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!