Good afternoon everyone!
I hope everyone has had a wonderful week – I feel like I blinked on Monday morning and all of the sudden it’s Friday.
Just a reminder that next week begins our fall fundraiser. Students will be fundraising for St. Jude’s, which in turn helps us purchase things like math manipulatives and other resources for our school. Students who bring in a minimum of $40 will be able to attend a trip to Glow Zone. Monday is Pyjama day, so any students who paid their $2 for Monday can come to school dressed in their pyjamas.
A few quick reminders:
· Monday is a Day 2 (students need their gym clothes).
o This is a speaker series day, so gym will be from 12:20-1:20.
· For anyone who ordered Hot Lunch, payments were due on the 13thof September.
o If September balances are unpaid, October lunches will not be able to be ordered.
· The hot lunch site is open for the month of October and will close on Wednesday, September 25that 3:00 p.m. The special for October will be pancakes with vanilla cream and syrup (optional).
· Letters were sent home yesterday for the Caribou math contest. Any students looking to participate must bring the letter back signed. The month of October is a free test for all grade levels as a trial – this is an optional commitment.
We started the day with an assembly to kick off the Fall Fundraiser which is taking place next week! Each day has a different activity which students would have brought in money for. The everts are: Pyjama Day on Monday, Popcorn Day on Tuesday, Ice Cream Sandwich Day on Wednesday, Wacky Thursday, and a 1-hour electronics party on Friday. We will also have daily prizes for the top fundraisers. They are:
· Monday – Student will sit on teacher’s chair for a day
· Tuesday – Student will choose a teacher to be silly stringed
· Wednesday – Student will apply make-up on Mr. Oliver
· Thursday – Student will style a teacher’s hair
· Friday – Student will choose a teacher to pie in the face
I can’t wait to see how next week turns out!
Inquiry into Language – Today, we started by sitting in our literature circle groups today and had a discussion about chapter two. Every day I will be sitting down with a different group to hear these discussions. This morning students had an opportunity to rehearse the discussion for later today when I will be sitting with a group. A reminder of the roles:
1. The discussion director comes up with insightful questions that will fuel discussion in the group.
2. The literary luminary chooses important passages for the group to read and discuss.
3. The connector makes connections between their own lives and the book (i.e. movies, other books they’ve read, real events, the current UOI, etc.)
4. The illustrator/mapper creates an illustration (i.e. comic, picture, mind map, etc.) based on what they felt during the chapter for the group to discuss.
5. The word wizard chooses 3 words that were interesting or new for everyone to discuss as a group.
Music – Then, we had music with Mr. Oliver, which you can read about on his blog (https://mrolivermusicclass.blogspot.com).
French – Right after music, we had French with Mme. Stella, which you can read about on her blog (https://stjudesfrench-stella.blogspot.com).
Inquiry into Energy – Today, we worked on our electrical safety posters. These will be due on Monday. A reminder of the videos if students need to re-watch any of them:
This weekend, students will begin watching videos of electric car designs and ideas to start preparing for science fair. Here are the links:
Inquiry into Math – Today during math, we started working with exponents that are larger than squares.
We think of exponents as repeated multiplication. When the same number is repeated in multiplication, we write it with an exponent. 25= 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2
25àThe whole thing is called a power, 2 is the base of the power, and 5 is the exponent.
We express them in different ways: 25is the exponent form, 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 is the expanded form, and 32 is the standard form (the answer after we multiply everything together).
A power with the exponent two is a square (i.e. area of a square) and a power with the exponent three is a cube (i.e. volume of a cube).
A perfect square is a number that is the square of a whole number while a perfect cube is a number that is the cube of a whole number.
There are two big rules to remember for exponents:
1. Any number to the exponent 1 is itself (i.e. 81 = 8).
2. Any number to the exponent 0 is 1 (1,000,0000= 1)
We practiced a few exponents as a class and then students were given the opportunity to work on their homework.
Homework:
We do our best to complete UOI and Language work in class. In the event this is not possible, it will go home for homework.
As always, please feel free to email me with any questions.
Mr. Conte
