Last week, we finished up unit 5 of our Everyday Math program. We reviewed: adding and subtracting within 20, working with addition and subtraction equations, understanding place value, and measuring lengths. Today, we completed our mid-year assessment. This test has been sent home to be signed, and then must be returned to go in your child's portfolio. If you have any questions about this assessment, please come see me. I am confident that our little learners did their best, but I also know that test scores do not reflect the whole story, or all of your little one's knowledge and understanding. I am well aware that there are great test takers, and lousy test takers. Know that I use ongoing assessment methods to get the full picture of your child's understanding. While I encourage you to go over this test with your child, please don't stress them out if their scores 'aren't good enough.' All of your children should be proud of their learning, and should not feel like they have let you or themselves down. That puts too much weight on their little shoulders. With that in mind, I am very happy with how each of them preformed. I have attached the home letter below for our next math unit that we will begin tomorrow. During Language Arts, we focused on the ow/ou sounds as well as the oi/oy sounds. Over the next month, we will be heavily focusing on phonics. For many children, practising the ability to recognize sounds in words can make a big difference in how fast they learn to read. These spelling patterns will also assist your little ones in their writing. As a great deal of my training lies in phonics, and reading instruction, I will be working closely on this skill heavily before I leave. There will be a stronger writing focus after I leave, and I have prepared amazing writing lessons for Mrs. Wendy to deliver that I am so excited about! Last week, our fabulous student teacher Frances taught us all about precipitation and the water cycle. Students began this unit by looking at different books about rain, sleet, hail, and show, and asked questions about what they wanted to learn about. They also sang songs and watched videos about the water cycle learning the words 'evaporation,' 'condensation,' and 'precipitation.' We used our knowledge about what the word cycle meant from our last unit of inquiry on life cycles, and our inquiry cycle board. The next day, we learned about evaporation by doing two hands on experiments. First, we made a puddle outside, and drew a line around it using chalk. We left to do our next experiment, and when we came back, the water was gone. We learned that the sun evaporated it, and brought it up in the air to form clouds as condensation. Next, we filled a try and a cup with the same amount of water, food colouring and salt. We put them outside for the day. We learned that the water evaporated from the tray much quicker because it was less condensed. We also noticed that the salt stayed in the tray, because it is not a liquid. Later in the week, we formed clouds using a bag of ice, and boiling water. We learned how steam rises, turns into a cloud when it gets cold, and then precipitates. It was neat to see the whole process. We also played a variety of water cycle games, and even put the water cycle into our own words Today, we learned about how clouds can hold many water droplets. Students hypothesized about how many drops they thought a tiny cloud could hold, and then took turns using pipettes to add drops and count them. We learned that clouds can hold many drops before releasing them as precipitation. After all this excitement about rain, we prepped up our solar oven once more, and began to bake cupcakes for tomorrow's bake sale. We popped them in our solar oven, and they are now ready to ice and decorate tomorrow. We will be selling them to raise funds to purchase solar ovens for communities in Madagascar who need them. We also learned about print advertisements and what they should include. In groups, our little learners created posters to put around campus to advertise our sale tomorrow. I also want to thank Melinda Manning (Elizabeth's Mom) for coming in to read us two super cute stories last Friday afternoon. Parents, if you are ever interested in reading, teaching, or learning with us, please reach out and let me know how you would like to participate.
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March 2017
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