Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween morning together!
We started by playing YAHOO, a Math game of chance that allowed us to practice our multiplication and adding skills! Ask me about my game strategy... how did I do?

Next, Mme Careen played a silly song about skeletons and filled in the missing lyrics while listening to the music. Click HERE to see the dancing skeletons in action!

After locker break, we read an article about Día de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday that is celebrated November 1 and 2 every year. In recognition of this holiday (and of Halloween of course!) we made our very own name skeletons! Hand-writing and cutting out our names for our skeleton torsos was a bit tricker than some of us thought, but once we got the hang of that, our works of art really started coming together!

Wishing you all a safe and too-much-candy filled evening!
Happy Halloween! :)

Extra Extra!

Mme Careen here, checking in with a very important weekend-edition blog post!

Congratulations to our talented newspaper team who just released the first issue of our monthly school newspaper! The idea for a school newspaper was completely student-driven and is something the team has put A LOT of hard work into since coming up with the idea at the beginning of the school year.

The first issue has been very well received by students and staff alike and the anticipation and
excitement for Issue 2 is already growing!

Congratulations again, Knights News team! Excellent work!

Courtney, Aurora and Bronwyn - Three of our budding journalists!
Félicitations les filles! :)

Have a great weekend everyone!
Looking forward to seeing you all dressed up on Monday!

A busy Wednesday morning!

We started our day together with Knight Time, our first one of the year!
During our time together we continued our discussions about what we learned at our assembly yesterday.

We started by re-listening to the story, "We Are All Treaty People."
You, too can listen to the story by clicking HERE.
After hearing the story, we shared some of the things we learned from the story
or something that the story made us think about.

We also had the chance to write "I Wonder" statements that we will bring with us 

to our next assembly in November.

After Knight Time was over, we had a very special visit from Mr. McGavock!

He stopped by to help us set-up our user accounts on our iPads!

This year, we have a set of 14 iPads that we will be sharing with Mme McKenzie's class. 

We will start incorporating the iPads into our lessons very soon!

We Are All Treaty People

The whole school gathered in the gym today for our October assembly.

The theme of today's assembly was inspired by the plaque our school now has on display 

in the main trophy case near the office.

We were very fortunate to have Mrs. April Waters, one of our school division's Indigenous Education teachers, speak to us at the assembly about treaties and how the are so significant in our province's and country's history. We also listened to the story, "We Are All Treaty People," a book that explains the history of treaties in a way that was easier for us to understand.

After the assembly, we went back to our classroom tasked with 4 discussion questions to guide our conversations. We began our discussions with what the phrase, "We Are All Treaty People" means to us and began to share our stories, reactions and questions to all that we learned at the assembly.

We will continue these important discussions tomorrow during our first "Knight Time" of the school year, with the goal of creating a class statement as to the purpose of having the "We Are All Treaty People" plaque displayed in our trophy case. How would we explain to our parents, friends or to a visitor the importance of the plaque?

This will be a conversation we will continue to have as a school throughout the year and it is through our conversations that we will grow in our understanding of such an important part of our history.

A quick Monday check in...

* Last call for October Scholastic orders!
Order will be placed tomorrow afternoon so please have all orders in my tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.
Parent Pay online is available!
* Section A of our current Calcul Mental strategy will be corrected in class tomorrow.
* Science projects due November 3.

Coming up this week:
* School wide assembly - tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 9:30 in the gym.
* Our first Knight Time of the year will be Wednesday morning.
* Spirit Week also begins Wednesday of this week. Check the Room 208 News page for more details!

Have a great week, everyone! :)

A guest teacher and newly-found extra-terrestrials!

We were very happy to welcome Mme Banks into our classroom period 1 today! 

Mme Banks read two stories to us, "My Teacher is a Monster" by Peter Brown and 

"The Darkest Dark" by Chris Hadfield.  We loved listening to her read!

Mme Banks even took the time to Tweet Chris Hadfield a great student question!

Mme Banks also stayed to play multiplication war with us. So fun! 

We hope she comes back to visit us again soon!

After our visit with Mme Banks, we worked hard to complete our clé dichotomique that we started in Science yesterday. We all reviewed our work to make sure our questions 

and the names of our subgroups were specific and clearly written.

After that, Mme Careen introduced our first "Design Process" project Science this year! 

We were so excited to jump in and get started!

We are creating our own planet and the group of extra-terrestrials that live there! Once our planet population is created, we will design a dichotomous key (clé dichotomique) to organize them into groups/subgroups. We can present our project however we would like; in the form of a book, a poster, a maquette, etc. 

We will have 2-3 periods of class time to work on our projects next week. 

Our projects are due Thursday, November 3rd. 

And, just a reminder that Scholastic orders are due Monday!

Have great long weekend, everyone! :)

A busy Wednesday!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

We started our day in Math with our first Calcul Mental evaluation. 

Our first strategy was a multiplication strategy where we "Cut and Pasted" the extra zeros.

Ex: 3000 x 5, becomes 3 x 5 when we cut the zeros.

We then multiply 3 x 5 = 15, and then paste the zeros, to get 15 000!

After getting our brain warmed up with mental math, we moved on to our PPCM evaluation.

Most of us still need more time to work, so we'll use part of tomorrow's Math class 

to review and complete our work.

We were busy in Science today, too!

We each got a spoonful of dried beans and used them to create a classification key (clé dichotomique). We needed to focus on writing specific questions in order to organize our beans into subgroups. We will finish reviewing our work and answering questions about our keys tomorrow.

3 quick things...

Happy Tuesday everyone!
Just checking in with 3 quick announcements.

1) October Scholastic/Club de lecture book order sheets were handed out today in class! Hooray!
Please send any orders back by Monday, October 24.
Parent Pay Online is available, if you would rather pay by credit card than cheque.

2) Students will be completing a short PPCM evaluation in Math tomorrow. We have been working with multiples for the past couple of weeks and reviewed for this task together in class today.

3) Agendas, agendas. Students are reminded that their agenda should be coming to class with them each and every day! We do our best to write something in our agenda every day at the end of our morning together. We write upcoming assignment due dates (if there are any), as well as other things. Sometimes it is one thing we learned or discussed... other times it is a sentence using a new verb we learned how to conjugate. Please ask us to show you our agendas and encourage us to bring them to class! Thanks! :)

Monday, Monday!

Happy Monday everyone!

Here's what we were up to today in Room 208.

We started our day with a visit from Mme Marcoux. 

She walked us through a survey with questions about ourselves and our new school.

After that, in Math, we solved PPCM word problems and watched the last PPCM Samba presentation!

Finally, in Français, we started with LaLaLa, worked on our "Féminin" and "On corrige" booklets

and reviewed how to conjugate the verb, "AVOIR." 

Being able to correctly conjugate often-used verbs AND properly apply them in our daily writing is much like recalling basic facts in Math. The key is to review and practice often so that the skill is present when 

communicating with others (either through dialogue or written text).

We will be doing A LOT of writing in Français this year, so brushing up on "the basics" is a great place to start!

Looking forward to a great week! :)

The week that was...

Hello everyone!
Our (short) week of learning together passed so quickly!
Here's a look at what kept us busy in Room 208!

TUESDAY
In Math, we continue to work on multiples and finding the "PPCM" - plus petit common multiple
(LCM - lowest common multiple).
After some pencil/paper work, we put our PPCM knowledge into action! We worked with our table groups to create a PPCM Samba! Each group member chose a multiple and had to choose an action to perform each time a multiple of their number was said. There were some pretty creative moves happening!
We'll be presenting our PPCM Sambas to the class later this week.

In Français, we continued with our LaLaLa before looking more in-depth at the Terry Fox article we began reading as a class a couple of weeks ago. Today we identified Terry's 4 goals and the specific action plan he followed to achieve his goals.

In Science, we looked at a different format of dichotomous key (clé dichotomique). This version requires us to write a specific Yes/No question on our paper to sort our objects into subgroups.

WEDNESDAY
Mme Careen was away today at a Math/Science training course and we were lucky to have Ms. Arsenault (our Art and Home Ec. teacher) in our room as our guest teacher! Even though Mme Careen was away, we still worked hard in all three subjects!

In Math we practiced mutliples, in Science we created another clé dichotomique using the new format and in Français we started setting our own goals and action plans for the year. We also started reading an article about food allergies (les allergies alimentaires).

THURSDAY
In Math we completed a 'Shape and Space' diagnostic assessment (for Mme Careen's Math/Science training course) and we got to use connecting blocs to do it! We forgot how much fun it was to build the tallest tower we possibly could! (We played with the blocs first, and then got down to work)!

In Français, Mme Galka (one of our school division's Literacy Specialists) was in our class to do a lesson about reading strategies. We all admitted that sometimes we are "fake readers" - we go through the motions of reading but aren't really understanding the author's message. We talked about what strategies we can use to be "active readers" and how it is important for us to use and practice these strategies every day, each time we read, so that we can all become stronger, more confident readers.

In Science, we reviewed our dichotomous keys with a partner. Using the same objects we used to create our key, our partner had to sort the items following our yes/no questions to see if they ended up with the same groups we did. This was a great way for us to check to see if we created specific, easy to understand questions when identifying common characteristics in our groups/subgroups.

FRIDAY
We started our day finishing off our "allergies alimentaires" article and playing a multiples Math game and multiplication war. Then, it was PPCM Samba presentation time! We had fun counting to 100 while watching the different groups perform their multiples movements. At the end of each presentation we guessed each student's multiple and determined the group's PPCM.

Our last group with present first thing Monday morning - check back then for their group pic!

Wishing you all a great weekend! :)

P.S. Check out the new "OUR CLASSROOM BELIEFS" page, found under the "6F3 Info" heading on the right sidebar menu. Also, don't forget to keep checking the "ROOM 208 NEWS" page!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today, in French, we worked on our writing in order to complete a fun, fall craft-ivity!

We each wrote 8 sentences highlighting what we are thankful for.

After reviewing and editing our sentences, first with a classmate and then with Mme Careen or Mme Galka, 

we got to work creating our own "citrouille de reconnaissance."

After two periods of hard work, we celebrated our pumpkins (and each other!) with our October class picture. 

We have already grown so much since our first day of school!

Wishing you all a safe (and delicious!) Thanksgiving weekend!

Je suis reconnaissante pour vous, mes chers élèves! :)

Just a quick check-in with a picture of us hard at work in Science.

We worked in groups to classify a set of objects (pictures of objects), asking a specific question in order to divide the groups into two subsequent subgroups each time. This is how we create a dichotomous key (une clé dichotomique).

Tomorrow, will compare our dichotomous keys to see how each group classified the set of objects.
How many different groups and subgroups will there be?

Happy October!

It's hard to believe September is already behind us. Time is passing quickly. 

You may even say, it is passing faster than a speeding bullet?

(See what I did there...?)  ;)

This morning in Math we reviewed our multiples rules and used our
knowledge of multiples to colour some pretty *super* math pictures!

We are continuing our reading in Français, and today half the class read independently while the other half read with a partner. We will repeat the same process tomorrow, but the groups will be reversed.

In Science, we continued working on our "modes de transport" dichotomous key and had quite the discussion about how to divide certain groups into subgroups. Many of us offered great suggestions, but getting the entire class on board was no easy task! We will put these questioning/negotiating skills to good use when we start creating and following our classification keys later this week.

Looking forward to a great week! :)