Thursday and Friday highlights

** Thursday! **

We started off our chilly, rainy-day Thursday in the library!
No better way to spend a rainy day than with a good book!

In Math we tackled our second "Thinking Classroom" question. This time, we were trying to figure out where to stand in line at 711 in order to receive the most free stuff! If every 3rd person in line
gets a free slurpee and every 7th person in line receives a t-shirt, where in line do you have
to be to receive both?

Our groups all approached and solved the question in different ways and were able to build on what they learned in the first version of the question as they tackled each additional question given.
Bravo!

Thursday in Science, students worked in their table groups to sort a set of random objects. Their goal was to look at the group of objects as a whole and then to ask specific "yes / no" questions in order to sort the objects into different groups. Some objects were fairly easy to group together while others called for quite a bit of discussion and depended on our own experiences. We all collaborated well in our teams and came up with some great solutions! Great work, everyone!

** Friday! **

Friday morning in Math we completed a loooong assessment (89 questions!) of all things Math. This will help Mme Careen see what concepts we are already familiar with as well as which ones we might need to review. There were questions from Grade 2 concepts all the up to Grade 9! Wow! Our brains worked hard this morning and we all tried our best to answer as many questions as we could.

We also had our school Terry Fox run/walk this morning! We started off in the gym together as a full school and then branched off into a walking group and a running group for our own "Marathon of Hope." The snow stopped and the sun came out from 11:00-11:45 just for us! As a class, we collectively ran/walked a total 75km! Bravo!
(P.S. If we forgot to bring in our Toonie for Terry today, we can still bring in our donations on Monday).

*****
Agenda items:
1. Orange Shirt Day - Monday, October 1
(We watched this video (https://youtu.be/-xAAWBJFbuE) period 8 today in preparation for Monday)
2. Please send back Smudging permission form - Smudging will be done outside either October 4 or 5, weather-pending.
3. First calcul mental assessment - Tuesday, October 2

Thursday agenda items

*****

Agenda items:

1. Calcul mental Section B - due tomorrow (Friday)

2. Weather-permitting, our Terry Fox Run/Walk will be Friday (tomorrow) at 10:45am. 

Please wear green and yellow to show your school spirit for the run. 

We are collecting a toonie from each student to donate to the Terry Fox Foundation.

 Our school goal is to raise $500. Please give as you are able.

3. Please read, sign and return the 'smudging' permission form that was sent home today.

4. Orange Shirt Day - Monday, October 1.

Students will learn more about this day tomorrow afternoon. 

Please also refer to the email letter sent home from the school office earlier this week.

Super Wednesday!

This morning we discovered that practicing multiples in Math is SUPER!

What a fun way to start the day!

*****

Agenda items:

1. Calcul mental Section B - due Friday

2. Please send back Consent/Assent forms for our educational study

3. Weather-permitting, our Terry Fox Run/Walk will be this Friday at 10:45am. 

Please wear green and yellow to show your school spirit for the run. 

We are collecting a toonie from each student to donate to the Terry Fox Foundation.

 Our school goal is to raise $500. Please give as you are able.

4. Atomic Volleyball has started! 

Please check the schedule outside the gym (or on our school website) for practice times.

Terrific Tuesday!

Hello friends of learning!

Here are a few quick highlights from our morning together:

In Français we are continuing with our daily reading. 

Today half of the class read with a partner and half of the class read independently.

To end of morning, we were happy to welcome back Pam for another Talking Circle session. 

She is reading us the story Wenjack by Joseph Boyden. While we listen to her read, we are each making a unique abstract art piece, using a variety of designs and colours. We look forward to hearing the conclusion of the story in class tomorrow.

*****

Agenda items:

1. Calcul mental Section A - due tomorrow (Wednesday)

2. Please send back Consent/Assent forms for our educational study

3. Weather-permitting, our Terry Fox Run/Walk will be this Friday. Please wear green and yellow to show your school spirit for the run. 

We are collecting a toonie from each student to donarte to the Terry Fox Foundation.

 Our school goal is to raise $500. Please give as you are able.

4. Atomic Volleyball has started! 

Please check the schedule outside the gym (or on our school website) for practice times.

Hello, Week 3!

Happy Monday, everyone!
We're ready for a great week of learning!

In Math this morning, we had our first "calcul mental" lesson and Mme Careen explained the routine of how we would be working on different mental math strategies over the course of the year. Please ask me about our first strategy: "Coupe et colle les zéros." After practicing the strategy in class, we are assigned 20 practice questions that we will complete on our own for an agreed-upon due date. (For example, Section A is due on Wednesday of this week). After we have had a chance to practice the strategy for about one week, we will be assessed on the strategy before moving on to a new one.
Stay tuned here for more "Calcul mental" news in the coming weeks!

In Français, we took 10 minutes for our daily reading, but today we had half of the class reading independently and half of the class reading with a partner. We will continue to practice our reading this way before adding in the final "LA" - "Lecture Avec Mme" early next week. We also finished our class discussion about our 4 beliefs (Respect, Responsibility, Integrity and Excellence). Mme Careen will now type out all of our ideas and we will read them again together as a class before signing.
We are hoping to have our classroom beliefs posted by the end of the week. Stay tuned!

Finally, in our short Science lesson, we started discussing how we could classify our shoes. Yup, that's right! What kind of Yes/No questions can we ask to create a class shoe classification chart?
Be sure to check back tomorrow to find out! :)

*****
Agenda items:
1. Please send back Consent/Assent forms for our educational study as soon as possible.
2. Atomic volleyball has begun! Please check practice times posted by the gym.
(Practice times are also posted on our school website).
3. Section A - Calcul Mental - due Wednesday
4. School Terry Fox run - Friday at 10:45. More info to follow soon!

Have a great week! :)

And then we finished Week 2!

We blinked once or twice and then it was Friday!

We've had a great week of learning and we can't wait to see what next week will bring!

Here's a quick peek at our morning:

We started our morning with a formative mental math assessment and it made our brains work SO hard! We had 20 minutes to complete as many questions as possible (out of 50) on our sheet. Mme Careen will use this assessment to begin planning what mental-math strategies we'll be working on this year.

After finishing our assessment, we took a bit of time to 'unwind' with tangrams. One of the new tangram challenges for today was building 6 squares, all of the same size, using a set number of shapes. Bravo to our one team that was able to complete the task!

In Francais, we read with a partner and did our daily mini-grammar lesson. We also talked about "Excellence" and what our roles and Mme Careen's roles will be in the classroom when we work towards demonstrating this belief every day at school.

We ended our morning with our third Talking Circle session. Today we talked about what respect looks like to us. We also shared a bit about we already know about residential schools and the book/art project we will be starting in Talking Circle next week. We're so grateful to have Pam with us and look forward to all we will continue to share together as a class.

*****

Agenda items:

1. HPV Vaccination forms - please send back!

2. If you're already here, and haven't yet done so, please take a minute to follow our blog!

3. Please check your inbox for an email from Mme Careen. Please read the whole email!

4. Please read over and sign the Assent/Consent forms sent home today. 

These forms are explained in the email mentioned in Agenda items 3. Forms are due back ASAP (please, please!) but no later than next Friday. Thank you! 

Thursday!

Hi, team!
We had a short, productive time together this morning!

After working more with our multiplication tables in Math, we took the time in Français to read with a partner and discuss our classroom beliefs. Today we focused on "Integrity" and talked about the post-it notes we wrote and placed last week to describe what we feel our 'jobs' and Mme Careen's 'jobs' are when working towards demonstrating this important value at school every day.
We will continue discussing the remaining three beliefs in class tomorrow before Mme Careen collates all of our ideas into one set of classroom-belief statements.
We can't wait to share it with you here on our blog! :)

*****
Agenda items:
1. HPV vaccinations - ASAP, please!
2. First Drama Club meeting - Monday, 8:00am
3. Students interested in helping with our school-wide Terry Fox run - please attend a short meeting tomorrow (Friday) at 12:15 in Room 205.

Wednesday!

Hello, everyone!

Here's a quick look at what we were up to this morning in Room 208!

In Math, we had our first "Thinking Classroom" class of the year.
What is "Thinking Classroom" you may ask?
Working in randomized groups of 2 or 3, we collaborate together - standing at the white board - to solve different types of Math questions. Each group only has one marker, so we take turns writing and explaining our thinking to our team. Sometimes the questions will have a "right" answer, and other times, we are working to explain as many different possible answers as we can. We also need to make sure that everyone in our group understands the answer and can explain it in their own words before Mme Careen moves us on to the next step or gives us a different question to try.

Today, we worked on "Which one doesn't belong" questions. We had to take a look at each number, question or picture in a set of four and make a case for why it didn't belong to the set. Many groups came up with very detailed and creative explanations. Bravo!

In Français, we started with our daily reading and today was the first day we read with a partner - the second "La" in our daily "LaLaLa." When reading with a partner, we need to choose the same book, actively listen to our partner when s/he is reading and equally share the amount of text being read. Today we chose our reading partner. In the future, Mme Careen will pair us either randomly, or with a specific partner so that we can grow as readers together.

We ended our morning with our second Talking Circle session. Today was Pam's birthday and she shared a treat with us! We are learning more and more about each other each and every day which will make us closer and more confident as a classroom team! So wonderful! :)

*****

Agenda:

1. HPV Vaccination forms - past due.

2. Scholastic orders - due date extended until tomorrow! (Thursday)

Orders can be sent to school (cheque only) or placed online.

3. Drama Club starts Monday at 8:00am!

A busy Tuesday!

Hello, learning friends!
We had a busy morning in Room 208!

In Math, we took a look at multiplication and division and began filling in a multiplication chart in our Math notebooks. We will continue to fill in the boxes over the next couple of days looking for patterns as we go.

In Science, we discussed different examples of classification systems and how we can organize the same set of objects in different ways.

In Français, we did our daily reading and then worked with the verb 'avoir'. Many of us remembered how to conjugate it, which is great news! Incorporating small grammar lessons each day will help us become better writers.

We ended our morning together with our first Talking Circle session with Pam Peristy. We had a chance to get to know a bit more about each other and learn the history and importance of talking circles.

Looking forward to seeing everyone this evening at our Community BBQ (4:30-6:00).
No tickets required - just come when you can! :)

*****
Agenda item:
1. Vaccination forms - ASAP
2. Scholastic orders - due tomorrow (Wednesday).

Week 2, here we come!

Hello! Happy Monday!

We are ready to start our second week of school!

In Math this morning we played a game that helped us brush up on our multiplication skills! Using a deck of cards to create a spiral game board, we rolled a die to moved our 'jeton' along the cards, multiplying the value of the die and the card we landed on together. If we got the correct answer, we could stay. If our answer was incorrect, we returned to our previous space. Our brains were working hard - especially when landing on a King (a value of 13) after having rolled a 6!

After being called down to have our pictures taken (Cheese! 😃) we came back to class and listened to Mme Careen read a story before settling into our own daily reading.

We finished the morning with a new part of our daily routine  - On Corrige - which we'll explain a bit more in detail once we wrap our brains around it. Stay tuned!

*****

1. Vaccination forms due back ASAP!

2. First Note session - tomorrow (Tuesday) after school!

3. Meet the teacher BBQ - tomorrow 4:30 - 6:00.

(No tickets required. Just show up to eat and mingle!)

4. Scholastic orders - due Sept 19

5. ADN (Drama Club) for Grade 6s starts on Monday, September 24 at 8:00am!

One full week for the books!

Happy Friday, learning friends!
What a great first week it has been! We have settled in to our lockers and our classroom space and have started growing into our roles as les chevaliers et les chevalières de Ness!

Here's a look at what we were up to this morning:

We started off with our book of the day, The Math Curse and read that Math truly is EVERYWHERE!

We then tackled one of Mme Careen's favourite activities - Les gratte-ciels (Skyscrapers)! After being divided into randomized groups of two or three, we worked together to solve as many 'puzzles' as we could. The time flew by!

We started Français with our "lecture autonome" and then did a sharing activity with our peers about what we would be up to on the weekend. We followed a script that Mme Careen wrote on the board to help us with how to correctly structure our sentences using the proper verb tense.

We ended our morning with a team challenge in Science: "Le défi guimauve!" We worked in randomized groups of 3 (and 1 group of 4!) to build a free-standing structure using 20 pieces of dry spaghetti, 1 m of tape and one marshmallow. 

We only had 16 minutes to create the tallest structure we could.

We had many successes and failures with our designs and learned that having a plan before getting started is a good idea. Congratulations to the winning group whose structure measured 49cm, with the second and third place groups both measuring in at 45cm.

We had a great time collaborating with our classmates and are looking forward to our next team challenge, which could pop up at any time...!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

*****

Agenda items:

1. Say Cheese! :) Picture day is Monday, September 17.

2. Please return vaccination forms ASAP.

3. Meet the teacher BBQ - Tuesday, September 18

4. Scholastic orders due Wednesday, September 19.

5. Check school calendar for all athletic updates.

The 5th Day of School!

Hello, learning friends!

We had a great morning of learning in Room 208!

We started our day reading the book, As-tu rempli un seau aujourd'hui? before taking more time to work on our classroom belief charts. Mme Careen will now be compiling all of our ideas and we will use them as the starting point for writing our belief statements for our class this year.

We then moved on to a Tangrams challenge in Math. Working in randomized groups of 3, we were tasked with creating 3 different shapes using 7 shapes. It was not as easy as we thought!

Next, in Français, we started with "LALALA." What is that?! LALALA is a daily literacy activity that has students reading individually, with a partner and in a group with a teacher (Mme Careen). This will be done for 10 minutes at the beginning of every Français class. We started today with "Lecture Autonome" (reading individually) and will introduce the next "La" - Lecture Avec Partenaire (reading with a partner) - early next week.

We ended our morning with a sort-of Science activity; we created lists of items based on a specific colour assigned to our group and then, based on all of the items written on the board, we worked to re-sort the items into a different set of groups based on common criterium. We will be completing different versions of sorting activities over the coming weeks as we move into the classification outcomes of our Diversity of Living Things unit.

Great work today, everyone! :)

*****

Agenda items:

1. Please send back vaccination forms tomorrow (September 14th)

2. Stay up to date with all of the upcoming try-outs and clubs by visiting the 

school event calendar on our school website.

3. Scholastic orders due - September 19.

The 4th day of school...

Happy Wednesday!

We continue learning more and more about each other every day!

Today, we started our morning together with a Smarties sharing activity. Each colour of Smartie represented one thing we could share about ourselves with our table group.
Please ask me what I shared about myself!

We also read the book We're All Friends Here, learned Mme Careen's favourite brain break move (please ask me to show you!) and started our discussion about what our four school values: Respect, Integrity, Responsibility and Excellence, will look like in our classroom this year. We reflected on what our roles should be and what Mme Careen can do to make sure we are working towards our 4 beliefs each and every day. We will continue to work on our classroom belief statements over the next few days before signing and posting our final copy on the wall in our learning space.

*****

Agenda items:

1. Please send back Triad forms.

2. Please send back HPV vaccination form by Friday. (Even if you do not want want to be immunized, please sign off on the form and return to the school).

3. Stay up-to-date on all of the sports try-outs and all else coming up here at school!

Tuesday!

Hello learning friends!

We had a great morning together getting to know a little bit more about each other.
On our list today: more book sharing, a "Trouve quelqu'un qui...?" activity and a quiz! Yikes!
It turns out the quiz was a silly set of T/F questions all about Mme Careen... phew!
Did you know, for example, that Mme Careen goes to Newfoundland every summer, wakes up WAY too early every day and does NOT like eating chocolate marshmallow Santas? Ha! Now you know! :)

After finishing Mme Careen's crazy quiz, we got to work on our own. We were tasked with writing 4-5 T/F statements about ourselves and then shared them with our table groups to se if we could stump our classmates. We all learned some very interesting fun facts about each other!
Great work, everyone!

Trouve quelqu'un qui...

Writing and sharing our very own T/F quizzes!

*****
Agenda items:
1. Triad forms.
2. Visit and follow our classroom blog.
3. SO many sports tryouts and meetings! Be sure to write down where you need to be and when!
4. Scholastic orders due September 19.

Happy Monday!

Hello everyone!

Our morning together flew by as we spent our time getting organized for the year and
learning more about each other.

We started our day with a sharing activity; we walked around the classroom, shook hands with one of our classmates and then, following short script written out on the board, introduced ourselves and shared one thing we did on the weekend. Then Mme Careen challenged us to line up in the order of our birthdays WITHOUT talking! Even without our voices, we were able to get organized by working together as a team.

After practicing how to line up for a fire drill and getting our binders, duotangs and scribblers organized, we spent the last bit of our morning sharing about our favourite books! How wonderful to see so many books and hear so many different reasons why we love to read them!
We look forward to continuing our book discussions tomorrow!

One of Mme Careen's favourite books!

Wishing you all a wonderful week! ☺

*****
Agenda items:
1. Please bring back Triad forms asap!
2. Please visit AND FOLLOW our classroom blog! (Hello to all of our already-followers!)
3. Please bring in your favourite book if you forgot yours at home today. You can also bring in a second book if you have a different one to share!

*****
1. Boys Volleyball Tier 1/2 ID sessions: Tues 3:45-5:15, Wed 7:30-8:45.
2. Girls Volleyball Tier 1/2 ID sessions: Wed and Thurs 3:45-5:15.
(Atomic level practices will be announced soon).
3. Cross Country practices: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week - 7:55 - 8:30 am. (If you missed the information meeting, please see Mme Careen for an information letter and a permission form).
4. Flag football intramural are starting soon. Sign-up your team by Friday.

What a great first day!

Happy Friday!

We had a busy first day at school and had a great time getting to know each other this morning! The time flew by as we: practiced our handshakes, put up new, smaller version of our schedules in our lockers, attended our first school-wide assembly, practiced lining up for both the bus, talked about lunch procedures, took a tour of the school and finished our day by writing in our agendas. Phew!

Mme Buckwold welcoming us to school!

We are listening to Mme Buckwold talk about our 4 school beliefs : Respect, Integrity, Responsibility and Excellence.

 We also took some time to take a first day of school class picture; one of Mme Careen's favourite first day of school traditions! :)

What a good-looking group of Knights!

What a great first day!

Vive l'ecole Ness!

*****

Agenda Items:

1. Please bring back forms.

2. Visit our classroom blog. (If you're reading this, you're already here. Welcome!)

3. Tomorrow (Saturday) is International Literacy Day! 

Please bring your favourite book to school on Monday to share with the class so we can celebrate literacy together!

4. Two new classmates I met today are: __________ and __________.

See you tomorrow!

Sleep tight, Knights!

Looking forward to a great first day of school tomorrow! :)

Bonjour! Bienvenue!

Hello and Welcome Families of Homeroom 208!

It was so wonderful meeting all of you at our Triad Conferences and I am very much looking forward to a
great year of learning together!

While you are here, please take a minute to FOLLOW our classroom blog. It's VERY easy to do!
Type your email address in the box under "FOLLOW BY EMAIL" found on the righthand menu bar and
then click "SUBMIT." That's it! :)

When you are one of our Blog Followers, you will receive an email whenever a new post has been added to our classroom blog, which will allow you to keep up to date with all that we are doing here in Room 208!

Wishing you all a great first day of Grade 6!
J'ai hâte à vous voir vendredi, les élèves! :)

Hello!

Welcome to Mme Careen's Blog for Room 208!
Check back soon for exciting updates about our learning! :)