A Week in Review

    Thank you parents for taking the time last week to meet with me for Parent-Teacher Conferences. I deeply value and appreciate your input, knowledge, and wisdom of how to best support your child in their learning journey this year. Thank you! It was a true pleasure to speak with you and get to know your family better.

Science:

    In our learning last week, time was spent in reading moon charts and researching historical weather data to try and see if there is a pattern within the phases of the moon that will help predict when the cold weather will really set in for the winter. All of this hard work, is to connect to the Blackfoot moon phase knowledge and how the First Nations peoples used the moon to help them predict and understand weather changes. There is a lot of information that students began to explore and investigate within this learning activity. As a class we will continue to deepen our understanding and knowledge together. If you could please support your child in asking questions, and recording their ideas, that will be most helpful as we go deeper into Trees and Forests and Sky Science.

Mathematics:

    In mathematics we continued to analyze and interpret graphs this last week. This coming week, we will be asking students to continue to explore and interpret line graphs. We will also begin a health and math investigation. Students will be asked to create four charts to record their sleeping habits, fluid intake habits, physical activity habits, and screen time habits. The goal is to record data for a week, and then we will reflect upon the data collected before we begin to make charts and graphs to explore how to represent the data and connections students make. 

Literacy:

    We have begun to explore reading strategies to help with comprehension. Students began to explore this using sketchnote taking methodology. This is a practice where students use key words and connect the words to an icon (small image), to help increase their memory. To help students study these strategies, please support your child to go back and colour their visual journal page, add more details (banners, dividers, connectors), as this will also help increase their visual spatial memory and help them rehearse the information.

    This week, we will begin our first novel study of the year, Iqbal. Students are going to be asked to read to the class, as I will share my screen with the novel for all students to read along. As we work through the novel study, we will also be practicing the reading comprehension strategies, re-introducing other literacy skills, and encouraging students to get back into the habit of reading regularly. We will also be engaging in online collaborate work with partners.

    On Friday, students will be given a literacy task to help them get into the fun make-believe world of Halloween, where they will be creating a ballad, poem, or song. This will be templated for students to follow along, but they are being asked to be highly creative and selective with word choices and meaning making.

Social Studies:

    We will continue to explore and examine the Rights of a Child as we read Iqbal, but also within our Class Meetings. This is going to help us transition into our work with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Mrs. Matikainen and myself are hoping to help engage in this transition around the same time as the American election. We will begin with the levels of government first, but the tie into what is happening in the world around us.

Music and Physical Education:

    The literacy activity students will be engaging in on Friday is connected to exploring a familiar folk song, and our hope is that charting how active students are will also heighten our awareness of the need to give ourselves physical breaks during the day. I will be going over some strategies this week, to help us with out Online Learning and developing healthy habits in our work areas and within our work spaces. We will be begin using movement breaks as a strategy to transition from one learning activity to another, and to move when one starts to become frustrated to give the body and brain a break. Sorry this is taking us time to develop, we are still trying to find resources and build our own capacities in these areas. Thank you for your patience, we are very mindful of these two areas and are trying to find ways we can all incorporate learning.

    Once again, I cannot thank you enough for all of your time, efforts, and Learning Coach support. Please know that if you need any suggestions or support that you can also connect with me, I am happy to help in any way that I can!

Sincerely,

Dianna

dleaston@cbe.ab.ca

dleaston@educbe.ca