October Update

A new week begins and I must say, we are all very sad to see our six grade five friends go. However, they are not going far (across the hall) and will be in extremely good hands. Mr. Carr will be a wonderful teacher and I'm sure he'll pick up right where I left off.

Updates Abound 

Language Arts 

Students will be handing in their first round of reading response journals. All work on reading response journals entries are due this week. Please remember your due date and remember to use the checklist and rubrics I handed out to reflect on your work.

ALSO: REMEMBER ONLY SECTION ONE IS DUE (appetizer, dinner and dessert).

In writing we will be editing and revising our Important Book pages that we started two weeks ago. This special class book will help students sharpen their skills of paragraph writing. By following an organized format from the Important Book, students will get some practice in grouping similar ideas.

We will also be looking at vivid verbs to try and add some descriptive clout to their writing. Online, thesaurus work and some 'word mapping' will help students explore some unique verbs that will jazz up their writing.

Math 

Students will be writing their first math assessments this Tuesday. I apologize in advance for not getting a review sheet home sooner. Our photocopiers were down Thursday (how frustrating). After our unit test, we will be moving on to Patterning. A very exciting strand that will allow students to explore various growing, shrinking and repeating patterns. Students will learn about how to create a pattern rule and an 'input/output' machine to help them develop algebraic concepts.

Social Students 

We have begun to locate where Medieval Europe and various ancient civilizations were around the globe.

Grade fours will be begin to explore the feudal system structure of Medieval Europe and the grade fives will be looking into daily life in Ancient Greece.

Health 

Students will have a chance to gain some experience in trying to determine what a serving size is. They will have an opportunity to look at foods from their lunches and analyze how much yogurt or milk they actually need to have one serving of milk and alternatives!

Requests

Hello!

I come to you with a short wish list for our classroom. We don't seem to have any games in the class to play during indoor recess. If you have any old board games, card games or chess/checker boards. Our class would be willing to take them off your hands.

What's Going on in Rm. 309?

Math

We've been reviewing place value and have started to compare numbers 

All of us should be able to: 

Represent numbers up to 10 000 (gr.4) and 100 000 (gr. 5) with

• pictures (money) and base-10 materials 
• standard form (33) 
• words (thirty-three) 
• expanded form (30+3) 
• place value charts 

We have learned that there are multiple strategies when comparing numbers. We can use base-10 materials, place value columns and numbers lines to compare similar numbers. 

Language Arts 

We have finished our Alpha Genre Brainstorming placemats and will display them in our class for all to see. We learned that there are all kinds of creative ways to express ourselves with writing. We don't always have to focus on serious stuff like science reports, letters and procedures. Although serious writing is very serious and important! 

We have also started to review paragraphing. An important skill that may have been forgotten over the summer months. Once we regroup our ideas and get organized (terrible joke?), we will move onto our original programming, our Me Assignment! 

We have also started to create our own word ladders. This activity allows students to review simple spellings of words, word families and also experience changing syllables and sounds within words. It also gives students a chance to be creative! 

In reading we have settled into some regular reading routines, set up our reading response journals and just started on our first reading strategy - CONNECTIONS! We will be working on making connections for the next few weeks and will also be working on reading out loud, easier said than done.

Social Studies 

We've review some basic mapping concepts and have a benchmark of the world around us now. We have begun the study of Medieval Times and Ancient Civilizations by comparing what life was like back then, to present day times. What do you mean they didn't have television, cars or the Internet?! 

Stay tuned... We've been working at a modest pace and things are about to take off! 

You've Been Patient

Students, parents, guardians!

Here we are on the World Wide Web. Welcome!

I have to say it's been a frantic three weeks here at RHPS. Your kids are fantastic, the school is shiny and new and I think we've been learning about what it means to be the first group of learners through a brand new school.

I hope you've enjoyed the journey thus far. I invite you to continue (at your peril) for the rest of it. We will meet here whenever I feel the need to share with you or you feel the need to peak inside our classroom.

Take care,

Mr. Martyn