Everyone has been doing a great job raising money for the Terry Fox Foundation! This week will be finish up our fundraising efforts with lots of fun and exciting activities. On Thursday, October 2^nd from 5:30-7:30pm we will be having our first ever “Gulf Shore Fall Fair.” This activity, in partnership with the Town of North Rustico, should be a great family event with many activities available to explore including; a fire truck pull, basket raffle, fun games and contests and lots of yummy treats.

As part of the fall fair, our class will be decorating a scarecrow. I’ve asked the students to bring in any items they may have to decorate our scary friend in the next few days and we will be putting things together later on in the week.

I’d also like to thank everyone for their donations to our class basket and for all of their hard work fundraising. Bravo! Just a final reminder: All pledge sheets and money are due in tomorrow, September 30^th.

Tomorrow will also be picture day here at Gulf Shore, so please remember to dress your best 🙂

Here’s what’s happening inside our classroom this week…

Grade 5

French- This week for our dictée we will continue to study the verbs “avoir” and “être” in the present tense. Again, this is a review of what has been covered in Grade 4 and students should spend some time each evening reviewing these concepts and completing that night’s assigned activity on the worksheet. I will attach a copy of the worksheet each week to the blog in case it gets lost or left at school. After we finish up our review of these verbs, we will be starting our 3^rd dictée of the year on different types of sentences.  Here is the link to the practice sheet: pratiquer-les-verbes-etre-et-avoir

This week during our reading blocks, we will continue to establish our routines of reading and responding to what we’ve read with lots of questions, predictions, inferences, connections and analysis. We will start our first independent letters in our “carnet de lecture” and will also discuss how we can share books we’ve enjoyed with others. I will also start reading a new novel aloud during our snack time and I’m sure there will be lots of great discussion happening around this new literary discovery.

In writing, we will publish our first text of the year. We will also spend some time talking and discussing what a good piece of writing looks like and how we can set goals to improve our writing throughout the year.

Math-This week will finish up our first objective on describing and representing whole numbers to 100 000. Students will be tested on this concept on Tuesday. We will also continue to review and study our multiplication tables, placing individual focus on those tables or problems causing us the most difficulty, and will start our next objectives on decimal numbers and fractions.

Over the next few weeks, your child will:

• Model, compare, and order fractions and decimals.
• Explore equivalent fractions and decimals.
• Relate fractions to division and to decimals.
• Use decimals to record measurements.
• Pose and solve problems involving fractions and decimals.

Fractions and decimals are used and encountered frequently in our world. For example, prices on grocery and other store advertising flyers typically show decimals and special sales announcements that include fractions. Encourage your child to look for such examples and to use fractions and decimals at home.

If you are dividing something into equal pieces, such as an orange, have your child name fractions that describe the pieces. For example, if the orange is divided into 8 equal pieces, each piece is one-eighth of the orange.

While shopping, encourage your child to look for decimals on price tags and labels. Have your child help you estimate the total amount of the items you intend to purchase, as well as how much change you should receive.

Science- This week we will be studying the ear and how it works to process sound. We will also be discussing how people and animals hear and make sounds differently.

Grade 7 Science

This week we will continue to examine volcanoes, earthquakes, mountains and the rock cycle. We will also start preparations for our first quiz of the year.

Grade 8 Science

This week, we will have our quiz on the viscosity property and will continue to study how different fluids have different densities.

I hope you all have a fantastic week and I look forward to seeing everyone on Thursday night at our Fall Fair 🙂

Madame Walker

 

Just a quick note about our first ever “Fall Fair” here at Gulf Shore. The event will take place on Thursday, October 2nd from 5:30-7:30pm. Staff and students, in partnership with the Town of North Rustico, are busy planning lots of fun activities for that evening, with all proceeds going to the Terry Fox Foundation.

Each class has been asked to put together a basket of goodies to be raffled off at the event. Our class’ theme is “Bored Games.” A notice went home earlier this week with a great list of possible items that we could use to fill our basket (decks of cards, board games, etc). If you would like to donate any items, please send them in by Monday, September 29th.

Additionally, to help decorate for the fair, our class will be putting together a scarecrow. If you have any items at home that would help us put together our spooky friend we would certainly appreciate your help with this activity as well.

Finally, a reminder that all pledge sheets and money for our Terry Fox Run are due on Tuesday, September 30th.

Merci beaucoup!

Mme Walker

We had such a wonderful time on Friday walking and celebrating the life of Terry Fox. He is truly an inspiration to us all! All money and pledge sheets are due back on September 30^th. Thanks again for all your help and support with this great activity!

There will be no classes for students on Friday, September 26^th, as teachers and staff attend collaborative team professional development sessions across the province.

Here’s what’s happening inside our classroom this week…

Grade 5

French– This week we will have our first dictée on “les pronoms personnels.” Students have been reviewing these concepts both in class and at home and we will soon move on to our second dictée of the school year on “le present” of the verbs “être” and “avoir.” These verbs were worked on a great deal in Grade 4 and this should be a good review for everyone as we move deeper into our reading and writing workshops.

This week during our reading blocks, we will be talking about our interests in different books and authors, reviewing the differences between fiction and nonfiction texts and we will be starting our “carnet de lecture.” Here, students will learn to write letters to respond to what they have read and to keep track of the books they’ve read throughout the year. We will be finishing up the book “Lola Superstar” that I have been reading with the class and after reviewing the structure of a letter, we will be writing a response to that novel in order to get our feet wet with this activity.

In writing, we will continue to discuss and review the writing process and we will go over the steps and behaviours associated with helping our peers revise and edit their texts. We will also be moving towards publishing our first text and starting to think about our writing goals for the months ahead.

Math-This week will finish up our “bootcamp” review and will start to look at the first section of the Grade 5 program on whole numbers. Your child will learn how to represent and describe whole numbers to 1 000 000 in a variety of ways. He or she will:

• Recognize and read numbers to 1 000 000.

• Read and write numbers in standard, expanded, and written forms.

• Use place value to represent numbers.

Here’s a suggestion for an activity you can do at home:

 Newspaper Numbers

Take a page each from a newspaper and circle all the numbers in the articles and advertisements on that page. Then talk about the circled numbers. Which are estimates? Which are not? How can you tell?

Next, both of you choose one number and describe it to one another in terms of its number of millions, ten thousands, thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones only. Then challenge your child to find your secret number while you identify her or his number.

We will also continue to review and study our multiplication tables, placing individual focus on those tables or problems causing us the most difficulty.

Science– As we move through our unit on sound, we will continue to explore how sound is created and how it travels. We will also start to examine how the ear works and how animals and people hear and create sounds differently.

Grade 7 Science

As we continue in our unit “Earth’s Crust” we will take some time this week to continue to examine volcanoes, earthquakes and mountains and what movements cause them. We will also start to explore the rock cycle and how rocks are formed.

Grade 8 Science

This week, in our unit on “Fluids” we will be reviewing the viscosity property and will start to explore another property of fluids: density. We will be doing some exploratory experimenting with density and will learn the difference between mass, weight and volume.

I hope you all have a marvelous week!

Madame Walker

It was great to meet so many of you at our “Meet the Teacher” night on Thursday evening. Please don’t hesitate to contact me throughout the year if you have any questions or concerns 🙂

This week is shaping up to be another busy one here at Gulf Shore as we get back into the full swing of things. On Friday, September 19^th, we will hold our annual Terry Fox Walk and Fun Day. Last week pledge sheets and information about this activity were sent home with your child. Students have until the end of the month to collection pledges and all money and pledge sheets should be returned to the school on or before September 30^th. Friday morning, we will be bussed to our starting place at Ms. Ready’s gate and will walk back towards the village park. In the afternoon we will return to the school for a BBQ lunch and group team-building activities. There will thus be no pizza order this week, as we will be treated to hotdogs from the Home and School to help us refuel after our walk.

Now a look at what is happening inside our classroom this week…

Grade 5

French- This week we will continue to practice always speaking french in class. I am very impressed so far with the students strategies to figure out words they don’t know and they are all working together to maintain our classroom climate “en français.”

For our first dictée, this week we will be exploring personal pronouns. These pronouns are found in almost every sentence we read, write, and say in French and we will continue to practice them throughout the year. In preparation for our first quiz, students should practice these concepts at home each evening in additional to our work in class 🙂

We will continue this week building our reading routines. We will look at when it is appropriate to abandon a book if we find it is too difficult, how readers are always thinking as they read and how they can share those thoughts with others after they finish reading. We will also be discussing different genres of books and the differences between fiction and non fiction texts.

In writing, we will continue to review the writing process, what good writing habits look like and how to generate ideas for our writing. We will also continue to work on forming good sentences and paragraphs that make sense in French.

Math-This week we will continue our “bootcamp” review of the concepts presented last year; fundamental concepts in fractions and decimals, place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and in particular multiplication tables to 10 x 10. Students should continue to work on reviewing their multiplication tables at home each evening and on Thursday we will have a short evaluation to see their progress to date. We should be ready to start into the new math concepts next week.

Science- We will continue our unit on sound. Last week we learned the difference between a sound and a noise and how we can recognize different objects, people, and animals based on the sounds they make. This week we will explore how sound is formed and how it is measured.

Grade 7 Science

We have started our first unit on the “Earth’s Crust.” Our first task was to learn about the different layers of the earth’s crust and plate tectonics. This week we will be learning how movement of these plates can cause earthquakes, volcanoes and mountains and will explore how and why certain areas of the world are more susceptible to these events.

Grade 8 Science

We are well into our first unit on fluids. Last week we spent some time reviewing the differences between solids, liquids and gases and defining what the word “fluid” means. We also observed many different fluids and learned about the viscosity property. This week we will be exploring temperature’s effect of viscosity and what makes different fluids flow at different rates.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Madame Walker

Welcome to our first full week of school! It is nice to be back to routine here at Gulf Shore and this week will certainly be a busy one 🙂

On Thursday evening parents are invited to attend our annual “Meet the Teacher.” I am really looking forward to meeting everyone, as we start this year off together 🙂

Just a small reminder that there are still a number of students who haven’t brought in their student information forms and low-risk activities release forms. There are also many who haven’t yet paid the agenda fee ($5.00). If you could send these items back to the school as soon as possible, it would be very much appreciated 🙂

Now a look at what is happening inside our classroom this week…

Grade 5

In French class, we will be starting to develop the routines for our reading and writing workshops. We will be examining the proper behaviors during these workshops and will be doing lots of brainstorming about our likes and interests and how they influence what we read and write. We will look at how to choose books that are “just right” for our interests and reading levels and will discuss strategies to help us when we get stuck in our reading. In addition, we will practice our speaking and listening skills as we present a friend to the class and spend time working on verbal sentence structures in small groups. At home, students should start reading each evening for approximately 15 minutes. I have a large selection of books that they are more than welcome to borrow, in addition to those books they can soon take out from our school library.

In math, we will continue our “Bootcamp”. This activity is designed to give students the chance to review concepts presented in previous years and to get them once again “thinking math.” We will be reviewing concepts including; place value, estimation strategies, addition and subtraction of multiple digit numbers, multiplication and division facts, identifying, comparing and converting fractions and decimals, perimeter and area and telling time. It is a good idea for students to continue to practice these concepts at home, especially their multiplication facts, as we look toward starting new concepts in the coming days.

In science, we will start our unit on sound. This week we will define sound, explore new vocabulary related to sound and start to observe how different sounds are carried and heard.

Grade 7 Science

This week we will continue to explore the rules and vocabulary associated with using our school’s science lab. We will also review the scientific method and start our first unit of study entitled “Earth’s Crust.”

Grade 8 Science

After a quick review of the rules and vocabulary associated with our science lab and the scientific method, we will begin our first unit on “Fluids”

I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Madame Walker

September has arrived and I am so excited to welcome you to the 2014-2015 school year, here at Gulf Shore Consolidated!

Over the next 10 months, as we journey through our school year together, I will use this blog to update parents and students on upcoming events, tests, projects, field trips, etc. I will try my very best to keep things as up to date as possible and I am always available through email if you have any questions or concerns.

This week we will spend some time getting acquainted and will get back into the practice of speaking French 🙂

In our language arts classes we will be writing, sharing and presenting all of our summer adventures with our classmates. We will also be looking ahead to this school year, establishing some reading and writing goals and will start to develop the framework for our reader’s and writer’s workshops.

In math we will start our ” math bootcamp,” a review of those concepts covered in the Grade 4 and will look ahead to those topics we will cover this school year.

Many sheets have gone home that require parent/guardian signatures.  If you could kindly send those back as soon as possible that would be greatly appreciated.

Again, please feel free to contact me at arwalker@edu.pe.ca or at the school if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing everyone at our “Meet the Teacher” night on September 11th 🙂

Have a wonderful school year!

Mme April Walker