April 4-8, 2016

Welcome back from Spring Break! Hopefully you all had a wonderful and restful break with your family! I know the students all came back and were bursting with stories about their time off!

As of today, we have 57 full days of school left in this school year! I can't believe it has gone by so quickly...but we still have so much to cover!

During the month of April and May, we have a HUGE math push happening in our class. We are doing math practice (basic facts) every day. The students are practicing on a few new math sites: XtraMath and 10monkeys.com. Each of the students has their own logins and passwords so I can track their progress. These sites will be used in addition to Mathletics. 
If you would like to know your child's login/password so they can access these sites at home, please let me know! (Note: 10monkeys.com is only accessible from 7am-2pm as it is a challenge among multiple Canadian schools.)

As there are so many different activities happening over the next few weeks, please check the 'Coming Up' tab at the top to see the calendar. I will be updating this fairly often to keep you in the loop, but don't hesitate to contact me about upcoming events. 

This week:
-Friday is PJ and Pancake day-kids can come to school around 8:05am to have a pancake breakfast. Students are also able to dress in their PJ's for the day. 
-Lice Check is happening on Thursday and Friday this week
-Jump Rope for Heart fundraising is happening now! Packages were sent home a few weeks ago and we are encouraging students to raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. 
-East Elementary's Lego Contest is accepting displays until April 15. Final winner will be announced on April 29. Winner will receive an awesome prize from Lego Canada.

Language Arts
Writing*-The students will be writing about their Spring Break (or a favorite trip they have taken). We will be planning, writing, and editing these pieces this week. 
Phonics-words that contain consonant digraphs (of sh, th, wh, ch, ck)
Spelling-Words this week have a vowel with an 'r'; er, ir, or, and ur 

Daily 5 Read to Someone-continuing "The BFG" by Roald Dahl (almost done!)

Spelling-the words this week are a review of the past 5 lessons. Test is on friday. 

*We are going to have a heavier focus on writing for the remainder of the year. The students are going to write, edit, and submit one story each week. Sometimes this story will be one of their own creation, and sometimes it will be in response to a picture (picture is shown and they write about the events surrounding it). We are encouraging students across the grades to write all of their ideas down, edit their writing, add to their writing, print legibly, and build their stamina. 

Math

Over the next few weeks, we are going to exploring Measurement. They will be using comparison words (bigger, smaller, lighter, heavier, more, less, etc) to compare items, using standard and non-standard units to measure, measuring items by weight/size/length, and using a calendar to compare days of the week and months.

Science

We will beginning our 'Boats and Buoyancy' unit this week. The students will explore a variety of materials and predict (and test) if they are buoyant. We will be looking at the various parts of boats and why they float.