Happy New Year!

We had a great first week back to school. Students were very excited to share about their holiday experiences and reunite with their friends. We spent time on Tuesday looking at a drawing continuum. Students evaluated drawing samples and put them in order from least to most developed. The purpose of this rubric is to help students self-evaluate where their drawings fit on the continuum and identify what they can do to move their drawings to the next step. Students drew a picture of something they did over the holidays and identified where their picture fit on the rubric. Later on in the year, students will use this rubric to self-assess their writing as well.

Have a look at our wonderful writers!! Many students have begun experimenting with writing sentences now. Some students have even begun to use spaces between their words. I am SO proud! 

I had my aunt over for Christmas.

I am watching Tree House at the farm.

 I played ninjas with my cousin and my brother.

I went to my grandma and grandpas.

We worked through a wintery math problem this week: If you were going to go outside to build 3 snowmen, how many snowballs would you need to make? 

Much to my surprise, this problem caused a great deal of difficulty for many students. The overwhelming answer that many children gave was 3, despite numerous prompts, reminders and varied explanations of what altogether means. We'll keep practicing! There were of course, many students who did understand the question and solved it almost immediately. We are a diverse group of learners :)

Inspired by the beautiful snow outside, we wanted to bundle up and do some outdoor exploring on Friday morning. But alas, the weather was colder than -20, which kept us inside. We decided not to let the weather get in our way and brought the snow indoors! The kids were ecstatic about this idea. They had a ton of ideas around what we should do with it:

"Are we going to build a snowman?!" 

"Let's play with it and see how it feels."

"We should put little drops of water onto it and see if it melts."

"Let's make a mountain!"

"Can we paint it?"

...and my personal favourite...

"Let's throw it in the air and pretend it's snowing!"

We decided to try everyone's ideas (except for the snowing suggestion, unfortunately). Students LOVED this snow experiment and made some great discoveries along the way:

"It's turning invisible in my hand!"

"There are particles attaching all the tiny bits of snow together."

"I'm making water!"

"If you add the snow to the water and stir it around, the water gets colder."

"I see sparkles!"

 I love my job :)

Classroom Reminders:

1. I've added new dates to our volunteer calendar. You can find the link to sign-up on the top right-hand side of the blog. Please remember that you need your approved security clearance completed before joining us in the classroom. 

2. We have quite a few students with overdue library books. Please remember to send back your child's library book each week so that they may take out a new one. Morning students go to the library every Wednesday. Afternoon students go to the library on Thursdays. 

3. If you would like to receive an email notification each time our blog is updated, enter your email address underneath where it says Follow by Email on the top right-hand side of the blog.

Stay warm out there this weekend! 

Miss Roberts