Mr Wideman (Room 104) - Nov 18 - Nov 22

Thank you for attending our Parent- Teacher Conferences this week; it was a great opportunity to meet with our Room 104 families to discuss the academic and social progress that our students have demonstrated over the first 3 months of the school year. The individual goals and areas for growth that we outlined during the conferences will help to guide our learning over the upcoming months.

Our work in Language Arts continued to be based around story writing, and our students are applying the ideas from our story plans to complete our original creative stories. This week, our focus will be on the peer editing process, as we will further develop our understanding of providing useful feedback to our classmates. The editing checklist that we used for our Pixar writing will continue to provide us with the structure and guidelines for our story writing. These continue to be available in our Google Drive folders. We will also be looking at how we can evaluate the quality and usefulness of websites as sources for our research in Science and Social Studies. As we move further into research based projects, our ability to assess online resources becomes important in determining how we can become more effective and efficient in obtaining information from websites.

In Math, our work will continue to be based on multiplication and division strategies, including those related to variables. We have begun to investigate the connections between multiplication and division, and how using inverse operations can help support our understanding of the four operations. The question of using division strategies came up as a topic of conversation during several Parent-Teacher conferences this week, and we will aim to take some of the "mystery" out of division as we look at several different division methods, including the traditional long division algorithm, the box method, and the Big 7 strategy. Our goal is for each student to attach themselves to a strategy that they feel confident in using for dividing numbers, as we will be investigating these different approaches on equal terms.

Our yellow Weekly Review folders went home on Thursday, and these should be signed and returned to school early in the week, preferably on Monday, if possible. These folders will continue to be sent home each week as our students will complete a short review activity that includes some of the main skills and ideas that we focused on during the week. Please note that our work in Google Drive will be available for your review and discussion on an ongoing basis. This is a great opportunity to see how our work has been progressing in different subject areas.

We're looking forward to another great week of learning, and we will be welcoming Miss Yanko (our student teacher) to Room 104 starting on Monday November 25. Miss Yanko will be joining us for three weeks in November-December, and then again in March-April for her first two practicum experiences. We're excited to have her join us!

Enjoy your week,

-Mr. Wideman

Mr. Wideman (Room 104) - Nov 11 - Nov 15

During the week, we continued to focus on applying computational and problem solving strategies in different areas of the curriculum. With Parent-Teacher conferences upcoming on Thursday November 21 and Friday November 22, we will have an opportunity to discuss our work and progress over the first three months of the school year. I encourage all families to sign up for a conference on either Thursday evening or Friday morning. If neither of these days work for your schedule, I’m also available to meet before or after school on most days as well. Please feel free to contact me via e-mail if you prefer to set up an alternative day to meet. I’m looking forward to meeting with everyone in the upcoming days!

In Language Arts, our work this week continued to be based around our original story writing. The templates that the students have been using for their ideas are available through Google Drive, and I know that several students have been taking up this work at home as they continue to add their thoughts and ideas. Students have moved into Parts 3/4/5 of the template and are now focused on adding their ideas for the main structure of the plot (rising action), the climax of their stories, and the falling action leading to a conclusion. As the planning process continues this week, we’ll be taking these ideas and building them into our creative stories. Through this work, we’re aiming to demonstrate our ability to focus on the structure and organization of creative story telling. Our marking checklist is also available through Google Drive, and this will help guide our work as we peer edit and revise our writing.

In Math, we continue to focus on equations and working with basic facts using the four operations. We have been exploring different ways to work with variables in equations, and we are starting to develop a greater understanding of the connections between multiplication and division through the concept of inverse operations. Just a reminder that while working in our Lure of the Labyrinth online environment, students may choose to either play the quest game or work on individual puzzles that focus on the different strands of our math curriculum. This week, we looked at some of the other games and puzzles available through Lure of the Labyrinth, including those involving multiples and equations in different contexts.

In Social Studies, we are continuing to apply essential characteristics of maps. We worked in Ozoblockly to create “tours” for our crew of Ozobot robots that allowed them to begin to explore physical regions of Canada (Grade 5) and Alberta (Grade 4). Our work on our interactive maps continues and we are currently looking at creating quizzes that will demonstrate our knowledge and understanding of the regions of Alberta and Canada. In Science this week, we’ll be working on activities that will provide a conclusion to our current work on Waste in our World (Grade 4) and Electricity (Grade 5). We will be revisiting these skills and concepts throughout our upcoming Science units of study as well.

On Friday, we sent home our “Weekly Review” folders as part of our Feedback Friday focus. The work in Google Drive will always be available for parents and students to view and discuss at home, and the Weekly Review activities will help to provide some additional insight into the skills and concepts that we have been working on during the week. This week’s review includes work on variables using all four operations, quick creative writing summaries, and characteristics of maps. Please send the signed folders back to school each Monday, as we’ll be adding another short Weekly Review activity each week. 

Thank you for your continued support of our work, and I look forward to meeting with our Room 104 families at the Parent-Teacher conferences this week.

-Mr. Wideman

Mr. Wideman (Room 104) - Nov 4 - Nov 8

We hope that everyone is having a restful and reflective Remembrance Day long weekend. Our students put together a thoughtful and respectful Remembrance Day assembly on Friday morning, led by the music and organization of Mrs. Lacey. Thank you to our school community for attending and supporting this event. The students also had the opportunity to hear about the experiences of Corporal Mark Fuchko, who served in Afghanistan and lost both legs during an IED attack while on a tour of duty. For our school community, this was an important event that brought us together to share our respects for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve, in the Canadian Armed Forces. We thank them for their bravery and their sacrifices.

Our work in Language Arts has been focussed around original story writing, and students are preparing their plans to write their own creative story. Based on the structure and framework as outlined by the Pixar films, the students are working through a story planning template (available through Google Drive) that will help them to organize and revise their thoughts and ideas before beginning the formal story writing process. At this stage, the students are working to complete their details on characters and setting, as well as establishing the basic outline of events that will guide their writing. Stay tuned as this work continues to progress during the week.

In Math, we have been spending time with a focus on equations and working with basic facts using the four operations. At this stage, the students have expressed that division has been a particular area of challenge, and we have been working with inverse operations to demonstrate the relationship between multiplication and division. All students have been registered with an account for our new problem solving website, Lure of the Labyrinth. We started working on the initial activities in Lure of the Labyrinth, beginning with equations involving variables. While working in the Labyrinth, students may choose to either play the quest game or work on individual puzzles that focus on the different strands of our math curriculum. Students are welcome to continue working on Lure of the Labyrinth at home as well.

This week, Social Studies and Science were focussed on wrapping up some projects on Waste and the production of Electricity, and we'll be completing some further investigations this week. Our work in map explorations has taken us into Scratch where we are currently working to design and program an interactive map of Canada. This work will progress with the students creating quizzes that will demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of Alberta, Canada, and the different regions of both. These quizzes will be shared online in our Room 104 Scratch Studio, and this will provide all Room 104 students with the opportunity to review and provide feedback on the projects of their classmates.

We're looking forward to another great week of learning! Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about any of the learning in our classroom community. Thank you for your support, and enjoy the upcoming week.

-Mr. Wideman

Literacy Centres

This week we began our daily Literacy Centers. Each day students worked their way through a variety of centers that include, story writing, reading, spelling and Social Studies.
Literacy Centers have a number of positive benefits for student learning. They promote independence and ownership of student learning as they monitor the time of each centre and remain accountable for completing their work in that amount of time. Each of the centers are planned to be engaging while giving students a chance to practice and extend their learning of activities that have been taught during instructional time.
Research has shown that the implementation of literacy centers allow teachers to cater to all different learning styles by providing opportunities of multi sensory learning that combines auditory, visual and tactile elements into a learning task.

This week our centers gave students multiple chances to strengthen their reading and writing skills by working on the following tasks:
Centre #1 - Reading: Students were given a novel that they will read with their group and will also be the base for a number of activities throughout the next few weeks.
Centre #2 - Work with Teacher: During this time students worked with me on developing their story plot line for their Pixar narrative stories. Each week there will be a different focus as they work with me.
Centre #3 - Spelling: Students worked on strengthen their spelling and vocabulary by playing different literacy based games on the iPad.
Centre #4 -  Inferencing: We have been working so hard on strengthening this skill over the last few weeks that students spent time transferring their knowledge of this skill into their writing. Students were given a picture that they had to write a short story about what they thought was happening in the picture.
Centre #5 - Close Reading/Notes: Students were given a link based on their grade that was connected to what we are learning in Social Studies. Grade 4's worked through an interactive website that taught them about the different regions of Alberta. Students read the information and took notes on the different aspect of the region. Grade 5's were given a link to a fun and informational video about Canada. As they watched the video they took notes about interesting facts and information about each Province.

These centers will continue to evolve and change throughout the year as students learn new skills and curriculum. We look forward to showing you what we have been doing at Conferences.
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