Week in Review - Week 6 (October 7-10) "Safety Week"

Hi Family and Friends,

This week was safety week at CJM. As a part of safety week, we conducted and talked about many different ways of being safe at school as well as at home. We participated in a fire drill, lockdown practice and a safety walk to Colonel Fred J Scott school. We also talked about how to be safe with friends, being kind and what bullying is and the effects it has and what you can do to try and stop bullying. We also talked about digital safety. With access to social media sites, youtube and online games it is important that kids understand how to be safe on the computers as well. We discussed how you should only talk to people that you know online and talking with online friends can be dangerous. Parents should know what sites kids are visiting and monitoring usage.

In word work this week, we continued with our double graphemes (two letters that when combined together make one sound). We reviewed the sounds of: "oa" (o sound) like in the words boat, float and coat, "ie" and "ee" (both make an e sound) like in the words movie, field, tree and street, the "oo" grapheme which can make an "oo" sound like in the words bloom, smooth and broom. The "oo" grapheme can also make a "uh" sound like in the words took, book and cook. The last grapheme we reviewed is the "ing" grapheme. We discussed how adding "ing" turns a word into an action such as in the words jumping, playing and sitting.

In math this week, we continued with our work using cuisenaire rods. These rods have been a great tool to help us with our addition. This week we focused on organizing our information into manageable pieces and increasing our efficiency. We created a chart to organize our date separating each block, the quantity of blocks and then finding the total value/sum of all the same colored blocks. The kids do not know, but this is a early look into multiplication (something they don't need to know till grade 3)! Next week we will work on adding all our sums together using traditional and non-traditional addition strategies.

We started social studies this week with a sit spot. We did a sit spot the first week of school. The sit spot is a great way to connect with nature and the land. As we return to the sit spot throughout the year, we are able to see the differences during the different seasons, ask questions and find new inspirations. As we enter into fall, many notices that the leaves were falling off the trees. We also saw a lot more orange than green and that the grass was a lot harder than it was in September. This connection to the land provided a segway into our inquiry into the prairies. We started with examining what we know and what we want to know about the prairies. Many of us wondered "what are the prairies?" which gives us a fresh opportunity to explore. We started off by looking at landforms of the prairies. This week we looked at "fields"/ flat land which is the most common landform that we see/ envision for the prairies. We looked at many pictures of flat fields and following some brainstorming, were tasked to create descriptive sentences about the fields of the prairies. We came up with many descriptive sentences such as "there is lots of dry yellow grass". Following this we had an opportunity to draw our interpretation of a prairie field.

Home reading will start next Tuesday. Home reading is a great opportunity for kids to practice their reading outside of school. It is recommended that students read a minimum of 20 minutes at home every night. This is also a great way for parents/guardians to be involved in your childs learning. I will provide more information and send books home on Tuesday!

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

Have a great long weekend, and Happy Thanksgiving to all that celebrate.

-Mr. N-