Dear Parents,
Each week there are students in charge of a current event. I have sent home a reminder with these students but I will also list them here.
Monday - Alex
Tuesday - Christoffer
Wednesday - Halle
Thursday - day 2, no current events
Friday - Max
Here are some student friendly sites for Current Events.
Good News Daily
Science News for Kids
Time for Kids
A few quick notes first
1. After school activities begin this week. I have a list of the activities students are registered in, posted in my room.
2. Monday is a day 5 - students will start project adventure so they must have proper sneakers for PE. Please assist with this as it is a real neat part of PE and I am sure students would not like to miss this.
3. Please resume temperature checks every morning and complete the form. It wastes a lot of class time if I have to get students temperature checks done here at school. 22 students takes almost 15 minutes to complete. Please make sure this is done daily.
4. We will have our annual cluster seasonal feast early in December. For this I need three families to prepare Turkeys. If you could volunteer for this please let me know. More details later as we get closer.
5. Student pictures, for those who paid for packages, will be distributed on Monday to go home. If you are unhappy with the picture return the packet an I will see to a retake in January. Please make sure all pieces are in the packet when it is returned.
Camp was a great success and students will be talking about it for some time to come. So much to do and so little time was the typical response I got when we returned. My thanks to all the parents that attended and especially the ones who helped us overnight in the cabins. A big thank-you also needs to go out to the TAs as they are the real ones responsible for getting it all together. I have pictures up on our class website which can be seen here. I have also placed a video in this blog from the Water Sports Center which was one of the highlights. If anyone has more pictures or videos they would not mid sharing with me please feel free to send them along.
Students spent some time with the MacBooks making a book talk video. These videos are now up on their reading blogs. While not perfect (it was their first time), you can see the excitement about reading they have and how much they enjoyed the video components of the laptops they will be using next year here at HKIS. If you do not know your students reading blog address it is linked at our Grade 5 website here. I hope to continue this again after the Christmas break with another video on their reading.
Reading for the next several months will look a little different. The times are still the same - 30 minutes per night for a minimum of 6 nights per week. Students still need to be reading their choice of fiction books for their reading blog but there will be a book or two assigned per week about our next science unit on pollution. Students will also have to take notes on these books.
After two weeks away from homework I do expect it might take some getting use to again. However, it does resume to its fullest this week. With all the holidays and special events it was not possible to get the homework package out to students earlier than tomorrow. Some students may not get it all completed this week. They will have a vocab test on Friday so it will take the highest priority.
I am sending home two incomplete pieces of work this week with Monday Folders. I was hoping to use the time after camp to complete our personal profiles and time line projects. This was not possible and I do not foresee more time in the future. If students have some time at home they can complete these projects. They are not required to however. Students fall writing assessments are also coming home this week. Please remember to sign the Monday folders and have them returned by Thursday if possible.
This week will see us complete our current math unit on Geometry and move on to our next one on Division. Special games and other resources can now be found on our class website here. There is one piece on this page students are required to assist with - a math vocabulary presentation. It is a Google Presentation that I have shared with my entire class. Students can define the words, use pictures, find movies or whatever to help us better see and understand some of the unit vocabulary. The math Family Letter is attached to the email I sent out on Sunday.
Several students asked if they could bring their own laptops from home to use at school. I think this is a great idea for two reasons; 1) Next year this will be the norm - maybe not the computers they are using now but the same idea and 2) I plan on continuing with all the online applications we have started this year and any computer can access these. There is also the fact that we have only 14 computers in our room so not all can use them at the same time. I wanted to mention this here since I do allow it and think it would be kind of neat for the students. If student bring the electrical connection I can supply power strips to plug into.
I do want to share one observation I made while using the MacBooks; student's writing is both longer and more detailed with a computer. I am not sure why at the moment but this was very evident while we had the computers. Of course, it goes without saying that typing skills are a major part of this.
Whew! This is a long one and I hope I did not burn you out. As always, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.
Regards,
Harold Daw
