“Over the years I’ve learned that investing in other people’s success doesn’t just make them more likely to enjoy working with me. It also improves my own chances of survival and success.”
Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth MEA CULPA! MEA CULPA! Well, that’s egg on my face. The Terry Fox Run is FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, not this Wednesday as I have been advertising all along. Please accept my apologies for this confusing error. I try to limit these gaffes to 4 a year, so I have 3 more to go. A letter has been sent home with Oldest/Only children at the school, as well as a pledge form the all students received. There will be a head shave/ponytail chop prior to the run. The Terry Fox run is an all morning event. IMPORTANT INFORMATION Musical Theatre For students that brought home a Musical Theatre form, please make sure they return them for this Wednesday. The group meets Mondays and Wednesdays during the lunchtime recess, with the first time being September 20th. School Forms All school forms are now due. Remember to look on both sides of the sheets to read and sign. Book Fair Amazing books for sale in the Learning Commons! We will be hosting a Scholastic Book Fair September 21 & 22, during Meet the Teacher Conferences. Notices and fliers came home today for this. Our class will be going with our Buddy Class (Miss Gilbank’s Gr 5 Class) on Tuesday afternoon. IMPORTANT DATES September 21 & 22: Meet the Teacher Conferences September 29: Orange Shirt Day October 6: Terry Fox Run OUR DAY 10 days under our belt, 170 days to go! Another busy day! Today, we took time to write our Usual and Most Unusual Lists in our Visual Journals. This is a more challenging tasks than it seems. We discussed, as a whole class, what some different types of lists are, and then we put pencil to paper. The expectation was coming up with 7+ words for both lists. We then shared with our table groups. From the list and a quick body break (“Milkshake” on GoNoodle), we read the book The best Part of Me. This book is our provocation for our writing about ourselves. Tomorrow, students will begin panning out their favorite part, and the reasons why. The writing they will be doing is prose, meaning more descriptive, almost poetry-like, in their writing. We continued on with our collages. We started gluing on our backgrounds, and now many students are ready to get their images on their covers. Students spent some time planning their layout, and I showed them a trick of transferring the layout onto what paper to help keep their design organized. We finished off the day with Phys Ed (a team wall-ball type game) and handwriting (the letter “d”). We can now write words like add, dad, and cad. Tomorrow we will add “g” to their repertoire. The tasks we have been doing have certainly made the kids become more reflective about who their are, and why they like or dislike something. This will help them with their writing, making connections as we explore our four Social Studies countries, and even with science. Cheerios! Ms Lauf “I know everyone else on board did similarly unheralded, unobtrusively helpful things. We’ve all fixed the toilet in space (it breaks down regularly). We’ve all wiped jam off the walls (it has a way of floating off your toast and splattering everywhere).”
Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth IMPORTANT INFORMATION Scholastic Book Orders Scholastic Book forms have come home today. They are due on Monday, September 18, 2017. Musical Theatre Musical Theatre forms came home today to students who are interested in participating. They meet Mondays and Wednesdays during the lunchtime recess, with the first time being September 20th. School Forms Please make sure all school forms are now due. Remember to look on both sides of the sheets to read and sign. Book Fair Amazing books for sale in the Learning Commons! We will be hosting a Scholastic Book Fair September 21 & 22, during Meet the Teacher Conferences. Notices and fliers came home today for this. Our class will be going with our Buddy Class (Miss Gilbank’s Gr 5 Class) on Tuesday afternoon. IMPORTANT DATES September 20 (Wednesday): Terry Fox Run September 21 & 22: Meet the Teacher Conferences September 29: Orange Shirt Day OUR DAY 9 days under our belt, 171 days to go! Today, we started with our Visual Journal cover collages, by cutting out images, different letter styles to make their names, and words/phrases that they find appealing. Once students picked their pictures, we came together and talked about composition and making sure the image was contour cut. We discussed how this helps project our message of who we are, and that the ideas aren’t getting lost with the surroundings. Our Grade 5 Buddies came in to help for half an hour. I have to say, that you would never know 43 students were in our space, they were so quiet* and on task. In the middle of all this, we had gym with all three Grade 3 classes and a music class with Mrs Dennill. We finished reading The Liszts. I gave a weekend task to the students to talk about the book with their families, and to come up with lists usual and most unusual. We will be doing a writing activity in our Journals on Monday around this. Our day finished off with everyone working together to clean the classroom, sweeping the floor, putting the magazines away, garbage in the garbage, recycling in the recycling bins *Quiet, meaning they were talking quietly amongst themselves. Two weeks in, and it has been already a stellar time! I am inspired by this class, and everyday I look forward to coming in and seeing where we go. Have a warm and fruitful weekend. Cheerios! Ms Lauf “Competence means keeping your head in a crisis, sticking with a task even when it seems hopeless, and improvising good solutions to tough problems when every second counts. It encompasses ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything.”
- Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth IMPORTANT INFORMATION Scholastic Book Orders Scholastic Book forms have come home today. They are due on Monday, September 18, 2017. School Forms Please make sure all school forms are now due. Remember to look on both sides of the sheets to read and sign. Book Fair Amazing books for sale in the Learning Commons! We will be hosting a Scholastic Book Fair September 21 & 22, during Meet the Teacher Conferences. Notices and fliers came home today for this. Our class will be going with our Buddy Class (Miss Gilbank’s Gr 5 Class) on Tuesday afternoon. IMPORTANT DATES September 14, 6-8 pm (Thursday): Prince of Wales School 40th Anniversary Open House September 20 (Wednesday): Terry Fox Run September 21 & 22: Meet the Teacher Conferences September 29: Orange Shirt Day OUR DAY 8 days under our belt, 172 days to go! Lights! Camera! Pose! Pictures were taken, and from what I could see, everyone looked smashingly wonderful. Today, we did a diagnostic spelling assessment. This is part of a spelling program I do called Words Their Way. I love using the program, as it is tailored to student need, and is much more effective than giving one list for all students. There will be weekly sorts (guided and independent), activities, and weekly assessments. The assessments help me keep track of student progress, and it also keeps the kids honest. I will have information to share with you at Meet the Teacher next week. In light of the Prince of Wales 40th Anniversary BBQ and Open House tonight, I had the students write a piece titled “When I Am 40”. We brainstormed ideas first, I printed off the ideas as reference, and then off they went. I am excited to read how they see themselves, as some ideas included living in a house shaped like a skinny pig or Pokéball, or having a trained panther for a pet. In today’s writing, we focused on adding the date, a title, indenting the first line of a paragraph and skipping lines for editing purposes. This will be the focus for the next week or two, and then I will begin introducing self-editing strategies (C.O.P.S. - Capitalization, Overused/Ordinary Words, Punctuation, and Spelling). I read the epic battle story called The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors,written by Drew Daywalt and illustrations by Adam Rex. We also continued our discussion of Wants and Needs, this time tying it into the Rights of a Child, of which there are 41 Articles. We discussed what “rights” mean and how they came to be. We discussed child labour and how laws came into effect to protect children, and from there the rights were established. The students contributed to an anchor chart of what they think their rights are. One students wondered how these rights might apply to homeless people. We will continue our discussion. What we learn and discuss will come up throughout the year, as we being looking at the four countries of India, Peru, Tunisia, and Ukraine. Cheerios! Ms Lauf “To me, it’s simple: if you’ve got the time, use it to get ready. What else could you possibly have to do that’s more important? Yes, maybe you’ll learn how to do a few things you’ll never wind up actually needing to do, but that’s a much better problem to have than needing to do something and having no clue where to start.”
Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth IMPORTANT INFORMATION Cooler Weather A friendly reminder to please make sure your child has come to school dressed for the weather, as well as inform them that they need to wear their jackets/sweaters when it is cool/cold/raining outside. School Forms School forms are now due. Please remember to look on both sides of the sheets to read and sign. Picture Day Picture Day is tomorrow! I will make sure the eyebrow shave, face painting, and Fudgsicle eating contest is scheduled for another day. Book Fair Amazing books for sale in the Learning Commons! We will be hosting a Scholastic Book Fair September 21 & 22, during Meet the Teacher Conferences. Notices and fliers came home today for this. Our class will be going with our Buddy Class (Miss Gilbank’s Gr 5 Class) on Tuesday afternoon. IMPORTANT DATES September 14 (Thursday): Picture Day September 14, 6-8 pm (Thursday): Prince of Wales School 40th Anniversary Open House September 20 (Wednesday): Terry Fox Run September 21 & 22: Meet the Teacher Conferences September 29: Orange Shirt Day OUR DAY 7 days under our belt, 173 days to go! Today was a day of art and collaboration, as well as talking about transitioning efficiently from one activity to another. We have been working on “I Am…” posters, and they are visual works of thoughtfulness and beauty. Students that finished early asked if they could help their friends, and boy does that warm a teacher’s heart! We also spent part of our morning with Mrs Ferrari, a teacher who will be working with our class every once in a while, supporting the art we do in class. Today, students created colour wheels using plasticine, and then they created a shape and colour activity, where they had to follow instructions and draw different elements. We have Library on Wednesdays, and students are allowed to take out 2 books at a time. Mrs Cornford, our fabulous Librarian, showed the law of the land. A reminder that students/families will have to cover the cost to replace any lost books. Students also learned the word “deferred”, as in, “The students were working so intently on their artwork, that they all agreed to defer gym class to another day.” I will take the kidlets outside on the very next non-rainy day to make up for the deferred class. Tomorrow, we will read a tale of an epic battle. Cheerios! Ms Lauf “Sharpie—the preferred writing utensil on orbit since you can hold it any which way and it still works.”
Chris Hadfield, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth" IMPORTANT INFORMATION School Forms Please make sure all school forms are now due. Remember to look on both sides of the sheets to read and sign. Picture Day Picture Day is this Thursday, September 14th. I will make sure that no finger-painting, tilling the fields, or painting ceilings is scheduled for that day. Book Fair Amazing books for sale in the Learning Commons! We will be hosting a Scholastic Book Fair September 21 & 22, during Meet the Teacher Conferences. Students will have an opportunity to view the books in the days leading up to the conferences. Notices and fliers will be coming home soon. IMPORTANT DATES September 14 (Thursday): Picture Day September 14, 6-8 pm (Thursday): Prince of Wales School 40th Anniversary Open House September 20 (Wednesday): Terry Fox Run September 21 & 22: Meet the Teacher Conferences September 29: Orange Shirt Day OUR DAY 6 days under our belt, 174 days to go. Lemonade! That cool, refreshing drink. Or Tag Game. This is a fun game that includes charades of jobs, running, and hilarity. I truly love watching the kiddos act out the jobs. We continued to work on our “I Am…” Character Posters. They are coming along swimmingly. I read the book “Those Shoes”, by Noah Z. Jones, to the class. It is a touching story of Jerome, a school-aged child who WANTS Those Shoes that all the cool kids are wearing. Unfortunately, his grandmother, who he lives with, cannot afford the shoes. He does, however, NEED new winter boots. Jerome finds a pair of Those Shoes, and buys them with his own money. The problem is they are too small. Jerome ends up giving Those (too small) Shoes to his friend Antonio, because Antonio NEEDS new shoes, as his are falling apart. A wonderful class discussion ensued, where one student identified that the difference between WANTS & NEEDS is the type. We need water, but I want bottled instead of tap. We need shelter, but I want the $5 million house on the island. That simple word made the concept much easier to host out. We had our first music class today. I am excited to hear their lovely singing voices throughout the year. We also continued with our handwriting, adding “a” to the “c”. Tomorrow, we will add “d” and “g”. Cheerios! Ms Lauf “You can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones. Ultimately, the real question is whether you want to be happy.” Chris Hadfield, “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life On Earth IMPORTANT INFORMATION Picture(s) for Journal Cover Collage Held Over! Students will be creating a personal collage on their Visual Journal covers. Please bring in any pictures and magazines that can be cut and glued. If you have extra magazines, we will take those off your hands, as well. Please have materials for Tuesday, September 12. School Forms Please make sure all school forms are returned as soon as possible. Remember to look on both sides of the sheets. Picture Day Picture Day is this Thursday, September 14th. I will make sure that no Pie-in-the-Face contests, Mud Tag, or changing the oil in the car is scheduled for that day. Book Fair Amazing books for sale in the Learning Commons! We will be hosting a Scholastic Book Fair September 21 & 22, during Meet the Teacher Conferences. Students will have an opportunity to view the books in the days leading up to the conferences. Notices and fliers will be coming home soon. IMPORTANT DATES September 14 (Thursday): Picture Day September 14, 6-8 pm (Thursday): Prince of Wales School 40th Anniversary Open House September 20 (Wednesday): Terry Fox Run September 21 & 22: Meet the Teacher Conferences September 29: Orange Shirt Day OUR DAY 5 days under our belt, 175 days to go. Addition War! Strong verbs identification! “I Am…” character traits! Today, students practiced their mental math strategies paying Addition War. In this game, students each started with 26 cards face-down. They each flipped one card over, and the first to correctly say the sum, won the two cards. If both players said the sum at the same time, a war ensued. Play continued until one person had all the cards. We read “Elwood and the Witch”, written by Nicholas Heller. This is a descriptive book, which we used to identify strong verbs. We will be reading books with a focus on strong verbs, to help build up the student’s word bank. Some activities we will do with the words are: verb conversion regular vs irregular verbs taking boring, skeleton sentences and adding in detail sorting We started talking about Wants and Needs, and the difference between them. This ties in with Quality of Life and the Rights of a Child, which is part of the Grade 3 Social Studies curriculum. We played Octopus Tag and Four Corners in gym, and finished off the day with a whole Grade 3 Addition War extravaganza! Cheerios! Ms Lauf “What I did each day would determine the kind of person I’d become.”
Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life IMPORTANT INFORMATION Picture(s) for Journal Cover Collage Students will be creating a personal collage on their Visual Journal covers. Please bring in any pictures and magazines that can be cut and glued. If you have extra magazines, we will take those off your hands, as well. Please have materials for Monday, September 11. School Forms Please make sure all school forms are returned as soon as possible. Remember to look on both sides of the sheets. Picture Day Picture Day is next week Thursday, September 14th. I will make sure that no pig wrestling, swinging in pine trees, or rolling down the hill is scheduled for that day. Prince of Wales School 40th Anniversary Open House Celebrate 40 years of our school between 6:00 - 8:00 pm, Thursday, September 14th. The school will be open, and all staff will be on hand in their classes. This is a great opportunity to connect with teachers and staff informally, and meet past students and community neighbours. Huzzah Prince of Wales School! Terry Fox Run The Terry Fox Run is September 20th. We will be discussing the life of Terry Fox, and the incredible journey and task he undertook. We will tie this in with our "I Am" concept. Orange Shirt Day We will be observing Orange Shirt Day on September 29th. Doorbell I will be showing the students where and how to use the doorbell to enter the school if the doors are closed. (As per regulations, school doors are locked at all times.) I will encourage the students to share this information with their families. Bus Students A reminder that if you are picking up your child from the school, instead of going home by bus, it is important for you to call or email the office to let them know. If we do not have the request from the parents, we put the child on the bus. OUR DAY Phew! Our first week is done. 4 down, 176 days to go. It truly is amazing when you look at just the total of days in school, how little time it seems to be. The wonderful thing is, is that it is spread out over 10 months, with lots of breathing space. With that in mind, it is important that the children play in downtime. This helps them process and assimilate their learning. Today, we continued on with our fun! We did, what I call, Slam Tasks. These are strips of quick tasks to do, such make a list of 10 things you see in front of you, draw and label what you ate for breakfast, or explain how you would help a friend having a bad day. These tasks tie in with Health, organizing information, parts of the scientific process, making observations, or adding detail, to name a few. I use these as springboards to when we start exploring the Grade 3 concepts intentionally. We also had gym with both Ms England's class and Ms Parent's class. We played Everyone's It Dodge Ball. Skills learned were dodging, deking, running different pathways, and navigating space and other people. We also went outside for 15 minutes to enjoy the last of the smoky days. At the end of day, we played a board game with Ms England's class, called Fun with Friends Healthy Board and Movement Game. Kids were spread out in the class, hallways, and learning commons. After this game, we reflected on the it, how they felt doing it, what they thought about it, and what they would improve. Some suggestions were that it was "too silly, and needed to be more civilized" and "it needs to be sillier". The beauty of this game is that Ms England made it, and we can change it around. We also challenged the students to make a version if they wanted to. Have a fabulous weekend! Ms Lauf “Focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination.”
Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life of Earth IMPORTANT INFORMATION Picture(s) for Journal Cover Collage Students will be creating a personal collage on their Visual Journal covers. Please bring in any pictures and magazines that can be cut and glued. If you have extra magazines, we will take those off your hands, as well. Please have materials at school by Monday, September 11. School Forms Please make sure all school forms are returned as soon as possible. Remember to look on both sides of the sheets. Picture Day Picture Day is next week, September 14th. I will make sure that no mud pies, wrestling, or laying in the grass is on schedule that day. Terry Fox Run The Terry Fox Run is September 20th. We will be discussing the life of Terry Fox, and the incredible journey and task he undertook. We will tie this in with our "I Am" concept. Orange Shirt Day We will be observing Orange Shirt Day on September 29th. OUR DAY Students explored the school today with a Mission Impossible activity. Some tasks were measuring the classroom with a meter stick, counting how many foot steps from the class to the water fountain, making a leaf rubbing and then coming up with a math problem about it, and rolling a dice four times and creating the largest four-digit number and the smallest four-digit number wth the numbers. We reflected on the activity, and students gave positive feedback, including suggestions on what to add for next year. We also created water colour paintings for our handmade thank-you cards. Students learned that water colour painting is learning to paint with coloured water, that you mix on the tray (not on the paint discs), and that you build up the colour. We read "Marshall Armstrong is New to Our School", by David Makintosh. It is a sweet story about acceptance of new people into our lives, and that we shouldn't make assumptions about who someone is or isn't. Next week, we will begin to look at quality of life, rocks and minerals, patterns, strong verbs, and journalling; and as always, all of these will be tied together in some capacity. IMPORTANT INFORMATION
School Forms Please make sure all school forms are returned as soon as possible. Remember to look on both sides of the sheets. Picture Day Picture Day is next week, September 14th. I will make sure that no mud pies, wrestling, or laying in the grass is on schedule that day. Terry Fox Run The Terry Fox Run is September 20th. We will be discussing the life of Terry Fox, and the incredible journey and task he undertook. We will tie this in with our "I Am" concept. Orange Shirt Day We will be observing Orange Shirt Day on September 29th. OUR DAY Today, we continued to build our community through games and activities. We played cooperative games with Ms England and Ms Parent's classes. In the afternoon, students took squares a toilet paper, and how ever many squares they took, they had to share that many pieces of information. This was done as part of a Sharing Circle, where we talked about listening with open ears, and open heart, and an open mind. We discussed how we have similarities and differences, and that we always need to be respectful with each other. I will talk with the children throughout the year about being friendly with everyone, and that when we are open and accepting of others, we feel valued, safe, and loved, and that, in turn, helps our learning, health, and lives. Tomorrow, we will be going over the Program of Studies, and how our learning might look like. "Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction. Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight, turns you into who you are tomorrow, and the day after that." - Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life Ms Lauf I am.
This year, the driving concept at the school is "I am". I am a tacher. I am a runner. I am part of a family. I am a story teller. We started exploring this today, and we will continue to do so, weaving this idea throughout our learning and the curriculum. Today was also a day of learning procedures. We talked about the important ones (fire alarm, lockdown, bathroom, and class supplies), and we will learn about other ones on contextual situations. The focus this week is to get to know each other, and build trust and relationships with each other, so that our classroom is one of love, understanding, acceptance, and safety. __________________________________________________ IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Student Information Packages The student information package came home today. Please check your child's bag, read them over, sign what needs to be signed, and send back as soon as possible. Bus Students For students that take the bus to and from school, please make sure you let the office know, as well as myself, if you are picking your child up. When students leave at the end of day, they go in many different directions, and this will help us manage who needs to be where. __________________________________________________ Ms Lauf |
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June 2018
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