Special Visitors!

Today, Mrs. McCrea's Mom and Dad, Mrs. and Mr. Krogsgaard, came to visit our classroom and share their experiences living in Africa.  It was a special morning and students were challenged to think about "fairness" in new ways. If you want to check out more on Zambia Mission Fund Canada, here is the link.

Check out our "kwacha"!

Mathletics!

Hi, everyone! I'm excited to introduce you to Mathletics- an interactive website that allows students to practice their Math skills.  Each student has been given a username and password so that they can log-in and get started.  Also, next week there is a competition called the Maple Leaf Challenge- on Tuesday and Wednesday students can sign-in and compete against students all over the country.  

Fare Thee Well

The Grade 6 students did a fantastic job of performing their interpretive dance to the song Fare Thee Well.  I have uploaded the video and you can view it by going here.  It will ask you to type in a password.  The password is "smarties".  Enjoy!

Remembrance Day Service

Hi, everyone!  Tomorrow, beginning at 11am, is our Remembrance Day service.  It will be a special morning and parents are especially welcome to join.  The Grade 6 classes will be performing a dance to the song, "Fare Thee Well".  I previewed it yesterday and it is wonderful.  I will also record it and attempt to post it.  Students are to wear dark pants with either a black, red or white shirt.

Quote of the Week!

This week for our classroom "quote of the week" we watched a clip from The Pursuit Of Happyness and the students had to create their own quotes for the short clip.

Grade six classroom quotes:

"Never let anyone get you down, just follow your dreams"
- Matthew

"Don't let your dreams crah down on you just because someone says you can't do it, pursue your dreams and take action."
- Emily

"Don't give up on yourself, even when everyone says you can't do something.  When you give up on yourself, you have already lost."
- Kyle

Researchers!

Today in Science we were deep into researching. This research is building them up and introducing them to finding data and facts online and from books. Eventually the students will pick a living thing to research and they will decide what they want to know about that living thing. They will organize their research into a presentation.
Today they were researching the five different groups of Vertebrates!

Classroom Update From Mrs. McCrea

I have started into my first couple days of my three week teaching block.  I am very excited to see what the students can learn but also bring to our classroom and share their own knowledge and experiences with the classroom.  Here is an update on where we are within the subjects I will be teaching:

In English, we have started a new unit on Fairness. Students will be reading and viewing images, books, videos and biographies surrounding the theme of fairness.  Through this unit students will learn how to organize paragraphs and eventually organize and write their own biographies.  The end goal is that the students will be able to write a biography on someone who has fought for fairness.

In Math, we started a new unit that is called Understanding Numbers. This unit focuses on place value with large numbers (up to the millions), solving word problems, multiples, prime and composite numbers, factors, order of operations, and integers.

In Science, we are learning about Living Things.  Soon we will be starting an inquiry project in which the students will be choosing a living thing that they want to learn about. They will decide what information they want to learn through developing questions about that living thing and organizing how they are going to present their information.  We are practicing how to create good questions and our researching skills in the classroom.

In Health, we have discussed and defined values and personal standards.  Students have recently completed an assignment that challenged them to determine and uncover their values and then set their own personal standards for each of the 5 dimensions of the wellness (physical, psychosocial, social, spiritual and environmental).  We have also discussed that in our lives people face situations that will either challenge or reinforce our personal standards.  The students will create a skit of a situation that will challenge and then reinforce their personal standards.  In the situation that will challenge their personal standards, they have to resolve the challenge in a healthy way through the skit.