daw.com - November 8

Dear Parents,

Each week there are students in charge of a current event. I have sent home a reminder with these students but I will also list them here.

Monday - Faven
Tuesday - Stephen
Wednesday - Claire
Thursday - Christina
Friday - Day 2, no current events

Here are some student friendly sites for Current Events.

Good News Daily
Science News for Kids
Time for Kids

I am still looking for two families to supply turkeys for our annual Holiday feast on Dec. 9th. If you can help me out please let me know. You might also want to mark this day on your calendar as parents are invited.

We finished our Cultural Encounters unit last week and this week we move on to our Pollution Unit. Some of the students have already started by reading some of the non-fiction books I have on the subject in preparation for their poster project later this month. They are also taking notes on the books they read in the form of answering questions about our essential questions for the unit. This should be part of their regular nightly reading. This week we have a special speaker for our pollution unit. Should be some interesting insights. Students will also be bringing home a particle detector which needs to be hung or placed somewhere in the home where there is movement of air - it can also be outside as long as it is a place where the detector will not be blown away or get lost.

We started our math unit on division last week. This is a fast unit with a look at three division strategies and algorithms. The final assessment for the last unit is in the Monday Folders this week as is the remainder of the work for the unit.

If you have not already done so, have a look at your students reading blog. They now have their first reading response blog posted and from the ones I have already read, they look pretty good. In another two weeks they will post their next response. These responses come from the books they are reading at home and here at school.

We are also well into our unit on summarizing a story. At this moment we are looking at the 5 w's for the stories we read in class and also as we share reading. It is also going to be a part of guided reading for the next two months.

Students should complete their Realistic Fiction stories this week and will publish them on their website when completed. Have a look there to see it later in the week.

Students have now completed their camp webpage with goals, a story about camp and their reflection. They did an excellent job on this so have a look see. Links to their pages can be found here.

On Friday the students have their annual Field Day. Our class color is RED so I am hoping that students can beg or borrow lots of read garments to wear as part of this day. We will leave just before lunch, have lunch at the field in Tai Tam and then return in time for dismissal. Water bottles are important for this day.

I took a 3 minute video of students participating in Project Adventure as part of their PE this week. Have a look and you can see what they are doing. This is an excellent problem solving unit for students in PE. Kudos to Mr. Bilington and Mr. Watson for making this available to students.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Harold Daw