The countdown is on, WEJ! We are one week away from our holiday break! All next week will be Holiday Spirit Week! Starting with Merry Monday- wear any special clothing from a holiday that you celebrate! Dress up and show your holiday AND school spirit next week!
The students are excited about our performance in our upcoming holiday concert… and they have been hard at work prepping for their big number on Thursday! I cannot stress enough that all children should have a black (or dark) top, black pants, black socks and shoes for our performance on Thursday. We will also most likely have a dress rehearsal tomorrow (Monday)… so please make sure your child has their dark clothes (either worn to school or brought in a bag to be changed into) tomorrow as well. Parents coming to the concert on Thursday should arrive a few minutes early to ensure yourself a parking spot as well as a good seat. The primary concert for parents will begin at 10:00am in the gym on Thursday. Hope to see you there!
We also have Spirit Days this week! (Please see the previous blog post). We hope that everyone shows their school spirit this week. But again…please ensure that your child has the dark clothing items for Monday and Thursday this week!
On Tuesday, the students enjoyed learning their first hour of computer science! We live in a world surrounded by technology. And we know that whatever field our students choose to go into as adults, their ability to succeed will increasingly hinge on understanding how technology works. But only a tiny fraction of us are learning computer science, and fewer students are studying it than a decade ago. The Hour of Code is a worldwide initiative by code.org to introduce computer programming to millions of students and encourage them to learn programming. The event is taking place this week, during Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 9-13). Since this initiative began a few years ago, over 100 million students have tried an Hour of Code. This year, my students are joining tens of millions of students worldwide in over 180 countries! Please check out the links under Computer Science on the right-hand side of this blog page to watch various brief videos promoting this initiative, and let your child try the various coding tutorials offered to students! My students were able to complete much of their first tutorial for beginners yesterday in one hour! All of the puzzles and creative activities at the site are designed to teach students computational thinking and the basics of computer programming. Students solve each puzzle by programming visual code blocks to achieve a goal.
The Hour of Code is just the first step on a journey to learn more about how technology works and how to create software applications. To continue this journey, students are encouraged to try taking a longer course at http://code.org/learn/beyond
Here are some pictures of the students coding from the other day:
We will continue rehearsing for next week’s Christmas concert. My class will be performing with Mr. Jackson’s class during the concert on Dec. 19th in the gym beginning at 10:00am. Students will be asked to wear absolute black from head to toe. We hope you can come see us perform!
The school’s Recess Peer Tutoring program has become VERY popular and some of our students have benefited by working with the tutors. Talk with your child and remind them that going to see one of our Grade 6 tutors is a great and positive learning opportunity!
In Science, we continue to look at what makes structures strong and stable. Our unit on Patterns in Math continues as well.
Thank you so much to those families who have generously donated to our school’s Food Drive and United Way -WOW!
Finally, if you are planning or know that your child will be away before next Friday and/or will be absent from our Holiday Concert performance on Thursday, Dec. 19th, please send me a quick email to let me know. I know many of you have already reached out to me.
Throughout this time, you and your child may engage in activities such as the following:
Your child can make and use a 100 chart at home to show growing or shrinking patterns. For example, they can start with an item that costs $4, then add eleven $3 items to the “bill.” (They can use the repeat function on a calculator, if possible, to find each new number.) After they mark the numbers on the 100 chart with counters or circles, they can describe the pattern they see and explain the pattern rule.
Click below to see the Biography Poster Rubric, a blank copy of the poster, and two level 4 examples of finished good copies of the poster from a previous year… to give you an idea of what is expected of your child. Again, work on the poster will be completed in class.
A picture of the good copy poster
