February 20, 2018

News From Room 108

February 20, 2018


April showers seem to have come early this year as it is certainly very rainy and wet outside. However, the rain doesn't dampen our enthusiasm for learning in the classroom. We are very busy.


Some Housekeeping Items:



  • Lent is underway. Watch out for notices about the special fundraising days that will be happening on March 2 and March 9. The themes are Colourful PJ’s Day and Colourful Sports Jersey Day respectively. All the donations collected on these days will be sent to Roger’s House in memory of Cara Dance. As well, please remember that we are raffling off the beautiful quilt that is handmade by our own Mrs. Peddle. See the note sent home last week about ticket purchasing. I have extra tickets if you need them!
  • Winter Playday (run by our own Grade 6 students) is scheduled for Friday February 23 (afternoon only). This will be a fun day. We will move through the activity centres as a whole class. It is fun to play together. Our class will be dressing up on a beach theme (I love that we have a tropical winter country! Yeah, Jamaica!). So, we are planning to wear bright summer clothes over our warm winter clothing and we are wearing great sunglasses and sun hats. We will be very bright, sunny and cheery! This is MY kind of Winter Olympics!
  • Our Readathon is a huge success. As of February 20, we have earned 12 medals for reading over 600 books - that is an Olympic sized effort! WOOHOO! Keep up the hard work.
  • This month, we are focusing on the Catholic Graduate Expectation of Justice. We have discussed this in class and have decided that a person who demonstrates justice is a person who is always honest, truthful, and fair.


Curriculum Update


Our Winter Animal Unit is coming along very nicely. The students have learned about the differences between reading fiction and nonfiction. They are also learning that often a nonfiction text does not answer your questions and you must search out another source. They are writing about the animals as we study them, and without question, their favourite part is “cool facts”.

This is a great unit as it links reading, writing, and science so well.


Some Ideas to Support Reading and Writing at Home:

-Challenge your child to do their own “mini” project at home about their favourite animals. You can mimic the process we do in class. Read the text and read the pictures (snowy owls are white and brown!), discuss the information as you read, and then re-visit the text and organize the information under subtitles in a graphic organizer. We create graphic organizers using eat, live, can, and cool facts. Less is more at this stage - the graphic organizers only contain key words and phrases, not sentences. Then, using the organizers, your child can write full sentences about their animal.

- Your child can interview family and friends with a standard set of questions. Then, they create a mini biography as we did for each student back in September. We call these the “All About” stories.

- Create lists and posters. How about creating a list of “jobs” they are going to do to EARN the Lenten donations they bring in on March 2 and March 9th?



In Mathematics, we are working on numeration skills. This encompasses a lot:

  • Counting forwards to 100 (orally and in writing)
  • Counting forwards to 100 by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s.
  • Using patterns in the 100’s chart (1 to 100) to predict the next number.
  • Counting backwards (orally and in writing)
  • Correct number formation
  • Decomposing numbers into 10’s and 1’s (34 is 3 tens and 4 ones)
  • Decomposing numbers and creating addition and subtraction equations (7 can be 5+2, 3+4, 6+1, and 7-1=6, 7-2=5, etc)
  • Reasonableness of number (Is that group of markers 13, 30, or 100?)

And more! Number Sense is huge and ongoing everyday in class.


Great Games to Practice Number Sense at home

  • What number comes before or after _______?
  • How many do you think there are? (Follow up by counting the group, ensuring you organize the number into recognizable groups of 10)
  • Skip count by 10’s, 5’s, and 2’s to 100 orally and in writing. Reinforce correct printing of numbers.
  • Guessing games: For example,

I am thinking of a number. It is 2 less than 7. What’s my number? You can make this much more challenging by increasing your number.

I am thinking of a number. It has 3 tens and 2 ones. What’s my number? (32)

  • Students love flashcards. Have them make their own set of flashcards and test themselves on the answers to equations (increase the complexity of the math facts gradually as they become 100% accurate). Make sure the focus is NOT on speed but the focus is on accuracy. Always ask them, “Are you sure?” This slows them down and reminds them to focus on being accurate. Speed can come AFTER accuracy. (Vince Lombardi actually said, “Perfect Practice makes perfect.” This is especially true in mathematics.


That’s all for now. Have a great week (a short one)!