Winter Wonderland

Well, it looks like the winter weather has officially arrived and is here to stay. This is a welcome sight for some people.  I am one of those people that enjoys this time of year. That also means we are into the thick of the school year and working on some really fun things in different subjects.

Language Arts

Writing:

This unit in writing we have continued to look at aspects of narrative and expository/informative writing.  We continue to talk more and more about sentences needing to have a subject and a predicate. The students already know that a sentences needs a beginning capital letter and ending punctuation.  I introduced to them that every sentence needs a subject (who/what), and a predicate (doing/describing). We looked at some example sentences and understood that words like I, me, we, it, his, and proper names are all examples of a subject in a sentence.  The subject of a sentence  usually comes at the beginning of the sentence. "Fido ate my homework". Fido in this sentence is the subject, and ate my homework is the predicate. I will begin to look for subject and predicate in the students journal writing. We have looked at sorting details into main idea's, useful for expository writing. We have talked about opinions versus facts. Opinions reflect what a person believes and thinks, where as facts represent truthful things that cannot be changed.  This week and next we will be discussing and practicing writing elaborate details in our writing, comparing general details to specific details.

Phonics:

In phonics we have finished working on short vowel sounds and are now working on all the long vowel sounds. The students are doing well to grasp the concepts we are talking about.  It is important for those that have difficulty sounding out new words to remember rules like; When there is an "e" at the end of a word, it makes the middle vowel say its name, (Lake, the "e" is silent and makes the "a" say its name).  When two vowels "go walking" (a vowel digraph is two vowels together that make one sound), the first one does the talking. (boat says "bōt". The "a" is silent).

Math

In math we are continuing to work on different aspects of number sense. Much of the practice over the previous weeks has been using different strategies to add and subtract.  We have used counting on, a number line, a hundreds chart, as well as our fingers.  We have also introduced the concept of adding and subtracting 10 and making 10 to help our addition and subtraction.  We are also well into our patterning unit. Since the beginning of our patterns unit, we have discussed numerous terms. Our main topic so far is repeating patterns.  A repeating pattern is a pattern that has a section that repeats. The section of the pattern that repeats is called the core.  We are also discussing attributes. An attribute is what is changing in a pattern.  Examples of attributes are colour, shape, direction, or size.  An example of a repeating pattern is up, up, down, up, up, down.  The pattern core is up, up, down, and the pattern attribute that changes is direction. The students have been doing many activities that involve creating, extending, and recreating repeating patterns and recording their patterns in their math journals. This week we are beginning to explore increasing patterns.  This is a pattern that gets bigger.  The most basic increasing pattern is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...  We start at 1 and increase by 1 each time.

Science

We are doing really well in our Hot and Cold unit.  We recently did an experiment to show what takes up more space, snow or water.  The students had fun collecting snow and recording the temperature before letting it melt to see what happened.    Some of the students are still having a hard time reading thermometers though and could use extra practice at home.  We look at weather every morning during our morning routine, recording the temperature, but more practice is always an asset. Once our insulating containers are tested, we will be writing our Hot and Cold Unit test.

Social Studies

In social we have completed our mapping unit. We have also looked at the geography (land and water formations) of our three communities we are studying, as well as weather that occurs during the year and comparing them to our own community of Leduc.  The students were truly amazed at the annual average snowfall amount of Iqaluit (236cm).  They also learned that Saskatoon is one of the sunniest cities in all of Canada. We will now continue with studying the early years of our 3 communities, Meteghan, Iqaluit, and Saskatoon.  We continue to compare and contrast the 3 communities together with our community of Leduc.


I hope everyone can make the best of this weather if they do not enjoy it. 

Mr. Aasen