Busy At School This Week

We have been busy this week adding to our large community that we are making. We have people, homes, businesses, services, schools, and parks. It's looking great!

In Math we have moved on from repeating patterns to increasing patterns. Everyone in our class had a chance to make their own increasing pattern from their choice of objects.

 

Spelling Sept. 24-28

We will continue with short a words but add more sounds into the words. Word families will be studied this week as well as some students will look at adding endings such as ing, ed and how that might change the sound of the word and the spelling.

List- camp, fast, flap, strap, flash, stab, sand, smash, blast, stamp
 7c and 20c-  mad ran glad map trap plan stand sand when was

As well both groups add one word of their own choice and I add a "surprise" word. The surprise word isn't really a surprise as it is a word that we have discussed all week during our morning message time.

Have a good week!

Great Website/Spelling

You should find a new link on the sidebar labelled Mrs. H's Favourites. The site "Bookflix" is available for MacNeill students in Grades 1-3. The user names for September is bkflix and the password is wind. There are lots of great non-fiction books and videos on a wide variety of topics.

Friday the 20th is our first spelling test. I hope everyone makes an effort at studying their words. I teach the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK  method to study. Spend some time doing this method with your child. It will pay off in the future- you shouldn't have to dictate the list all year to your child. Hopefully they will learn how to practice their spelling words on their own. We did not get a chance to practice this way yet.

Look for the new Home Reading Duotang to come home on Friday, September 21.

Have a great weekend!

Field Trip Pictures

Welllll.... unfortunately my camera did not have a memory card in it so I only have 4 pictures that I was able to take with my camera. We did have a nice afternoon though. We ended up going to Condie instead of Brown's Coulee-both in the same general area but Condie is closer. Some lucky children got to see the  beaver when they went down to look at the beaver lodge. The outdoor ed technician took the kids down to the lodge four at a time and the first group got to see the beaver. Needless to say after hearing the kids, the beaver did not show his face again!

26c was checking out a gopher hole. 

By the way, I refer to the children by their class numbers I gave them, along with their first initial. I do this for safety reasons on the internet.

Spelling

A weekly list will be in your child's agenda next week. A couple of students will have an adjusted list. As time goes on I will most likely divide the class into two spelling groups with two different lists based on the same phonetic sound. Example next week is short a-we will have both simple short a words, then some with more sounds in them. Please be assured that those ten words are not the only ten we look at. If we have bat and cat on our list then in class we practice all the other "at" words as well. So next week we have hand on our list- meaning in class we will also practice stand, grand, band, land, bland etc. Each student is going to choose a challenge word for him/her self as well.

Short a list for Sept. 17-21

cat, bat, tap, sad, fan, dad, hand, plant, crash, thank

Adjusted list for students #7b and 20c

cat, bat, hat, sad, dad, mad, and, hand, land    

Learning Buddies and Math Work

We met our new Grade 5 Learning Buddies this week. Each week we will get together with them to read, play math games, play cards or do special projects. We usually change buddies once a year. 

We have been working on repeating patterns in Math. Repeating patterns have a core that is repeated and  more than one attribute can be in the pattern. We have been working with size, colour, shape, position and now have added thickness. We have had fun making patterns with manipulatives and drawing patterns as well. Although you can't really see it in the pictures, the children used the thickness of the various shapes in their patterns as well as the other attributes. This makes the pattern more difficult. 

Our Class Promise

We spent some time this week talking about class and school rules. Rather than have a list of rules we have made a class pledge or promise that encompasses everything we talked about.

We also had some fun this week playing Snakes and Ladders! It is a great game for counting. As time goes on we can make it more difficult by playing with two die and adding the two die together.

One thing we learned this week was that in Room H we easily decide who goes first by a quick one shot game of Rock, Paper, Scissors!