Wednesday, September 12th

Good afternoon everyone!

Hope everybody is enjoying the sunshine while it lasts.

Gym – Please see Mr. Orr’s blog (link on the left hand side).

Inquiry into Math – We did a review of multiplication and division today to help us with our exploration of large numbers. The important thing is to remember to put the extra zero in when multiplying so your addition is correct!

Music – Please see Mr. Oliver’s blog (link on the left hand side).

French – Please see Mme. Rawan’s blog for information on French (link on the left hand side).

Inquiry into Math (continued) – We continued our unit of whole numbers today by learning to understand large numbers. We started by placing our number into a place value chart. We recalled that there is space for our ones, thousands, millions (the list goes on) and in each, there is a hundreds, tens, and ones space.

After this, we discussed the four ways numbers can be written: standard form, word form, expanded form, and number-word form. We all decided we like standard form the best.

Inquiry into Language – We reviewed and summarized the first chapter of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief today. We did a few comprehension questions for chapter one together.

Inquiry into Matter – We watched a video to discuss the states of matter and to see what properties we see in each state. Some are very similar, and some are very different. We started to fill out an anchor chart, which will be completed later on.

For homework:

A couple of quick reminders:

• ·         The last page of student handbook (given out on orientation night) needs to be signed and returned to me no later than this Friday, September 14^th.
• ·         If anyone in the class has to pick up their younger siblings from the cafeteria afterschool (JK – Grade 1) to bring them to the gym for dismissal, I need the permission form signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• ·         The permission form to bus to and from the city church and athletic centre must be signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• ·         Order forms for the Welcome BBQ were sent home last Wednesday. If you are attending, please fill out the form and return to me by no later than Friday, September 14^th, 2018. This event is not only for parents or students, but for both.
• ·         Mr. Beresford will be holding co-ed soccer tryouts this TOMORROW afterschool.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns by email, and I will respond as quickly as possible.

Mr. Conte

Tuesday, September 11th

Good afternoon everyone!

Hope everybody is having a fantastic week so far. We had a busy day today filled with a lot of learning.

We started the day working on some of our title pages for our UOI.

Inquiry into Math – We started our unit on whole numbers today by exploring the number one million and the variety of ways we can take to get there. We explored grids by starting with one cube, and then ten, and then one hundred. We discussed the pattern of each time multiplying by ten when getting larger, and dividing by ten when getting smaller. Today we explored as a class, and tomorrow, we will be breaking into smaller groups and exploring our new topic as well.

French – Please see Mme. Rawan’s blog for information on French (link on the left hand side).

Inquiry into Language – We read the first chapter of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief today. We talked about Greek mythology and make a few informed hypotheses about what may happen in the book based on the title and what we have read. Everyone is very excited to get started!

Inquiry into Matter – We did experiments today to kick off our matter unit. We did three experiments today.

Our first was putting baking soda into vinegar inside a water bottle and placing a balloon on the opening. We observed as the balloon expanded.

Our second experiment was dropping two ice cubes into water (one bowl of hot water and one bowl of cold water). We watched as the ice cubes were affected by the different temperatures and the one in the hot water melted faster.

Our last experiment, we set tea bags on fire! We watched the reaction as the bag burned into vapours right before our eyes.

Tomorrow, we will continue our inquiry by discussing how we find matter in our world.

For homework:

• ·         Spelling Workout pages 5 – 8 (this is due tomorrow),
• ·         Study for spelling test on Friday (words can be found on the left hand side of the blog),
• ·         Math Makes Sense workbook pages 12 – 13 (this is due tomorrow), and
• ·         UOI title page (if not complete)

A couple of quick reminders:

• ·         The last page of student handbook (given out on orientation night) needs to be signed and returned to me no later than this Friday, September 14^th.
• ·         If anyone in the class has to pick up their younger siblings from the cafeteria afterschool (JK – Grade 1) to bring them to the gym for dismissal, I need the permission form signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• ·         The permission form to bus to and from the city church and athletic centre must be signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• ·         Order forms for the Welcome BBQ were sent home last Wednesday. If you are attending, please fill out the form and return to me by no later than Friday, September 14^th, 2018. This event is not only for parents or students, but for both.
• ·         Mr. Beresford will be holding co-ed soccer tryouts this Thursday afterschool.
• ·         A reminder that we have gym and music tomorrow, so students should come dressed in their gym uniforms, and must make sure they have their instruments at school.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns by email, and I will respond as quickly as possible.

Mr. Conte

And so it Begins - Monday, September 4th

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend – I know that I definitely did. Unfortunately, we had a rough start to our week with this weather, but hopefully we see that turn around soon.

In Grade 5 today, we had a busy morning or Gym with Mr. Orr, and Music with Mr. Oliver. You are welcome to read about it on their blogs.

In the afternoon, we delved right into our math pre-assessment for whole numbers. We will be starting our first math unit of the year tomorrow.

After this, we jumped into our first spelling lesson of the year. We have a few of us spelling at the grade 5 level, and some of us spelling at the grade 6 level. Both of us were focusing on spelling the sounds for k, kw, and n.

For Grade 5, we focused on the following:

            - ‘kw’ written as ‘qu’

            - ‘n’ written as ‘kn’

            - ‘k’ written as ‘ch’

            - ‘k’ written as ‘ck’

For Grade 6, we focused on the following:

            - ‘kw’ written as ‘qu’

            - ‘n’ written as ‘kn’

            - ‘k’ written as ‘k’

            - ‘k’ written as ‘ck’

            - ‘k’ written as ‘que’

            - ‘k’ written as ‘ch’

I will post the spelling words for our test on Friday tonight on my blog.

After spelling, we started our first Unit of Inquiry for the year! We started our unit ‘What’s the Matter?’ where we will be exploring matter through a scientific lens. We completed a KWL chart (What we know, what we want to know, and what we learned) to start, and started designing our title pages for matter.

Once this was done, our day was over! Time really does fly by.

A couple of quick reminders:

•       The last page of student handbook (given out on orientation night) needs to be signed and returned to me no later than this Friday, September 14^th.
•           If anyone in the class has to pick up their younger siblings from the cafeteria afterschool (JK – Grade 1) to bring them to the gym for dismissal, I need the permission form signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• ·         The permission form to bus to and from the city church and athletic centre must be signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• ·         Order forms for the Welcome BBQ were sent home last Wednesday. If you are attending, please fill out the form and return to me by no later than Friday, September 14^th, 2018. This event is not only for parents or students, but for both.
• ·         Mr. Beresford will be holding co-ed soccer tryouts this Thursday afterschool.
• ·         Starting tomorrow, uniform violation notices will be sent home for missing/incorrect uniform pieces.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns by email, and I will respond as quickly as possible.

Mr. Conte

What a Week!

Hello Grade 5 Parents!

We have had an exciting week here in at St. Jude’s and in grade 5.

Today was spirit day! We saw A LOT of spirit for our houses.

We started our morning with a house game; we ran a relay race. We had a great time! We ran two different races with both Kappa & Zeta coming out on top. Congratulations to everyone who participated – it was close!

After this we went right back to class to work on our OWAs and DRAs. We even squeezed in a little bit of classroom artwork.

After recess, lunch, and French, we continued our DRAs and artwork for the remainder of the afternoon. I will be looking at the DRAs and OWAs for those who have completed them this weekend. I will reach out to parents individually sometime in the next few days to discuss results and strategies for improvement where necessary.

On Monday, we will commence with our regular schedule; Monday is a day 4. On day 4, we have gym first thing in the morning, so everyone should come in their full gym uniform.

A couple of quick reminders:

• The last page of student handbook (given out on orientation night) needs to be signed and returned to me no later than next Friday, September 14^th.
• If anyone in the class has to pick up their younger siblings from the cafeteria afterschool (JK – Grade 1) to bring them to the gym for dismissal, I need the permission form signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• The permission form to bus to and from the city church and athletic centre must be signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• Order forms for the Welcome BBQ were sent home on Wednesday. If you are attending, please fill out the form and return to me by no later than Friday, September 14^th, 2018. This event is not only for parents or students, but for both.
• Mr. Beresford will be holding co-ed soccer tryouts next Thursday afterschool.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns by email, and I will respond as quickly as possible.

Mr. Conte

Day Two!

Hello everyone!

We had another busy day today!

We kicked off the day with our morning announcements and then went straight to gym with Mr. Orr. After gym, we spent some time working on our lockers and went straight to music with Mr. Oliver after that.

Right after music, we had recess and then lunch. And just like that – our morning was gone!

We started our afternoon with some French with Mme. Rawan. After French, we practiced a little more on our lockers, and then we had our second house game of the year. Theta was our victor today, and we had a blast!

After recess and snack time, we worked on our OWA pre-assessments which I will be marking over the next few days, and communicating with everyone what I am seeing and making some plans for improvement.

And just like that, day 2 was over.

We will be working all day tomorrow on our OWAs, our DRAs, and our classroom artwork.

A couple of quick reminders:

• The last page of student handbook (given out on orientation night) needs to be signed and returned to me no later than next Friday, September 14^th.
• If anyone in the class has to pick up their younger siblings from the cafeteria afterschool (JK – Grade 1) to bring them to the gym for dismissal, I need the permission form signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• The permission form to bus to and from the city church and athletic centre must be signed and returned to me as soon as possible.
• Order forms for the Welcome BBQ were sent home yesterday. If you are attending, please fill out the form and return to me by no later than Friday, September 14^th, 2018.
• We had a few small uniform violations today, but overall, pretty good!
• Tomorrow is Spirit Day! Everyone should come dressed in their house colours and show some house pride!

As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns by email, and I will respond as quickly as possible.

Mr. Conte

A Message from Ms. Hayward...

Day 1 - What a Day!

Hello everyone!

We had an exciting first day today in Grade 5!

We kicked off the day with getting to know each other with a game – leaving it all to chance. We got to hear some favourite subjects, foods, hobbies, colours, a little bit about some family, and a few exciting things we did this summer.

We went straight into some art for our IB binders, and we even started our DRAs. We will be continuing throughout the week and are hoping to have everything completed by no later than Friday afternoon so I can take a look at them over the weekend.

We spent a good amount of time learning how to open our lockers, and we are going to continue to do this throughout the week. We do need a bit of practice.

We kicked off the afternoon with French after recess and lunch.

After French, we came up with our classroom rules (and I think we did a pretty great job)!

We will all make sure we are following the rules as the year goes on. After this, we had a great discussion about action (what it means and some examples). We briefly discussed the IB profiles and attitudes. We will be continuing that discussion all week. Each student has in their agenda to brainstorm examples of action they can take in their own communities.

After this we had recess and snack time. We ended off the day with our first house game of the year (and Theta won first place)!

Overall, we had an exciting and eventful first day of school. We are excited to kick off the year and will be delving into our regular scheduled studies on Monday.

A couple of quick items…

• ·         I sent home a copy of our class schedule with the students today. I also have a copy on my blog, but it is subject to change.
• ·         I sent home an order sheet for the Welcome BBQ taking place on Thursday, September 20^th. All money and orders are due to me no later than Friday, September 14^th.
• ·         We are starting our OWAs tomorrow.
• ·         We had a few hiccups in uniform today. Just a reminder that students must come in FULL summer uniform every day, and should have indoor shoes, outdoor shoes, and gym shoes. I have written in agendas for anyone who was missing uniform pieces. Please label all uniform pieces.
• ·         Tomorrow (and every day 2, 4, & 6), students will come dressed in their gym uniforms as they will have gym with Mr. Orr first thing in the morning.

I am excited to start the year, and with such a fantastic class nonetheless! If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out and email me.

Mr. Conte