This week will be another busy one and it will have two central themes: learning conferences and Science Fair 🙂

Our learning conferences will take place on Thursday evening and all day Friday. Once again, these conferences will be student-led, as your children (with some guidance from me of course) will present to you their progress so far this year, goals for the coming term, as well as samples of their work. I appreciate most of you getting the time sheets back into me so quickly and if you haven’t done so, please make sure to have them in as soon as possible. I look forward to seeing everyone later on this week to share in all the great things that have been happening since we last met in November.
Learning reports will accompany this set of conferences and will be sent home on Tuesday with your child. Please sign the envelope indicating that you’ve read your child’s report and send it back to the school, either with your son/daughter, or at your conference.

We are also just one week away from our Science Fair. Projects are coming together very nicely and we will be spending some extra time this week practicing and putting the finishing touches on our backboards, as we prepare to present to the judges on Tuesday, March 15th.

Dictée- As we work through our review of verbs in the present tense, students should continue to use their Besherelle to complete the assigned practice activities for homework each evening.

French-This week we will start to finish up our book clubs in our reading blocks and will spend some time reflecting on our reading goals for the coming term. We will also have the opportunity to explore “les nouveautés” in our classroom library and will start to get back into the routine of letter writing about the books we’ve been reading. Everyone is enjoying our new read aloud novel “Ti-Prout” and we hope to finish it up later on this week.

We have now sent our shared writing letter off to Ms. Ready and we anxiously wait to see if/when she will reply, as we spent time last week practicing our persuasive writing and wrote her a letter as to why we should be able to stay in for lunch recess. Everyone had lots of great arguments and examples and they will now get to practice writing persuasive letters of their own. Last week we started planning our writing, deciding on our audience and topic, and this week students will finish their planning and start their rough drafts. We will also reflect on our writing goals for the coming term.

Math-I was very impressed with the results of our first foundational concept quiz last week. All of our “flashback” work has paid off and at conferences each child will receive an individual practice package to help them to continue to review these concepts in preparation for our second quiz next month. We will also continue our “Flashback Friday” review in class and here students will have the opportunity to work on those concepts that have not yet been mastered through centre work as well as one-on-one or in small groups with me. In our regular math periods this week we will finish up our study of measurement, area, and perimeter.

Science-As I said before, the Science Fair will take place next Tuesday. This week we will spend our science classes finishing up our reports and making sure our backboards are ready for the judges. We will also begin to practice our oral presentations. Everyone is welcome to take their backboards home with them after their conference to put any last touches on them over the weekend, if they so desire.

Grade 7 Science
This week we will prepare for our assessment on the particle theory and how it relates to temperature and will finish up our Science Fair projects. Presentations will take place this Wednesday and next Monday in class, as a practice for the fair on Tuesday morning.

Grade 8 Science
This week will finish up our cell projects and present them to our peers. We will then start to look at how groups of cells work together as tissues, organs and systems.

Have a fantastic week!

Mme MacNevin