Our Learning Indoors and Out - April 27-30

 What a wonderful week to take our learning outdoors once again.  As we wrap up April, it is finally starting to feel more like spring.  Here is what we have been up to this week:

We had a wonderful trip to Twelve Mile Coulee on Tuesday afternoon.  Students were focussing on observing closely and documenting their observations in detail through drawing, shading and labeling.  We also did an activity where we wrote what we "See, Think, Wonder".  This allows students to look carefully at their surrounding and to think deeply and engage their curiosity about the environment.  We were disappointed that, due to Covid, we could not spend some of our time on the land with Saa'Kokoto, but we had him in our hearts and in our ears.  We took a speaker along with us and listened to a recording of one of his amazing stories as we sat in the grass in a clearing amidst the trees.

For our reading, our focus is on learning about long vowels and what different ways we might see a long vowel show up.  For example, long o can be made the following ways:

 o alone (old, only).        ow (crow, window)         o_e (note, hole)          oa (road, goat)

Students are learning about the patterns of long vowels and are learning to try both long and short sounds in an unfamiliar word to see if they can tell which one sounds right.

Many students continue to progress with their reading of the high frequency list words.  If your child recently received a new list, please help him/her to practice.

We enjoyed working on our Hip Hop dancing again this week on a live stream with the people from Sound Kreations.  We learned to move our bodies in new ways to try and make ourselves dance like robots.  It was so much fun.

The big concept that we began exploring this week is "Mood".  To begin with, we brainstormed words that we know that describe our feelings and emotions.  We then worked to use these words when we wrote about being in the coulee.

On Friday, we looked at some pieces of art that used bold colours.  We discussed how the bright, colourful paintings made us feel.  We then painted a flower with bold colours and described our feelings and what experiences these colours brought to mind.  Next we looked at pieces of art that used pastel colours and noticed how those colours had a different feel to us.  We added white to our bold colours to make pastel coloured paints and used them to paint a second flower.  Our next step was to write about the emotions and memories that those colours evoked.

Upcoming

Monday May 3 - Home Reading Exchange

Wednesday May 5 - Hats on For Mental Health 

Thursday May 6 - Home Reading Exchange

Friday May 7 - Library Exchange

Sunday May 9 - Happy Mother's Day!

Our Work This Week - April 19-23

 Despite our crazy Spring weather, we managed to spend some more time outdoors and extend our learning into our environment.  Here is some of the work we have been doing:

In Science, we focussed on the signs of Spring that are appearing around us.  Students went outdoors to look closely at the emerging plants and how the trees are changing.  They also hunted to see if they could find bugs or any signs of animals that are becoming active again.  They documented their work in their visual journals.  

With Earth Day falling on April 22nd, we talked about what the Earth provides for us and what our responsibility is to care for our planet.  Students learned of a number of different actions that they can do to make a difference to our environment and each student chose an action and made a pledge to work on this action for the coming year.   We drew and wrote our pledges on blue paper that was shaped as a raindrop and then created a garden mural for our rain to nourish. 

We wanted to add some extra art to our Earth Day projects, so students looked at the globe and some pictures of the planet from space and create a visual using blue and green.  They coloured their Earth with washable markers and then we sprayed them with water to make the colours blend.  With a black and starry background, the art is quite striking.  

We began our work with Sound Kreations this week and have enjoyed learning some moves.  We are working on making a dance to go with the hip hop song "The Three Pigs Rap".  We will be working towards mastering the dance in the coming weeks and I will be filming the final performance so that we can share it with you at the end of our school wide dance unit.

Upcoming

Monday April 26 - PD Day - No School for Student

Tuesday April 27 - Home Reading - Afternoon Coulee walk

Thursday April 29 - Home Reading Exchange

Friday April 30 - Library Exchange - Fun Snack

 

This Week's Learning - April 12-16

The week has just flown by.  We have been busy practicing our skills and tackling some new concepts.  Here are some of the highlights:

This was a great week for working on our soccer skills both inside and outside.  We are developing ball control, passing and shooting skills.  Students are working to move the ball towards a goal and to try defending against another player.

In Language Arts, we have begun focussing on developing our descriptive vocabulary.  We are practicing thinking of interesting adjectives to describe a variety of objects.  We will continue to build our vocabulary and practice adding more interesting words to our writing.  We began another story writing project this week.  We read the book "Corduroy" and decided to write a story about a lost object.  Students brainstormed ideas about what they could have lost and created a story map about places they could look for the lost item and what else they might find along the way.  We then wrote the beginning of the story and tried to include some descriptive words.

In Science, we continued to explore colour through investigating how paint interacts with a variety of materials.  We used the scientific method to experiment with materials and record our observations.  

We also explored materials that are transparent, translucent, and opaque.  We used black card stock, coloured cellophane, wax paper, tissue paper, and tin foil to create a stain glass window to demonstrate these three properties.  We have put our projects up in the windows of our classroom, so please come by and view our work.

Next week we will begin our work with Sound Kreations.  We will be learning about the Hip Hop style of dance.  It should be very exciting.

Upcoming

Monday, April 19 - Home Reading

Tuesday April 20 - Sound Kreations dance sessions begin

Thursday April 22 - Earth Day - Wear Green and Blue - Home Reading Exchange

Friday April 23 - Library Exchange

Monday April 26 - PD Day - No School for students

Tuesday April 27 - Home Reading Exchange - Coulee Walk in the afternoon. 

Back and Busy Learning - April 6-9

 It is so great to see everyone back after our Spring Break.  We are diving right back into our learning with some great activities and new concepts.  Here is what we have been up to:

Our Language Arts this week has been focused on stories.  We enjoyed sharing stories of our adventures over the holidays with our friends.  We used a story circle as a way to make sure everyone had a chance to share their ideas and then recorded our stories in our writing journals.  The students are becoming more confident in their writing and can easily express their ideas in complete sentences that are easily read by others.  They are also beginning to use more descriptive vocabulary in their personal writing.

We were also excited to meet with our Blackfoot Elder, Saa'kokoto, via video this week.  He talked to us about the importance of the land and the tradition of giving thanks for the coming of Spring.  He told us a traditional story, "Thunder".  His stories are deeply moving and give us lots to think about.  The students told Saa'kokoto that his story taught them several lessons including "Stand up for yourself", "Never give up even when something is hard", and "You need to have courage".

In Math, we continued to explore the concept of subtraction.  Students are learning to make accurate calculations in subtraction using a variety of materials including a number line, counters, their fingers, and their beaded number line.  Students are becoming more practiced at using counting backward to help with some simple subtraction.

We integrated our Science, Math and Art this week in our exploration of colour.  We reviewed our primary and secondary colours and learned about colours classified as warm or cool.  We then took what we know about patterns to paint two papers: one with a cool pattern and one with a warm pattern.  Finally, we chose one of the colour pallet patterns to be our background and the other colour pallet became the animal in the foreground.  The art pieces are quite striking.

In Gym, we began our unit on soccer.  With the nicer weather, students are keen to play soccer during recess times, so we are using our Phys. Ed time to help students develop some skills for the game.  We will also be working in the coming weeks on how to play a friendly game cooperatively so that everyone can have fun.

Upcoming

April 12 - Home Reading

April 15 - Home Reading 

April 16 - Library Exchange