Term 1 Wrap-Up with the Wolves!

Tomorrow, the Wolves will bring home report cards marking the official end of our first term of learning together! Congratulations to all of the Wolves and I look forward to your continued progress! :)

Since our last update, we took some time to reflect and respect those who have fought and fallen for the freedom we're privileged to have today. I was lucky enough to borrow some World War II soldier items from my childhood neighbour - Raymond 'Labman' Gregory - that were shared with the Wolves. You can see these modeled by Ethan below:

Thanks to Labman and also to Pyper and Rhys for carrying our A-Z list of things we're thankful for to the Remembrance Day ceremony that took place two weeks ago. Check them out below:



Thanks also to New Glasgow Academy for hosting us for a live performance of 'Elf'! Last Tuesday, we travelled to New Glasgow to catch a little bit of the holiday spirit, and have some laughs, while NGAs talented students put on a great show!


We have also been digging deeper into our learning about 'Healthy Choices'. Students have been looking at how diet, hygiene, exercise and mindfulness all play a roll in keeping us healthy. As part of this, a couple of weeks ago, we all touched a slice of bread. Students had not washed their hands before this. The other piece of bread was not touched. We had them both hanging on our whiteboard and we've been making predictions about the bread and the colours it's changing along the way. One lesson we have learned, is that we probably have dirty hands and hopefully we'll be better at washing them - especially before we eat! :)

Touched by students - 17/11

Not touched by students - 17/11

We have also begun keeping food journals to keep track of what foods we eat and how they make us feel. After we have a healthy snack and lunch tomorrow, students will record their feelings. They'll do the same when they have 'normal' lunches from home this week as well. We'll then look at some trends and see if there are any correlations between how we feel and what we eat! Stay tuned for our results! :)

And you've probably heard ALL about our arcade! Well, it was a success! Thanks to those parents who allowed their Wolves to bring in boxes and/or other materials from home to help with the construction of their arcade games. The Wolves wrote plans to create their games, built them, tested them and then had students from Ms. Beck's and Mme Brown's classes come and play them. Well done, Wolves! :)
You can check out photos and videos of our games below:

Congratulations to two more Superstar Students: Alex and Ben! Alex and Ben took initiative to clean the classroom during their free time, and then consistently make good choices (i.e. to read a book) when they have finished work early. Thank you and keep up the great work, Alex and Ben! :)

Happy Birthday to Ethan and Tristen who celebrated their birthdays over the past two weekends! All of the Wolves hope that you have an awesome year ahead! :)

Thanks for tuning in and have a great week! I hope to see many of you at parent-teacher conferences this coming Thursday and Friday! :) IMPORTANT DATES/REMINDERS: 

We have a student with a SEVERE NUT ALLERGY in our class. Please be mindful of this when packing your child's lunch! Thank you! :)

Monday, November 27th - Healthy Snack and Lunch Day - Your child does NOT need to bring a lunch or snack today!
- Report Cards go home Thursday, November 30th @6:00pm - 8:00pm - Parent - Teacher Conferences - I'll be having 10-minute chats with parents/guardians about their child's progress so far this year
Friday, December 1st - NO SCHOOL
@1:00pm - 3:00pm - Parent - Teacher Conferences

Happy November!

I hope the weekend has offered some time for the Wolves to come out of their Halloween candy comas and overdoses! What a week it has been though! But before we touch on this week, we've got to rewind two weeks back!

In the spirit of impending Halloween, students spent their end-of-the-week language time (two weeks ago), reading and then writing stories about Halloween. Students were told to think about a Halloween character - be it a pumpkin, owl, cat, ghost, goblin, vampire, etc. - that would be the star of their story.
We then brainstormed a list of different Halloween words and sorted them into 'nouns', 'verbs', 'adjectives' and even a few 'adverbs' to help us write descriptive, fictional stories about our characters.

Then, we created our characters using toilet paper rolls and other craft supplies! I'm sure many of you saw these coming home in backpacks! :)
The Wolves then had a chance to share their stories and character creations with the class! You can see in the photo and videos below:

(Pyper's character is missing from the video!)


We also looked and and discussed 'WOW!' pages in just-right books that we chose to read for silent reading. We then shared with partners why we thought the pages we chose made us say or think 'Wow!'
This week, when you're reading with your child, choose your own 'Wow!' page and share with your child! :)



Now that running records have been done for all of the Wolves, we've been doing some Guided Reading and mini-inquiries into books! Reading in small groups allows me to better assist your child in bettering her/his reading skills! During this time, students are also playing games or partaking in other activities that practice our reading and/or writing skills. You can see some of the sentences students built using some Duplo we have with words on it!

During our Mathematics time, we continued to work on our number sense knowledge and began adding double digit numbers. Check out our number posters we made since our last update:

While we initially planned on moving into patterns, student inquiry continues to steer us into a number focused area. We'll also be using numbers to help us keep track of our progress while we investigate 'Healthy Choices'.



Speaking of healthy choices, after some help from Bill Nye the Science Guy this past week, students chose an aspect of health and wellness that they were going to focus on (or a bad habit they were going to try to kick or limit!) for the next four weeks. To keep track of how this change might affect our bodies, we ran a 40m (20m one way) sprint and did a flexed arm hang for as long as we could. Students recorded their times and then made predictions about how fast they may run next time - and how long they might hold their flexed arm hang for! If any of you at home want to join us, please do?

As part of this science-(and math-)based unit, we've also been exploring foods and students have asked many questions about why we need food, how our body processes it and why some foods are better than others. To kick start our inquiry into these questions, students drew pictures of their favourite foods and then they were randomly distributed and students placed them next to signs indicating that we should eat 'some', 'a little bit' or 'a lot' of them. You can see this in action below:

We also celebrated two birthdays last week. Kara and Miriam had birthdays on October 24th and Lucas had his birthday on October 25th! HAPPY BIRTHDAY from the Wolves! :)

Halloween was a blast - and so was the dance! - and it was fun to see the Wolves all dressed up! That being said, it was really difficult for some of us to focus in school, given how much sugar was in our systems! Please limit the amount of junk food that is being sent to school with your child - it really, really does make a difference! :) Thank you!!

And CONGRATULATIONS to Emma and Henry who were recipients of our 'Superstar Student' Awards this past Friday. Emma and Henry have been consistently setting and achieving high standards for themselves and their classmates in completion of work and other class activities! Keep up the great work and THANK YOU for being such positive role models! :)

IMPORTANT DATES/REMINDERS:

We have a student with a SEVERE NUT ALLERGY in our class. Please be mindful of this when packing your child's lunch! Thank you! :)

Wednesday, November 8th - @10:10am - Library
-Meet with Green Schools Coordinator

Thursday, November 9th @7pm - Home and School Meeting

Friday, November 10th @1:30pm - Remembrance Day Ceremony
-Book Orders Due!

Saturday, November 11th - Remembrance Day

Monday, November 13th - NO SCHOOL!