IMPORTANT INFORMATION Halloween Halloween is tomorrow!! Students are invited to dress up for the whole day. We will do a quick in-class Halloween Parade for those students who are dressing up. This will hopefully get the Halloween Yayas out before our Amazing Day of Learning. A quick message regarding masks and weaponry: Masks Students may bring in masks to wear for our parade, first thing in the morning. After that, students will put their masks away, so they do not become a distraction, and scare the stuffing out of the teacher, OR get wrecked, lost, maimed, mutilated, shredded, chewed, or licked. Face paint is a-ok. Weaponry Please keep costume knives, broadswords, axes, cannons, catapults, ninja throwing stars, crossbows, battle axes, rapiers, dirks, evil potions, broccoli, slingshots, trebuchets, cows, and other nefarious items at home. We will be getting together with our Buddies during our par-tay. As per CBE regulations, students may bring in a HEALTHY snack (e.g., fruits, veggies, cheese, crackers, …), as I’d like to send them home as relaxed and ready as they can be for the evening. Please let Jodi know if you can send something along. “Please, sir, I want some more…” Oliver stated, holding up his empty craft bucket. He shot a sly look to his left and right, sizing up the crowd. He inhaled sharply. As he slowly exhaled he sighed a quiet, “… yarn.” (I’m pretty sure that’s how Oliver Twist goes.) Thank you to the students who brought in yarn for our Worry Doll Centre. On the weekend, the Grade 3 Teaching Team met, and we planned some more activities, to bring the centers up to an even 20. One station that we added is the Arpilleras, a vibrant quilt that depicts idyllic life in Peru. Students will be creating a version of this quilt, telling the story of their understanding about Peru. They will cut out shapes symbolic of Peru, and wrap yarn around it to create the 3-D effect, which they will then attach to the quilt. Sooooooooo…. with that, we require more brightly coloured yarn for this centre. Jacket Racket Coat Drive Grade 6 Students are collecting warm winter coats, toques, snow pants (why that is not a compound word is beyond me), and mittens for children in the K-Gr 12 age range. Please make sure the items are in gently used condition at most before donating. They are collecting items until November 1st. IMPORTANT DATES October 31: Halloween. November 1: Last day to donate to Jacket Racket. November 7: Photo retakes. November 8: Telus Spark Field Trip. November 8: Fun Lunch (Extreme Pita) - Please note: If you order your child a Fun Lunch, they will receive it when we return to the school at the end of day. November 10: Remembrance Day Assembly at 10:45 am. November 17: PD Day - No School. November 22: Fun Lunch (Opa!) November 29: Elder Shirley Hill OUR DAY 37 days under our belt, 143 days to go! Monday Morning Blahs? NO! Not this class! We got the Monday Morning Blah Blahs instead! Our day started off with a Wordstorm!, a self-competitive (is that a word?) competition where students write words for one minute only. They tally up their total. Extra points given if they wrote the Mystery Word, or wrote any words relating to curriculum. Students were encouraged to write critical words from their weekend to help prime their brain for writing. In future Wordstorms, students will try to beat their previous total. This was followed by goal setting for the week, Weekend/Artifact writing, and finally Literacy Centres. I am now giving them 20 minutes to work on a centre, so they get a sense of time, and understanding that we have a finite time to get things done. (I will continue to support students where needed so they can achieve this goal.) After recess, we had an informative lesson from Ms Purkiss about the Me to We concept which is understanding how our expected and unexpected behaviour affects not only our learning, but the learning of the whole class. I had asked Ms Purkiss to do this lesson based on my observations of classroom behaviour, and how I can best help the students be successful. Concepts we touched on include: expected and unexpected behaviour, keeping our hands to ourselves, pointing our body to the speaker to help us focus, speech bubble vs thought bubble, empathy, and making sure our behaviour is contributing positively to our classroom environment. Here is an example of how unexpected behaviour of one can trigger unexpected behaviour in many, and how it can affect the learning: Expected behaviour is to sit quietly and listen to a story. One student stands up to get a pen and paper to draw. This is unexpected behaviour. A couple students, whose minds may have wandered, sees the movement, and also stands up, because they aren’t sure what the group plan is or if the group plan has changed. The teacher stops reading to redirect the 3 students, but now 2 or 3 other students start talking and moving about, because they think the story is over. Soon, it is Mutiny on the Bounty. This all happens within a minute. I will be referring to this lesson to help reinforce these concepts. Cheerios! Ms Lauf Comments are closed.
|
AuthorMs Lauf Archives
June 2018
Categories |