Good evening.  I hope your family had a lovely weekend and was able to take advantage of the sunshine yesterday!  We had a great week last week and were busy, busy, busy!  Here’s a snapshot of what we have been working on:

Math:  Students have been learning about division and have been practicing with whiteboards and manipulatives.  We will continue on with division this week as well.

Bible/Health:  We have been focusing on core competencies and creating goals for the new year.  We will go back into our Promises of God unit this coming week.

Writing:  Students finished up their favourite season piece, wrote a paragraph convincing me that smarties were better than kit kat’s, and are getting ready to participate in The Great Chocolate Bar Challenge.  Each group will take a chocolate bar, write and create a commercial convincing the audience why their chocolate bar is the best.  Students will have to write the commercial based on what we have been learning about persuasive writing, perform it and then be judged.  The winning team will each get a chocolate bar, while the other teams will get to share one.

Science – Rube Goldberg Machines:  We are almost at the end of our Force, Motion and Simple Machine unit and students will be starting a partner project building Rube Goldberg Machines.  Each pair will make a machine that has seven steps, three simple machines,  and will pop a balloon at the end.  We will be building these over the next week and the final projects will be judged by Mrs. Johnsrude, head of the high school Science department.  Students may need to bring in some material from home (cardboard etc) and will also be free to use whatever I have in the classroom.

Reading: We are starting a new unit with a focus on oral storytelling, Indigenous stories, and the role of language. To do this we are starting with story book comprehension and discussion.

Art: This week we made a lot of progress with our Dana Irving trees. The shading that is being added is creating a lot of movement to the trees.

Social Studies: We are continuing to look at the ins and outs of how government works.

Upcoming Dates:

January

Jan. 29 – Term 1 Report Cards go home & Knight’s Day

February

Feb. 5 – Knights Day

Feb. 10 – Valentine Colours Day

Feb. 12 – Pro-D Day

Feb. 15 – Family Day

Feb. 19 – Knights Day

Feb. 24 – Pink Shirt Day

Feb. 26 – Knights Day