March 27, 2015

Congratulations Virtue Winners!
Congratulations to Callyn and Abiha, who won the Tolerance Virtue award at Thursdays Achiever's Assembly. These two students show respect and kindness to everyone in our classroom, despite the differences between them. These students don't let differences stand in their way of friendship with others. Great job!

Sportsmanship 
This week students have started writing their own scripts teaching others about sportsmanship. We have been working on being positive, inclusive team members all year and this month we have really focused on being a good sport within Phys. Ed. We have been having many conversations about being a good sport rather than being a sore winner or a sore loser. I'm proud of the increase of respect and post game handshakes in the last few weeks, and we will continue to work on demonstrating good sportsmanship skills in the weeks to come.

Important Dates and Reminders:
Tuesday, March 31: Grade 5's Day of Pink Rally at the U of R (PM)
Wednesday, April 1: Day of Pink
Friday April 3 - April 10: Holidays - No School

March 20, 2015

Point of View

We are currently learning about point of view, voice and perspective in our reading and in our writing. We have been reading stories told from different points of view, writing from different points of view and even rapping about different points of view! Here is a link to a very catchy rap about point of view from flowcabulary.com. https://www.flocabulary.com/point-of-view/

Students have started writing about a fiction character Mr. Jones, a substitute teacher who was being heckled by the students during his lesson when his pants ripped! Some students were assigned to write about the situation from Mr. Jones perspective, some students wrote from the students perspective, and the rest of the students wrote from the perspective of Mr. Jones' pants! As you can imagine, the students went straight to work, giggling with glee about their new writing assignment!

As a follow activity on Friday, students analyzed a movie clip and 3 written descriptions from Toy Story 3. They were asked to identify the different points of view and perspectives from each 3 characters in the same situation and discuss how different perspectives effect how each story is being told.

Battle of the Books Tournament
Congratulations to all of our Battle of the Books teams who participated in the tournament on Wednesday. 13 teams participated from 3 different schools including Gladys McDonald, Walker and Coldwell. Battle has been an exciting way to work as a team while developing our skills as readers. It has been a fun season and I'm looking forward to next years Battle of the Books already!

Report Cards and Conference Times **Important** 
Report cards were sent home on Friday. Inside the report card envelope is your child's conference time. Please sign and return the conference time slip to school with your child on Monday, indicating whether or not you will be attending your assigned conference time. Our classroom population has grown since our last conference day and we now have 29 students in learning centre 4!  With this larger class size, I have less flexibility with moving conference times on that day because every time slot for that day has been filled at this time. If you are unable to make it to your child's conference but would still like to meet with me please indicate so on your time sheet and we can arrange a  meeting after school on a different day.

Important Dates and Reminders:
Friday, March 20: Report Cards are Sent Home
Friday, March 27: Three-Way Conferences - No School but students are expected to attend their                                        conference.
Tuesday, March 31: Day of Pink Rally at the U of R for Grade 5 and up.
Wednesday, April 1:Day of Pink and March Reading Logs are Due

March 13, 2015

March is Rider Reading Month!
Our class is participating in Rider Reader Month! If our class reads for 15 minutes everyday for the month of March, we will be entered to win a classroom visit from a Roughrider Football Player! We are already big readers in Learning Centre 4, but we have tried to squeeze in more reading minutes into our day whenever possible to challenge ourselves to read even more than before!

Battle of the Books Final Tournament
We have had so much fun with Battle of the Books over the last few months. All teams have done a fabulous job working together to answer questions about the 8 books each team is responsible for reading. We were lucky enough to have many teams interested in Battle of the Books this year that we held 2 separate meeting each week! Unfortunately, there are so many teams, not all teams can advance to the finals! Congratulations to the Rainbow Readers, The Black and Red Ninjas, Puppy Purrfect, The Marshmallows and Warriors of Readerville who will represent GMS at the final tournament at GMS after school on Wednesday, March 18.  If your child is advancing to the finals, please sign and return the permission form that was sent home this week at your earliest convenience.

First Nations Art Inquiry Projects
Students have been busy working on their group inquiry projects, researching First Nations Art. The students will soon use the information they found to create a a large group poster and present their information to the class. Students are researching all types of art work including birch bark biting, quilt-work, powwow dancing and bead-work.

Day of Pink: Stand for Respect!
Day of Pink is just around the corner! On April 1st, students are invited to wear pink shirts in solidarity to show that bullying is unacceptable and to stand for respect. An order form has been sent home this week with more information. If you choose to order a pink shirt, wrist bands or hats please hand in your orders before the deadline on Monday, March 16. 

Grade 5 Students: On March 31st Grade 5 and up students have the opportunity to attend the Day of Pink Rally at the University on Regina. If you allow your child to attend, they return the signed permission form that was sent on on Thursday.

Reading IS exciting!
Parents, please remind your child to continue their 15 minutes of home reading each night! Students, please don't forget to fill out your reading log. Reading logs are due April 1st!

On Friday afternoon during our Rider Reading, students who reached their February home reading goal enjoyed a special treat to celebrate... Ice Cream Sundaes with ALL the toppings!! We are hoping more students will take part in the home reading program so we can reach one of our goals based on our class participating as a whole team. If 80% of students reaching their home reading goal, the whole class will earn a tech-party! We can do it! Each month we are getting closer and closer to meeting this goal as a team!Of course, we will continue to celebrate meeting personal reading goals with a fun treat each month as we work towards encouraging each other to make home reading a habit!

As you've probably noticed, I don't often send homework home, as I feel reading is a much more valuable use of time with benefits that extend far beyond those of worksheets for homework. Make home reading your child's nightly "homework" and the best part is most of our students don't consider reading work! Make it fun and read together, visit the library on a regular basis, and talk about your child's reading with them! Does your child have a particular movie they love or are they looking forward to seeing a movie based on a popular novel? Consider reading the book with your child, then watching the movie with the whole family afterwards! Reading can be so much fun and it's important we help our kids realize this without it being "homework" they have to complete before they can do an enjoyable hobby. Help make reading their enjoyable hobby and model this for your child at home.
In the words of our wise classmate Micaela,  "Reading is exciting, isn't it?!"

Have a wonderful weekend!
Ms. Cameron

Important Dates:
Monday, March 16: Day of Pink Ordering Deadline
Wednesday, March 18: Battle of the Books Tournament at GMS
Friday, March 20: KFC Special Lunch
Friday, March 20: Report Cards are Sent Home
Friday, March 27: Three - Way Conferences
Wednesday, April 1: Day of Pink and March Reading Logs are Due