What a fantastic day we had on Friday, celebrating Terry Fox ’s life and continuing his mission to raise funds for cancer research. The weather was beautiful and all of my students were wonderful ambassadors for Gulf Shore School. Bravo!!! Pledge sheets and money for the Terry Fox Foundation are due in to the school by October 9th. This means there is still a lot of time left to keep working hard collecting donations 🙂

It is hard to believe that we have already spent almost a month together. Lots of learning is happening in our classroom. Let’s take a look at what’s happening this week….

Dictée-We have finished up our review of personal pronouns and this week, we will continue to review the verbs être and avoir in the present tense. Again, students are reminded to spend some time at home studying these concepts and working through the activities provided each evening, to help solidify their learning.

French-In Reader’s Workshop, we will continue to discuss how to respond to what we’ve read in our “Carnet de lecture”. This week, students will start writing their letters. We will also look at how to revise the letters we’ve written to include lots of examples from the text to support our ideas and opinions. Last week, I presented some new books I received for our classroom library to the students  for independent reading, from many different genres. These books were a big hit and I look forward to hearing all about them in the letters I will read this week in their carnets 🙂
During our Writer’s Workshop this week, we will explore the different parts of a text and we will look at the importance of making sure our texts always have a beginning, middle and end. We will also start a new read aloud book together entitled “Moi, Zèbre Bouchard” and, as always, we will converse in French, practicing using the proper sentence structure.

Math- With our “Bootcamp” complete, we are now into our first learning of the Grade 5 curriculum: N1-Representing numbers up to one million. Students are learning how to say and write large numbers in a variety of ways, including expanded form, in words, using base ten blocks, and using place value tables. In our warm up, we will also continue to practice our multiplication and division facts. Continued practice of these facts at home is strongly encouraged 🙂

Science-As we move through our unit on sound, this week we will continue to look at sounds vibrations. We will also begin to explore the parts of the human ear and how its construction allows us to hear different sounds.

Grade 7 Science

This week in our unit on the Earth’s Crust, we will look deeper at how plate tectonics move. We will also explore how different types of mountains and volcanoes are formed.

Grade 8 Science

This week, we will finish up our study of the viscosity property of fluids and we will have our first evaluation of the year on this property. We will then start our study of another physical property of fluids: density.

I wish everyone a marvelous week!

Mme MacNevin

Once again, it was so great to see and to meet everyone last week at our “Meet the Staff” night and I hope everyone had a restful weekend 🙂

Late last week, Scholastic book order forms were sent home. If you are interested in purchasing any books, please have your order forms and money into me by Thursday, September 24th.

This week will certainly be a busy one here at Gulf Shore, with lots of events and fun activities planned!

On Tuesday, students are asked to come to school with their biggest and brightest smiles, as Mr. Martin Caird from Sandpiper Studios will be here to take our class pictures. Proofs and picture pricing should be available shortly after that, so be sure to look for those documents in your child’s book bag in the coming days.

On Wednesday, our Home and School will hold their first meeting of the 2015-2016 school year beginning at 7:00pm in the Science Lab. More information on Home and School is available on our school’s webpage.

Finally, on Friday, September 25th, we will host our annual Terry Fox Walk/Run. This is an all day event which includes a walk along the beautiful Gulf Shore Parkway in the PEI National Park, a BBQ lunch hosted by our Home and School, and finally some team building activities in the afternoon, hosted by our Student Leadership Team. Students are reminded to dress according to the weather on Friday and to continue to collect pledges to help raise funds for this worthwhile cause. Extra pledge sheets are available from Mme Larkin and all pledge sheets and money are due into me by no later than October 9th.

Now let’s take a look at what’s happening in our classroom….

Dictée-For our dictée this week we will finish up our review of personal pronouns and we will begin to review the verbs “être” and “avoir” in the present tense. Students are expected to review these concepts at home each evening in addition to our work in class.

French-This week in our Reader’s Workshop, we will discuss different genres of literature and our interest in certain authors, genres, and types of books. We will also start responding to what we’ve read in our “Carnet de lecture.” Each cycle students will write me a letter discussing the books they’ve been reading in class and at home. These letters challenge students to think deeper about their reading and to support their ideas with examples from the text. We will spend some time in writing, reviewing the parts of a letter in order to facilitate this process and we will also write some examples together as a class. In our Writer’s Workshop, we will also discuss how to plan our writing before we begin and how to conference about our writing with our teachers and our peers. We will also finish up our read aloud novel “Lola superstar” and we will spend some time conversing with our peers out loud in French, paying special attention to our sentence structure.

Math- This week we will continue finish up our “Math Bootcamp,” reviewing the concepts from Grade 4 and our multiplication and division facts. If time permits, we will then start into our first Grade 5 concept on number sense. In this unit, your child 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.

Continue practice on math facts and multiplication and division strategies is encouraged at home each evening 🙂

Science-In class this week we will be discussing how sound is formed through vibrations. Students will have the opportunity to experiment making different sounds and to observe sound vibrations through different visuals. It is always exciting to see the students discover sound in this way 🙂

Grade 7 Science

We are now well into our unit on the Earth’s Crust. This week we will learn more about tectonic plaques and their movement’s impact on the formation of volcanoes, mountains and earthquakes.

Grade 8 Science

In our unit on Fluids this week we will continue to experiment with the viscosity property. We will look at how temperature can impact a fluid’s viscosity and will spend some time in the lab experimenting with different fluids.

Have a fantastic week!

Mme MacNevin

What a fabulous first week we had together! Thank you so much for all your hard work getting forms and money sent in so quickly, and to the students for a wonderful start to the school year! We have begun to establish our classroom routines and everyone is settling well into school life 🙂

On Wednesday, September 16th, we will hold our annual “Meet the Staff” night here at Gulf Shore. Things get started at 7:00pm in the Multi-purpose room and I look forward to seeing and meeting everyone 🙂

Now let’s take a look at what’s happening in our classroom this week…

Grade 5

Dictée-Each week for our “dictée,” we will study a different concept of French grammar. This week we will look at “les pronoms personnels sujets”, personal pronouns, used to replace nouns in sentences. These concepts should be a review from Grade 4. Students are asked to complete a section of their practice sheet on these concepts for homework each evening, in addition to our work together in class, in preparation for our dictée quiz each week.

French-This week we will continue to establish the routines and procedures we will use this year during our Reader’s and Writer’s Workshops. In reading, we will continue to explore how readers choose books and respond to books that they’ve read, and at how to share the thoughts and ideas we have about our books with others. In writing, we will explore how writers get ideas for their texts and we will start to brainstorm ideas for our own stories. I have also started the novel “Lola Superstar” as a read aloud with the students and we will continue to discuss, predict, and respond to this story in the coming weeks. Students are reminded that they are expected to read in French at home for fifteen minutes each evening and to record the books they’ve read in their “Carnet de lecture.”

Math- This week we will continue our “Math Bootcamp,” reviewing the concepts from Grade 4 and our multiplication and division facts. Concepts including place value, fractions and decimal numbers, addition and subtraction of large numbers, and multiplication and division strategies will be reviewed. Students should spend some time at home each evening reviewing their math facts, practicing for speed and accuracy.

Science-On Monday, we will start the first unit of our Science program on sound. We will spend some time this week discussing the definition of what sound is and the differences between sound and noise. We will also spend some time “listening to silence” to familiarize ourselves with the environmental sounds that surround us here at school.

Grade 7 Science
This week we will finish up our introduction to the Grade 7 Science program, including our review of the vocabulary and rules specific to working in the lab. If time permits, we will start our first unit entitled “The Earth’s Crust”.

Grade 8 Science
This week we will start our first unit on “Fluids.” We will start by reviewing the properties of the three states of matters, the particle theory and we will then begin to explore the physical properties of fluids.

Have a wonderful week!

Mme MacNevin 🙂

Welcome back to school! I am so excited to be starting another year at Gulf Shore in Grade 5 Immersion 🙂

Throughout the year I will be using this blog to update parents and students on events, homework, evaluations, etc., that are happening in our classroom and in our school community 🙂 If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to contact me through phone or email.

This week will be spent familiarizing ourselves with one another and with our classroom routines and procedures. We will also have lots of time to share and discuss our summer adventures, and to review last year’s key concepts in French and Math.

As per usual, there will be lots of sheets coming home over the next few days. Please take the time to carefully review and sign each one and if you would kindly send them back into the school with your son/daughter, along with $5.00 for your child’s agenda, before the end of the week, it would be greatly appreciated 🙂

I look forward to getting to know each of you and to meeting you in the coming days 🙂

Here’s to a fun and rewarding 2015-2016 school year!

Bonne rentrée!

Mme April MacNevin (Walker)