I was so pleased to see everyone last week at our student-led conferences. It was such a joy to see my students share their learning with you and I am thankful to have such a supportive group of parents as part of my team this year. I would encourage you all to remind your son/daughter of the goals they’ve set for themselves and to help them in any way possible to reach these goals. I am always available to lend a hand with any extra resources you may need to assist you in this process and I look forward to sharing lots of improvements when we meet again in March 🙂

It’s hard to believe, but Christmas is only a month away and this week we will start to prepare for our annual Holiday program here at Gulf Shore. This year, we will be working together with the other Grade 5 students in Mr. Holmes’ class and we will be spending some time over the next few weeks practicing for our presentation on December 16th. Once students are assigned their roles, we may need a little help gathering costumes and props, so be on the look out for more information about this project in the coming days 🙂

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

Dictée-Our dictée focus this week will continue to be on how to properly use our Bescherelle. I am very impressed with how quickly everyone is catching on to using their tool to improve our writing 🙂 Keep practicing 🙂

French-During reader’s workshop this week we will finish up our look at how readers read between the lines. Time will also be spent this week reviewing our reading goals, as we return to our guided reading groups and to a more regular routine following our preparation for our student-led conferences over the past few weeks. We will also finish up our read-aloud novel “Ça roule avec Charlotte and will work in groups to discuss our thoughts and opinions about what we’ve read, as we practice our speaking and listening skills.
During our writing periods this week we will continue our study of procedural texts. Students are now well into writing their own procedural pieces, both during our writing blocks and through the creation of their instruments in Science class. As we journey through this unit, we will also take some time to review the writing process, which should provide a great opportunity for students to work on the writing goals that they set out during our conferences last week.

Math- This week in math class we will begin to explore our third foundational outcome: N2-Using estimation to solve problems. Over the next few weeks we will review strategies for
estimating sums and differences with whole numbers, and learn when to apply these strategies in ways that are appropriate and effective.

In this unit, your child will:
• Estimate sums and differences, and select and use estimation strategies to determine if his or her calculations are reasonable.
• Pose and solve problems using whole numbers.

Students are encouraged to use a variety of estimation strategies to add and subtract depending on situation and context. Calculating with number sense means that children look at the numbers and operations involved and choose the most efficient strategy. Ask your child to show you some of the different estimation strategies that he or she uses.

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 our multiplication and division facts and our first two foundational outcomes on fractions and decimal numbers. This week we will have our very first of many “Flashback Fridays,” where we will spend our math period reviewing concepts we’ve already studied this year.

Science-In Science this week we will continue creating our musical instruments and will have a formal assessment on the concepts we’ve studied during our unit on sound. We will then be moving on to a new humanities unit, this time in Social Studies.

Grade 7 Science
This week we will finish up our review of rocks, minerals, soil and erosion, as we prepare for our assessment on these concepts on Friday. We will also spend some time this week familiarizing ourselves with GoogleClassroom, which we will be using even more in the coming weeks to help facilitate our learning.

Grade 8 Science
This week we will finish up our unit on Fluids, as we prepare for our assessment on buoyancy and pressure.

Have a fantastic week!

Mme MacNevin