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? 

Literacy, Math, Artist in Residence and more!

Reminder: Field Trip forms came home with your child today. Please fill them out and send them back by this Thursday if possible. We are asking for payment online if at all possible, as it makes things easier and less paperwork is needed. 

I am asking for 3 or 4 parent volunteers. This is an amazing opportunity to come discover the Glenbow Museum with your child! If you are able to it will be all day next Thursday November 22nd. Please email me at imlagrana@cbe.ab.ca




Literacy

This week we are looking at NonFiction text. What is it? What is it's purpose? Why do we read it?

We had a Nonfiction scavenger hunt in our classroom and looked at a variety of Nonfiction text to see what we noticed about the text, the pictures, the pages etc...

We  noticed that Nonfiction books, magazines, articles and text have some special features.

We will be discovering more all week and talking about how these Text Features help us gather information and understand important new topics.

Parent Pipeline:

Mathematics

In math this week we have been practicing using Triangle Math and Open Number Line as two different strategies to solve the same addition equation. 2 skills that will really help us when using an open number line are to remember our friendly  numbers and to be able to skip count forwards by 10's, 5's, and 2's from multiple starting points.

Friendly Numbers to Ten

We also talked about skip counting. We looked at a hundreds chart and practiced moving by hops (10's), skips (5's) and jumps (1's) and from different starting points.

http://www.abcya.com/interactive_100_number_chart.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WghTG10k1EU

Artist in Residence

Yesterday we used tracing paper with a photocopy of the City of Calgary in its early stages. We had to decide what in our previous sketches was going to get to stay (river) and what might be removed or covered by new buildings (sod houses, teepees, trees). 

Literacy, Dispersion Experiment and IRIS

Reminder: Tomorrow is our Remembrance Day Assembly at 10:30 am. If you are have a Girl Guides or a Scout uniform please wear it to school tomorrow. 

Food donations have started to come in. Please if you have not done so already bring in some non-perishable food items so that we can fill up our donation bins by Monday Nov 12th. 

Reminder: There IS school on Monday November 12th. 

Literacy

This week we continued to work on making connections. We practiced making Text to Text connections. 

In Mrs. Lagrana's Literacy groups we looked at two different texts:

The Peace Book by Todd Parr

I Am Peace by Susan Verde

We then had to pause and make connections thinking about something from one book that reminded us of or a character or a feeling from the other book.

Science

This week in science we have been talking about dispersion. We added 4 drops of food colouring to cups of room temperature water. First we made a hypothesis about what we thought would happen and why? Then we completed the experiment? Then we talked about the results. We posed the question what would happen if we added the food colouring to cold water versus hot water? 

Does temperature effect how fast dispersion occurs? 

Ask me what I discovered? 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dispersion.gif#/media/File:Dispersion.gif

IRIS UPLOAD

Writing Rubric and Self-Editing and Assessment

This week we completed our good copy of our Pumpkin descriptive writing paragraph. We edited and made changes and added more powerful words to our writing. We did a self-assessment based on a student created rubric. Log in to IRIS to see my work and talk to me about how I think I did and why?

Math Gallery Walk, Feedback, and Problem Solving Steps, Artist in Residence, Canada's Railway

Reminder: We are collecting food for the Veterans Food Drive. Bins are at our school all week and donations can be accepted until Monday November 12th. Please donate what you can. 

Reminder: November Book orders are due by Friday November 9th. Please place your order online or send in a cheque and your filled out order form to the classroom and I will order it for you. 

Math

Yesterday we shared our group work and completed a gallery walk with feedback stickies. 

A gallery walk is where we walk around and observe our peers math work and give constructive feedback on sticky notes. We are learning how to make our feedback informative so that our classmates can use our suggestions to modify, revise and improve upon their proofs. 

We have been practicing how to give constructive feedback. If feedback is good it will help us grow, build, add to and revise our work. It will tell us SPECIFIC things that we did well or suggestions about how to add or change parts of our work to make it better.

Today we looked at Problem Solving Steps. When we are solving a word problem there are steps we can follow to be more successful in figuring out what the questions is asking us as well as solving it more accurately. 

We will be practicing using these steps when we are solving word problems. 

Artist in Residence-Day 2:

Today we worked with the Artist in Residence to create the second layer of our art. This layer is on Vellum paper and is depicting the settlers, first homes, and initial modes of transportation in Calgary. We looked at sod houses, log houses, horses and wagons, the beginning of the railway track and small boats that could move along the river like canoes or rafts. 

We practiced using pencils and sketching using different pressure to add a new layer to our creation. We sketched onto the vellum paper and practiced using some shading techniques like cross hatching to add details to our sod houses, log houses, and teepees. 

The History of the Canadian Pacific Railway:

We have been talking about the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway. We watched a video, looked at photographs and have been analyzing articles to decide whether we think building the railway was a positive step in our history or a negative one. We will be looking at this issue from multiple perspectives before forming our own opinion. Our opinion may change with each new peice of information that we learn. 

https://cpconnectingcanada.ca/for-students/

https://cpconnectingcanada.ca/

Ask me if I think the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was a good thing? Why or why not?