My interview schedule is filling up very quickly, and I have yet to hear from 9 families. If you have not yet returned your yellow form to me, please know I only have two available times left on Thursday, both later in the evening. If you are able to come after 9:15 am on the Friday, please mark this on the sheet. If you are not available later Thursday or Friday morning, please give me an alternative - perhaps Tuesday the 12th after school (but before reports go home) or the following week. If I don't receive your form back by Monday, I will assign you an available time and hope that you can make it. We like to see all families at this point in the year. Thanks for your flexibility!
Today in Financial Literacy, we got another update on our characters and had to make yet another tough decision for them. Our lesson was about using credit cards - cash advances, transferring balances, all the fees associated with credit cards, how your management of your payments can positively or negatively affect your credit score, and the overall pros and cons of having a credit card. Anna is fantastic - she fields about a million questions in her hour with us, and listens to lots of opinions. She is able to give us very good base knowledge and general information about all these topics, but I do hope that the kids are coming home and asking more specific questions about finances. For example, when we talked about OSAP v. a bank loan, there were lots of opinions, and not necessarily a right answer. You might have a strong feeling about how your child might fund their post-secondary education, and it would be a great discussion to have right now!
In math, we are having a very short (1 question) quiz tomorrow on calculating moyenne, médiane and mode. I will be leaving our anchor chart up during the quiz, so as long as students have been feeling good about the practice we've been doing in class, they don't need to worry about it. We have to move on to more of the probability side of data management and we will have a test later which encompasses these terms, the graphs we have studied, and what we cover in probability.
In English and French language, while we finish up our French stories and English science project, we are also moving along with learning how to find the main idea, with supporting arguments, and write a great (but concise) resume. All grade 5/6 classes are working on these skills for the next while. We have done some guided practice going step by step through how to find the information that is important to include in a resume, and then write it up. And, we have been reading passages together to find the one specific main idea, and the arguments that support it. We will gradually move towards greater independence with these tasks. Please ask your reader what the difference is between finding the main idea, and writing a resume, and what some helpful strategies are for doing this.
In drama, we have been working on our "Novel-in-an-hour" activity, though we spent a little more than an hour. Each group was given one chapter of a fairly simple chapter book (one that some remember from grade 1), and together, they had to read it and present it as a drama. Some groups chose to have a narrator, others acted it out through the lenses of the characters. Some groups sent me background images to project, others prepared background sets and props. All groups really did a tremendous job presenting their chapter, and we all understood the whole story by the end of presentations. We actually did such a good job with the presentations, and all the transitions between chapters, that we hope to present our story to another class soon! Ask your actor what role they played in their chapter of "P'tit Jean et la Sorcière".
In Science, the grade 5s are continuing on through their 6 science activity centres, which have been really fun and successful. The grade 6s have spent a class outside investigating the Dewson school yard to complete the "Hands-On" portion of their project. They either had to compare two organisms that they found, or create an organizer to classify as many living things as they could find. I forgot to take pictures, but it was fun to see some groups digging and finding worms or insects, and other groups trying to identify types of trees or figure out how to count how much grass we have.
I also want to thank the class for their kindness with a personal matter. We had a scare last weekend with my grandmother's health, and I let the kids know that I would surely be absent for a couple days in the near future as we were preparing to say goodbye - but if anyone can escape from palliative care, you can count on my grandma to do it. She's still 94, but for now, the immediate threat has passed, and the class applauded for her - it was very sweet!
Please read on below for info on The Redeemers!