Rocks and Rings, Descriptive Mermaid Writing, Racing Liquids, First Nations and Buffalo Perspectives

November 22, 2018

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Royal Oak School students will have the opportunity to participate in an on-site activity called Egg Farmers Rocks and Rings presented by Curling Canada from November 30th until December 6th, during Physical Education classes. Curling is a fun sport to learn and participate in and aligns well with the Alberta Physical Education Curriculum. The aim of the physical education curriculum is to enable individuals to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to lead an active, healthy lifestyle. Curling is one of many activities that individuals may participate in for many years.

This program introduces students to the Olympic sport of curling and features a variety of drills, relays and team-building activities. It is taught using unique indoor floor curling equipment that helps to provide a true curling experience without requiring ice. For more information on this program and to check out some cool videos check out their website at www.rocksandrings.com

The cost for this program will be $2.35 per student. Please pay online using your MYCBE account by Thursday, November 29th. The MYCBE account accepts credit or debit payments. If you do not have an account set up, please contact the main office. If necessary, payment arrangements can be made by contacting school administration.

The program will run during the current Physical Education schedule and students will attend with their class. Each class will have two 30-minute blocks during this residency.

Please remember to pay online no later than Thursday, November 29th. Thank you for your continued support.


Sincerely,


Helen Hennick
Royal Oak School
Physical Education Specialist

https://www.curling.ca/about-the-sport-of-curling/getting-started-in-curling/rocks-rings/

Descriptive Mermaid Writing

This week we have been working on improving our writing by adding more descriptive words into our sentences. The novel study we are working on (Search for Delicious) has a character named Ardis who is a mermaid. Everyone was so captured by this mermaid and excited about meeting her in the book that we decided to do some amazing descriptive writing using pictures, classroom generated word banks and sentence starters.

Ask me how I made my writing more double scoop by adding more descriptive words. 

Racing Liquids

Today we finished our Racing Liquids science experiment to test how a liquids Viscosity impacts it's flow?

If a liquid is very viscous (thick) it will move ________
If a liquid is not very viscous (thin) it will move ______________

Ask me what I know!


INQUIRY
The Impact of the Canadian Pacific Railway on the Buffalo and the First Nations People:

This week we have been looking at the voices of the First Nations people and the animal that was so important to them (the buffalo). We have explored a series of photographs and talked about what we think is happening and why. 

We listened to a quote from a Cree First Nations man. Tomorrow we will continue to talk about this and if we think their voices also need to be heard in the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway. 

An aging Cree man is credited with saying that, “they took our land, they plundered our soil; they would have killed the last beaver if they could have found it; they destroyed the buffalo that was our food and took everything they could sell. They left only the bones, but wait and see what comes next; as soon as they find out how to sell them, they’ll be back to get the bones too”

Retelling, Viscosity, Doubles Practice and Telegrams from the Past...

Literacy

This week in Literacy we are focusing on the comprehension strategy of Retelling a story. Being able to retell the important parts of a story in sequential order is an important way to tell if we are understanding what we are reading. 

Today we were introduced to the 5-finger Retell strategy also known as the fist-to-5 model for retelling:

We will be practicing using this model all week to help us retell the important parts of a story. 

Parent Pipeline:

SCIENCE
Viscosity

Today we set up an experiment to do with testing the viscosity of different liquids. We will be Racing Liquids down a cookie sheet to what liquids will flow faster than others? Why? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ty07Jelhwg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVQw0svRHZA

We brainstormed some different liquids with different viscosity. On Wednesday we will test these out by having a liquids race! 


Math

Doubles Practice

Today we reviewed our doubles facts to 24. 

Knowing our doubles can really help us when we are solving double digit addition equations.

We played power of ten DOUBLES! Ask me how to play the game?

Telegrams from the Past

As we learn about the past one mode of communication we have researched is the Telegram. We read some past telegrams from the Government of Canada between London Ontario and British Columbia talking about the condition of the Chinese Railway Workers and problems they were facing. 

Today we brainstormed what it would be like to be so far from home, away from our family and friends, working at a very hard and dangerous job in a new Country. We empathized with how it might feel. 

We then had to imagine we were those workers and think about if we had the chance to write a telegram home who would we write to? We used the format of a Telegram to come up with a message for our imagined loved ones. Ask me who I wrote to? What did I say? 

Glenbow Museum Field Trip

Please THINK TWICE before going ON THE ICE

Parents, we have had reports of youth in our community venturing out onto the partially frozen pond.  This is, of course, a safety concern as the pond does not typically freeze consistently enough to safely allow people to access the ice. 

We are asking that you please have a discussion with your children about Ice Safety and how to determine when an icy surface is a safe place to play.  An excellent resource (with notes and videos) for this discussion can be found through the Canadian Red Cross website at:

https://www.redcross.org/take-a-class/teach-water-safety/whale-tales-resources

Thank you for keeping our students safe as they explore the community this winter,

Royal Oak School

The Glenbow Museum

Today was our field trip to Glenbow Museum. Ask me about what my favorite part was?

We saw lots of buildings, new and old as we drove to the museum! We saw the Calgary Tower and we even saw the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks with a long train sitting on the tracks!

We also visited The Arctic Section as we will soon be learning and studying about the The North of Canada.

Reminder:

Tomorrow is our field trip to The Glenbow Museum. Please dress for the weather, bring a liter-less lunch and snack and proper footwear as we will be walking quite a bit. 



PARENT VOLUNTEER REQUEST!!!!

Dear Parents,

In anticipation of creating a potential art exhibit to showcase our learning about the past Mrs. Lagrana’s and Ms. Quesnel’s classes were hoping to create an artifact that represents a piece of our learning. We are hoping we might have a few artistically inclined parents who would be able to come in and create a Paper Mache buffalo skull with small groups of kids. We would like this to happen next Thursday November 29^th. We are open to artistic suggestions and input around materials that would best recreate this shape. We have paper mache glue at the school and can provide all of the newspaper strips.

Please email Mrs. Lagrana imlagrana@cbe.ab.ca  or Ms. Quesnel skquesnel@cbe.ab.ca if this is a project that you would be able to add your expertise to as soon as possible so that we can get started next week.

Fluency, Building the Railway and Descriptive Sentences

Reminder: If you have no sent in your field trip forms and paid online or by cash/cheque please do so ASAP. We go to the Glenbow Museum on Thursday. If your child has not returned their forms they will remain at the school and spend the day with another Grade 2 Class until we return. 

Reminder: This Thursday from 4:30-8:30 and Friday from 8:00am - 12:30 pm is Student-Led Conferences. If you have not yet booked a time slot please do so ASAP. Your child should come with you to these conferences as they have lots of work to share and exciting learning to showcase!

https://sis.cbe.ab.ca/guardian/home.html



Literacy

This week in Literacy we are focusing on FLUENCY. 

This week we will be practicing building our fluency by using punctuation to help us add expression, tone and pacing to our reading. 

Tomorrow and Wednesday we will be recording ourselves reading a few pages of a just right reading level book that we have read multiple times. We will be using the punctuation as a guide to help us know when and how to add expression and read smoothly. 


At Student-Led conferences you can listen to our reading and see how we have improved, as well as a goal we have for our fluency.

Building the Railway

Today we looked at photos and reading about the Chinese Railway Workers in the 1800s. We learned about the daily life, wages and struggles of the Chinese immigrants. 

Descriptive Sentences

Today we used sentence starters to add descriptive details about an important character from the novel we are reading in class "The Search for Delicious". Ask me how I made my sentences double scoop! 

Stephens Backpacks...

Stephen’s Backpack: Dream Out Loud

Royal Oak Students are continuing to support Stephen’s Backpacks Society for Children in Need this holiday season.Stephen’s Backpacks Society for Children in Need is an organization that was started in Airdrie by a young boy who thought it wasn’t fair that he received so much for Christmas when other children didn’t even have a bed to sleep in.

In the near future, Stephen’s Mom will be joining us for a special assembly. All parents are invited to attend. Please stay tuned for that date!

The backpacks this year are for children who range in age from infant to grade 3. We are looking for donations of new items that can go inside a backpack. Our goal is to fill 100 backpacks.

What could go in a backpack?

Child Backpack (4-9 years old):

·      Waterproof gloves/mittens, toque, scarf, blanket, socks

·      Book or colouring book, appropriate school supplies

·      Age appropriate toy (train, action figure, etc.)

·      Hygiene kit- (includes shampoo, conditioner, soap, toothbrush, and toothpaste)

·      Candy or candy bag

·      Clothing items, shoes/boots

Baby Backpack:

·      Waterproof gloves/mittens, toque, scarf, blanket, socks, toy, teething ring

·      Baby formula, bottle

·      Baby wipes, diapers, baby soap, baby shampoo, baby lotion

·      Clothing items

These items can be brought to school by your child and they will be placed under the tree in the gathering space. We will be accepting donations until Monday, December 10^th, 2018. Thanking you in advance for your generosity.

Link to Stephen’s Backpacks for additional information: Stephen's Backpack Society for Children in Need

Character Traits, Evaporation and Dirty Water!

Reminders: 
-There is no school tomorrow as it is a Professional Development Day. 

-Blue forms are coming home today that need to be filled out and sent back (before Student-Led Conferences if possible). Please fill them out over the weekend and send them back in on Monday November 19th. 

-Book orders are coming home for December today. This is the last set of book order forms that will come home until February 2019! I am putting the due date as Monday November 26th so that any orders coming in will be back before Winter Break and well in time for Christmas. 

-If you have not sent back your field trip forms yet, please do so by Monday November 19th. 


Character Trains

This week we have been looking at Character Traits. We have been looking at important characters from our Novel "The Search for Delicious" and thinking about Physical Traits Vs Personality Traits.

Yesterday we picked one character from the book. We had to draw the character very well on one side and just an outline on the other side. The well drawn side is the outside and shows the parts of the character that we can see. We used our sense of sight to use describing words for what we think the character looks like based on the picture we have in our head from listening to the book. 


We then had write all the words we could think of to describe the personality of our character.

Today we thought about making our descriptive words double scoop. 

Instead of  She wore a red cape------ Her ruby red velvet cape almost touched the floor. 
Instead of His eyes were blue---------His eyes were as light blue as frozen water.
Instead of His hair was long----------His long, grey, tangled hair flowed way past his waist. 
Next week we will put all of these sentences together and practice writing a detailed, descriptive paragraph. 

Science

Today we read the book One Well by Rochelle Strauss. 

We also talked about pollution and how important it is to keep our water clean. We then did an experiment to make dirty water! 

Ask me what contaminants I added to my water to make it dirty?

Next week we will start thinking about how we can clean the water? Is it even possible?