currently engaged in narrative writing, learning to write descriptive segments. We are learning the power of adjectives (describing words), and how they relate to creating an image in the head of a reader, reading their stories. To accurately describe a character or object, we need to use our 5 senses do describe how something looks, smells, feels, sounds, or even tastes. We have been using facts (as opposed to opinions) that paint a picture for the reader. ie: The scarecrow wore a black, leather, pointy hat on top of its head. The words black, leather, and pointy are all adjectives to help describe how the hat looks. We are trying to avoid using opinions, words such as pretty, neat, fun, awesome, as they do not give an accurate physical description of the object/character.
In phonics, we are into our long vowel sound segment of our spelling and phonics program. There are a few rules to remember for when vowels make the long sound (say their name). When a word has a magic "e" at the end, the voiced vowel will say its name. ie: mat (short a) vs mate (long a). Also, if 2 vowel go "walking", the first one does the "talking" ie: rain (ai is a long "a" sound). The next spelling lessons, up to unit 11, are all long vowel sounds.
We use these phonics rules and spelling lists to increase our vocabulary and foster our reading skills. Everyday we continue to work on different reading strategies to grow as independent readers.
Math
We have just finished up our first measurement unit. This unit included things like measuring length, comparing length, and relating days of the week to months of the year. We will be finishing up this unit by creating some calendars. We will then be moving into sorting and graphing skills, then an introduction into addition to 100 and learning some skills to help with adding larger numbers.
We have been practicing daily, our doubles and making tens. Knowing your doubles is an important strategy with helping add larger numbers. Once we know our doubles and our tens, we will get into doubles + 1 (6+7 - 6+6 =12, therefor 6+7=13), and almost tens (7+4 - 7+3=10, therefor 7+4=11).
Science
We have just finished up our Magnetism unit is science. The students did a great job with their home project magnet toys/games. I was really impressed with the quality of their work, and their knowledge of magnets. Our next unit, beginning next week, will be Exploring Liquids. We will be learning about different properties of liquids, what happens when you change the temperature of a liquid, when you mix liquids, and properties such as waterproof, viscosity, and absorption.
Social Studies
In social, we finished up our mapping unit, and we are now going to be looking at the geography of Canada, and what features there are in our 3 communities (Iqaluit, Meteghan, and Saskatoon). We will be looking at what kids of bodies of water are there, what are the landforms like, what the climate is like, and the location of the community in Canada. We will study each community individually, and compare them to the others, as well as to our on community of Leduc. I look forward to this unit in Social, as it gives the students a great idea of how vast and diverse our country of Canada truly is.
I hope everyone has an amazing November ahead, as well as a great midterm break around Remembrance Day.
