Week in Review (Week 4- September 23-27)

Hi Family and Friends,

This week was a fun filled week with lots of learning!

This week we continued our review of our letter sounds in word work. This week we went over the "H, D, K, C, G, F, B and U" sounds. Each day we will spell common words using these letters and sounds. We will discuss other sounds we hear as well as the use of double graphemes in words. Following this, the students will be tasked to write sentences using these words. This helps to enforce the spelling as well as using the word in the correct context. Some of the words we practiced this week were under, clean, book, first and sing to name a few. Next week we will finish our single letter sounds and get into reviewing double grapheme sounds.

We also started "WOW" writing this week. In WOW writing, different picture prompts are placed on the smartboard and we are tasked to respond to and reflect upon the picture that we see. This weeks pictures had to do with the different things that we were learning about this week (Math, Social ext). After writing we had the opportunity to share with the class. WOW writing will help to build our writing stamina along with the quality of our writing and the use of description.

In Math this week, we shifted away from patterns to exploring Cuisenaire Rods. These rods are a great tood to help with our understanding of number sense. We learned that each rod has a value, with the orange rod being worth 10. Following this, we found different ways to make 10 using different combinations of blocks. We created number sentences to go alongside the pictures we made (eg, 9+1=10 or 5+2+3=10). We will continue to build our abilities to make 10 different ways next week. There is an interactive site that can help with building. https://www.mathplayground.com/mathbars.html

In Science, we continued our inquiry into magnets. We conducted an experiment this week, testing to see what classroom objects are magnetic and which aren't. We reviewed the scientific method ensuring that we had a question (what objects are magnetic?), hypothesis' for each object, observations and results. We were able to test different objects with magnetic wands to see if they were magnetic or not. Some objects had metal on them (pencil and paintbrush) however weren't magnetic. This sparked curiosity which we will dive into in the following weeks.

Lastly, in Social Studies we began an inquiry into First Nations people, specifically Residential Schools. Through stories, we learned that many First Nations children were taken away from their homes and their families. The children were not able to speak their home language, eat theirtraditional foods and participate in their cultural activities and celebrations. We reflected on how lucky we are to have the ablity to speak our languages, celebrate our traditions and be ourselves while also connecting with the community in Calgary. We understand that it was not fair what the First Nations children had to go through. This helped us develop empathy for the First Nations people. We read the book "Stolen Words" by Melanie Florance and Shi-Shi-Etko by Nicola Campbell. These stories provided inspiration for our relfection this week. We reflected on what our lives would be like if we had to go to Residential School. In addition, in the book Shi-Shi-Etko, the girl crated a memory bag of her favorite and most important things prior to leaving for Residential School, so in class we drew and painted our memory bags of the things that are most important to us.

**** Monday September 30th is Orange Shirt Day. It is a day to remember the many First Nations children that attended Residential School, and also bring awareness to the inequalities that First Nations people face and do our part to help in reconciliation. If your child has an Orange Shirt (if not, red or yellow) please send them to school with that*****

That is all for now. As always, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to e-mail me at mdnishimura@cbe.ab.ca

Have a great weekend!

-Mr. N-