Happy Holidays!

Dear families,
I have really enjoyed my first 4 months in grade 5/6! I feel lucky to have such a wonderful group to work with this year.

We celebrated the holidays today by baking cookies and with our White Elephant gift exchange. We worked in teams to make 5 kinds of cookies and had a great time in the game!

Thank you SO much for the thoughtful and generous cards, gifts and classroom supplies. I hope the kids enjoy the book I chose for them and perhaps even decide to read it! I hope you are able to take a break from all your commitments over the next 2 weeks and enjoy some family time and get some much needed rest!

Thanks to some possible bonus points on our patterning quiz the other day, many students scored over 100%, and nobody achieved less than a level 3. Because I know there will be no concerns over these marks, I'm not bothering to send this quiz home for signature, but please ask about it - I know the students are pretty happy about it!

I have also finished marking our first science projects, which included many different components. I have not given an overall mark, as some elements will contribute to our English language mark, and others to science. I have not asked the kids to bring this home either, but they certainly may if you are curious. It should, however, be returned and kept in their binder so that we can refer to it later in order to make improvements on future similar projects.

We've been matched up with our reading buddies in Mme Potor's grade 2/3 class. Please ask your student who they will be reading with! We've begun discussing strategies for helping beginning readers, such as:
- showing enthusiasm (even if it means being an actor sometimes!)
- smiling
- asking about themselves, speaking only in French
- pointing to the words
- asking about the pictures or meaning of words
- listening to reading and gently correcting pronunciation
- reading to the student
Our students were very sweet and encouraging with their buddies on our first day. Here's what it looked like...

Happy Everything! See you in 2020!

White Elephant

Dear families,
One week 4 days left until the break! Can't believe it!

If you haven't already done so, please make sure that in the next day or two you sign and return:
- learning skills rubric from November
- pink Data Management math test
- yellow Writing rubric

There is no weekly homework for students this week, however there are still some deadlines in French, Social Studies and for a couple kids in Science that they have known about since last week, at least. In addition, we will have a patterning quiz on Wednesday morning. We are reviewing for this today and tomorrow and only 2 students approached me (after 3 reminders) for questions to take home, so I am assuming the others feel confident after today's review. There will be NO homework over the break!

Students have been asking me what we can do to celebrate the holidays on Friday. I want to do something fun too, but as always, we will not include food in our celebration. Please do not send food or treats to share. Rather than Secret Santa, which I was asked about, I have proposed a 'White Elephant' gift exchange, which is a bit more fun and inclusive, in my opinion. We went over how this game works and many students are familiar and are excited to do it. Participating in this is completely optional, and of course students would need to be here Friday (afternoon, likely). If a student would like to participate in the gift exchange, all they need to do is bring a gift worth between $3-$5, wrapped up, but with no TO or FROM name on it. The gift should be something that anyone in our class would like (so, gender neutral and not a joke gift). Some examples that we mentioned are candy (not to be eaten at school), a new pencil case with a few supplies inside, game, crossword puzzle book, a set of sparkle pens, a ball, notebook and pen, slime, small science kit... the dollar store is your best friend!

Thanks so much to our volunteers on Friday - cards are on their way - and to Mme Jenkins for planning the Aquarium trip. We had a great day! Here are just a few pics!

 

Aquarium tomorrow!!

Dear parents,

It's a busy time of year for everyone and we are trying to tie up loose ends before the holidays!

The grade 5s are almost done their presentations on the human body. They have been fantastic so far, and I'm so impressed with the models they have built! After our last 4 presentations, students will complete a self-evaluation on this independent project.

Our grade 6s have completed their project and evaluation and I will get their work and evaluations back to them before the end of next week. In the meantime, we are doing a little introduction to our next unit: FLIGHT!

In math, we have covered the expectations for the first half of the patterning strand. We have looked at numerical patterns, including recursive, shrinking and growing. We have learned to extend a pattern, and find and explain a pattern rule using correct mathematical language. We have also looked at geometrical patterns based on number of figures, perimeter and area. Finally, we learned to use a type of "entry/exit machine" to create patterns and write them up in a table of values. We will do a review on Monday and Tuesday, but no pre-test coming home this time. I will return an in-class assignment that we did today and if students feel on Monday or Tuesday that they need extra practice at home, they can ask me to copy a particularly difficult question from their text to bring home and work through. I am happy to do this if they ask me. We will have a quiz on Wednesday.

Our financial literacy workshops with Anna have come to a close. Please ask your student for a final update on how their character did in terms of net worth, as well as their family and professional life. In our session last week, we learned about bank accounts, which included the different types, fees, and interest rates. The kids brainstormed a financial literacy-ish gift that we could give Anna, since she has been so great and we have learned so much over the past 8 weeks.

In French, I have finally sent home the rubric for the first large writing project we did - our personal stories. Please sign and return these. We are now excited to plan and write another narrative, but this time, a work of fiction. We have already started planning! This project will give us an opportunity to improve our writing mark as it is generally the same process and expectations, so we can directly apply the feedback from our personal stories.
We have used our computer periods to watch some French videos and answer some listening questions on them. It's fun, and a challenge, to understand French speakers with different accents, and through these videos, we also get a window into life in different French-speaking communities.

TOMORROW is our trip to the Aquarium. I sent home a little reminder about what to bring and what I expect. I know it will be a super fun day! Please be on time for school!!

Finally, I know at this time of year, students often like to get a gift for their teachers. While this is very kind, it is not necessary. If you do feel compelled to give me a gift, consider something that our class can use. Paper towels, kleenex, art supplies, pencils, erasers and drawing paper, for example, are items we go through quickly and which I often spend my own money on. Gifting our class these items is as much a gift for me as it is for the class and we all get to benefit. Many thanks!

Take care, Tamara

Sight & Sound Clinic

Dear parents,
My apologies for not sending home our rubrics and tests sooner - I am working as fast as I can! These will come home tomorrow for signature. Again, please read over the additional learning skills expectations for Term 1.

Students have also received a registration form for our annual vision/hearing clinic. This will be held on Thursday, December 12th. If you would like to have your student's vision or hearing checked, please return the form with payment by Wednesday the 11th at the latest.

On Monday, our grade 5s were assigned a date for their Science presentation and this date should be noted in their agenda. They had a period of in-class time to begin preparing, but as we need to wrap up this unit in just a few classes, they understand that final preparations need to be done for homework and that this may involve getting together with their partner, the same way the grade 6s did.

As we have been working on outlining the main idea (in English) and writing a summary (in French) for some time, in our English time right now, students are working on an assignment that combines these skills with learning about a global issue closely tied to our grade 6 science topic of biodiversity. I'm sure many of you have heard about the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or have read similar articles about plastic pollution. We watched a couple videos today outlining this issue, and we are working on reading an article about it. Once read, we will work on our main idea and summary skills, as well as share our opinions about this issue. Finally, as a media assignment, we will work in pairs to create informative posters on this topic. Many kids are already aware of this problem and/or were shocked at some of the information in the videos we watched. I encourage them to delve deeper into this issue if it interests them. Here are the links we are already using, but there are many more informative videos on Youtube, and plenty of articles to be found.
National Geographic Article that we are reading
Science Insider Video
The Swim Video

In French, all students have now been assigned to a Club de Lecture, differentiated by colour. Each Club has a short story to read and questions to answer on it. The questions range from vocabulary development, to grammar, to comprehension, and of course, we are writing a résumé! I have explained that completing their Club de Lecture reading and questions is independent work. Students may of course use any free class time to pull this out and work away at it, and depending how other work is going, may be able to get it done at school. If, however, our group meeting date is approaching and they still have questions to answer, it must be completed as homework. Some students have already elected to bring it home to begin working on. I haven't set our first meeting dates yet, but I've asked students to work on the first two sections of questions (parts A & B) for next week. At our group meeting, we will talk about the text and take up the questions together. Guided reading groups like this give me a much needed opportunity to listen to students read individually and support students with specific skills or concepts. In these first groups, we are focusing on the passé composé tense, which we worked on last month, as well as reviewing the elements of narrative writing, which we learned about in writing our personal stories. Please ask your reader which group they are in and what short story they are reading!

This Friday is a PA Day for students. Have a great weekend!

Weekend Update

Hello parents,
So much going on! Where to begin?
First of all, it's late notice, but I'm in the middle of a super busy music time right now and have two concerts this weekend that you might be interested in. Both are with a fantastic choral group called Incontra. We are presenting a Christmas program Saturday evening at 7:00, at  Knox College Chapel (U of T) and Sunday afternoon at 4:00 at Christ Church Deer Park (Yonge & St. Clair). Both concerts will be great - I think Sunday's includes a sing-along! Tickets will be available at the door.

Thanks for the field trip forms. I've received about half of them already. I noticed that some did not make it into bags, so if you haven't received one yet, please ask your student to bring it home or ask for another copy.

Yesterday we had two presentations. First, our grade 6s had a workshop about homophobia, presented by Teach with Planned Parenthood. Thanks to our fantastic gym teacher for organizing this. During the workshop, students had the opportunity to ask about many of the terms they may have heard, such as "asexual", "transgender", "queer". The leaders defined these terms in an age appropriate manner, explained some misconceptions and let us know when it might be inappropriate to use the terms. They explained the difference between sexual identity and gender identity and unpacked many of the stereotypes commonly associated with different identities. Finally, they discussed how we can take positive steps towards inclusion and treating everyone with respect. I was proud that, overwhelmingly, our grade 6s responded actively and respectfully during this workshop.

Next, we had our regular financial literacy workshop. Our characters are 34 years old and have gotten married, purchased homes and had kids! Now that we are in the real estate market, our net worths have increased substantially, but we still had hard decisions to make about what path we want to follow now in terms of career and housing. Some characters are really struggling with the high costs of child care... (this workshop is starting to feel reeeally personal!). Our lesson was about taxes. We learned about the different ways that we pay tax, and where those dollars go. To some, it was a surprise that we are actually paying for health care, even though we don't whip out our credit cards at each hospital visit. Anna broke down where are dollars are going at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. She also explained what can happen if you don't pay your taxes correctly, highlighting how this is different than if you don't pay a credit card bill. This topic certainly merits further discussion!

This week, we presented our P'tit Jean et la Sorcière play to Mme Potor's grade 2/3 class. They will be our reading buddies this year!

This week, we also started a special Intercultural Understanding unit with Mme Gaudreault. She will be working with us once a week (until February) in the library on this French language expectation. We have begun by talking about critical thinking and bias, and getting to know some players from the French National Soccer Team.

With progress reports completed, each student has set a goal and has stuck it to the corner of their desk so that it is top of mind. I will do my best to give stars when I notice that they are working hard towards their goal (e.g., putting in a greater effort, speaking French with peers). I have also updated our learning skills rubric for Term 1, which will take us until February. This updated rubric contains everything we had been working on before, and one additional expectation per learning skill. These are based on my observations of where our class is struggling, and also a class discussion where students gave their input of what we are doing well and where we need to improve. In particular, we talked at length about having integrity - meaning, doing the right thing, even when we think no one is looking. This came up in discussions about grade 6 lunch and when we've had supply teachers.
Students filled out an updated rubric today. I need to look at them, and will send them home next week for signature. At that time, please read over the added expectations and review them with your student. We went over everything today and I know it is all very manageable.

This week we also completed our math test, which I will also send home next week. Our new unit will be patterning! Next week we will also be ready (hopefully) to start a new art project, our reading groups, and perhaps a new French writing project.
In Science, the grade 6s will finish their presentations and complete their self-assessment of their work on this independent project. The grade 5s had an awesome class yesterday, finishing up their models. We will schedule their presentations for the month of December. Some groups have already started working enthusiastically on this part!

Have a great weekend,
Tamara