daw.com - June 1

What a busy and fantastic week.  We finished our Genius Hour projects to wild acclaim, watched the ES Play "Wizard of Oz", and started our path to prepare for the MS library just to mention a few.
There were a total of 10 Genius Hour projects undertaken by the students this year.  They involved science, foods, fabrics, 3D printing and  digital science.  It was quite an array of ideas and the students pulled them off very well.  Our audience this year was mostly grade 3 & 4 with one group of students from grade 6.  The talk was exciting and really in depth as was the questions and involvement of the audiences.  After it was all over, the reflections were positive

from both the students and the classes that were involved.  I was very proud of the class for pulling this off.  It is a testament to what can really be done when a student has an interest that is not within the scope of the grade 5 program.

Students finished their swimming classes this week with a fun time on the "Giant Floaty".  I went and watched the class for one day and it was quite amazing how they handled such a huge obstacle course floating on the water.  Everyone really looked like they were have fun.

On Thursday we sat in the theatre and watched the ES Play The Wizard of Oz.  Students in grade 3-5 had worked for three months in preparing this and it was a sight to behold.  It was funny, witty and really entertaining.  I hope some of you are able to come this afternoon for the final performance which starts at 4:00 in the main theatre.  It is about 1:15 hours in length.

Next week is really a week to finish up things.  Students are well along with their first draft of their persuasive essay and I am hoping to have the final draft done by next Friday.  It has been interesting to watch this unfold as students try and determine if the resource they have is really genuine  or more of a personal opinion.  This is something that is not easy to do yet really important in a piece of writing like this.  The topics are student chosen and the research they have done is quite extensive.  I am looking forward to reading the final drafts.

We will also complete our final math unit for the year - problems in the coordinate plane.  This unit is a fun unit yet it is also extremely important since it sets the path for graphing and algebra in math for the future.  Students have done well with this and really enjoyed some of the neat problems that can be generated and solved with the coordinate plane.  We should have the final assessment on Thursday of next week.  After this we will complete the year with a look a problem

solving across the grade 5 curriculum.

One thing I always ask when a holiday approaches is if you are planning on leaving early to please let me know.  There are a lot of final end of the year things to be accomplished and I would hate for anyone to miss out on getting their gifts and yearbooks.  Just send me a quick email.

MAP test results will be emailed to you on June 6th.  I have already looked them over and for the most part was very satisfied.  Of the almost 60 tests taken, only about 5 results showed a decline.  None of these were anywhere close to a need for intervention (usually less than 1 derivation).  If you want to discuss these results when you get them, or anything else as we end the year, please let me know and I will gladly set up a time.

Have a great weekend.