December 5th-9th

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend and got out to play in the snow.

This week we were very busy getting ready for the first of the two Winter Concerts.  A big "Thank you" and "Congratulations!" to all the students who made it to Thursday evenings performance.  This week's concert is not one that our whole class is participating.  Instead we wish our two Pebbles choir members well on Thursday evening.




We have also been working on our "Wanted/Missing" posters for the Lorax or the Once-ler.  We have had many great discussions about the two different view points, using the inside/out or role on the wall activity to record our thoughts.  We used this information to help us perform dialogues in role.  A few of our brave students even volunteered to perform in our class "fishbowl".





We have moved into the study of colour in art and worked with colour blending.  This coming week we will be exploring warm and cool colours, as well as contrast.

In math, we have begun to look at the different attributes of two dimensional shapes.  It is amazing how many different quadrilaterals we
can create!


We are also continuing with our "12 Days of Mashup Math" challenges.

Please remember to send in your field trip forms for Crawford Lake.  They are due this Tuesday, December 13th.  We are looking forward to introducing our new Social Studies unit, focusing on First Nations and European Settlers (Communities in Canada, 1780–1850), with this amazing trip.

Have a great week and enjoy the snow!

Ms. Sparling

December is here!

Hello,

It is December already!  I know, because it is dark for far too much of the day.  Luckily, we are out in the portable and get to take advantage of the daylight throughout the day.

Our spelling this past week focused on contractions.  We will be continuing to build on this base of knowledge over the next couple of weeks.  

We also took the opportunity to add up our team spelling points as it was the end of the month.  Most teams came out ahead.  

We will see what happens this month with our new teams.

In science we focused on photosynthesis, learning about how plants make their own food.  We also completed an experiment that showed us the chlorophyl that gives leaves their colour.

We had continued our work with patterning in math.  

We can now complete, create and describe growing and shrinking number and shape patterns.  

We have also worked on solving Mashup Math challenges.  Can you solve these two latest ones?

In reading and writing we have been deconstructing narratives; learning about the components of the beginning, middle and end and retelling them effectively.

It was a busy week for the school as well, with Anthony Mclean in to present about anti-bullying and the Winter concert rehearsal.

I hope that you will all be able to attend on Thursday evening!  Remember, students need to arrive at 6:00pm for the 6:30pm performance.

We are looking forward to another amazing week!
Ms. Sparling

November is ending!

Hi everyone!

Can you believe that it is the end of November already?  I can't believe how quickly the time is passing!  I hope you all had an amazing week, we did in 3D.

Our week included a great presentation from The Earth Rangers.  We learned a lot about different endangered animals and enjoyed getting to see the animals they brought to visit our school.

In math, we have been practicing identifying and extending growing and shrinking patterns.  We have been focusing on how we can communicate what we know about each pattern and the different ways we can represent them.  We have also been challenging each other to extend our own patterning creations.

We have been continuing to learn about plants through reading, writing and various experiments.  We  created our own flowers to enact the role of a bee in pollination and dissected real flowers.  We wrote about the impact of humans on plant and animal life after the presentation by the Earth Rangers. We have also been reading books on the "Epic" website about photosynthesis and creating our own labeled diagrams with the information we identified as important.






In spelling, we focused on "s" blends and doubling the consonant when adding "ed" after a short vowel-consonant word ending.







Finally, we participated in the Eldorado Excellence Assembly.  Our own K.N. and J.H. received awards for their consistent demonstration of the character trait of respect.  The grade eight students presented a powerful message about bullying and being a bystander as part of Anti-Bullying Awareness week.

This coming week we will be practicing for the winter concert, continuing our work with math communication and patterning, as well as discussing the impact of humans on plants and the environment.

Have a great week!
Ms. Sparling

New Trees, Stop Motion Animation, and Student Led Conferences

Hi everyone!

It has been an exciting week for all of us at Eldorado, as you can probably tell from the title of this blog!  

The week started off with the arrival and planting of our new trees. The trees have been provided to our school thanks to a grant from TD. The students were excited to see the root balls and talk to the nursery staff about planting at this time of the year.  We are looking forward to our beautiful new trees growing and providing shade on our yard!




In math we continued to fine tune our pumpkin graphs.  Learning about the importance of the title and proper labeling (especially of our units of measurement) so that others can understand what data we are presenting.





We also worked on our first  "Mashup Math" challenge.  
Can you figure out the value of Donkey Kong, the bananas and the barrel?







With "Bullying Awareness Week" approaching we took some time to think about how we can each demonstrate kindness in various aspects of our lives.  Each of the students completed a "#choose Action Pledge" and shared their promise with our class, as well as, with the rest of the school.  








In the Innovation Studio, the class worked in partners to complete a series of stop motion video clips.  Mr. J complied the clips into a 1 minute film called "Rich 'n Roll".  You can find it on Twitter @MisterJsWorld or I have retweeted it on my account @MsSparlingpdsb. 

Finally I want to say a HUGE "Thank you!" to all of you who were able to come and join the students and I for the student led conferences. I know the students enjoyed getting to show off some of their work and sharing their goals for the rest of the term.  For those of you who were not able to make it in this week I look forward to connecting with you soon.

Have a great weekend!
Ms. Sparling

Remembering

Hello,

I hope you all had an amazing week and took the time to reflect on what peace means to you this Remembrance Day week.  I know that I am grateful for all the sacrifices made that allow me to live in a country where peace is the norm.

In class this week we continued to work with our one remaining pumpkin.  We are turned it into a work of art using our knowledge of lines and experimenting with the lines out of the two dimensional realm.

We have also been graphing the measurements we recorded of the other pumpkins to see if they might have helped us to make better predictions about the number of seeds each pumpkin contained.


In DPA we rediscovered the website Go Noodle.  The students were showing me all their best dance moves.

In spelling this week, we focused on words beginning with "r" consonant blends, as well as, how to pluralize words ending in "sh" or "ch".  I hope everyone studied this week as we will be having our spelling test tomorrow morning.

Thank you to everyone who donated so generously to the "We Scare Hunger Food Drive".  We have been graphing the food brought in as we begin to investigate the Canadian Food Rainbow in health.  We have also been learning about child hunger here in Canada.

We have also continued to work with money in math.

In the Innovation Studio we focused on the Green Screen, wandering through a forest of bean plants and turning into super heroes. Even the teachers tried it out.

 









The students also had the opportunity to create Google Slides about what Remembrance Day means to them.  We will be fine tuning them this coming week and they will becoming to a device near you soon.

I hope you all have a great start to the week and I look forward to seeing you at the student led conferences on Thursday and Friday.  Please make sure you check the Progress Report envelope for your scheduled time.

Have a good evening,
Ms. Sparling