September 2024

September 26th, 2024

I can't believe that we have almost completed the first month of school! Where has the time gone? Shorter weeks always seem to pack so much into them. This week was no exception. Here's what we got up to this week.

Language

This week, students had a reading assessment. This assessment was for me to gauge where students are at in reading as I plan for our upcoming book talks in mid-October and our reading program this year. Students are encouraged to read each night for 20 minutes and discuss what they are reading with a family member. We've had several conversations in the classroom about how reading increases our vocabulary and supports our writing.

The drama continued with our podcast! Now that we know who Flashcard is, students are getting a deeper understanding of how things work at Whittier Corporation. The responses continue to improve for many although students are encouraged to continue to re-read their responses, ensuring that they both answer the question and make complete sense to the reader.

Math

Things are moving along with our Data Management Unit. In groups and individually, we have been practicing creating bar graphs and stacked bar graphs. We have also been working to determine the mode, median, and mean of a set of data. Students are encouraged to review and use the anchor charts that are on display in the classroom. Next week we will be having a quiz. Students were given a problem to practice over the weekend. We will be taking up any questions regarding the task on Monday and preparing for our quiz on Tuesday.

Science

The prototypes are done and we can't wait for you to come in and see the incredible work that has been done to solve a variety of problems in new and unique ways. Starting Monday, students will be getting feedback and making the final tweaks to their prototypes as we prepare for presentations.

We will be starting a unit on Forces Acting on Structures shortly and the work that we have done with our first Design Thinking project will come in handy as students will be tasked once again with designing incredible solutions.

Health

We continued our investigation of food packaging and students watched an informative program that examined a variety of foods and the health claims that were on the packaging. From Nutella to Campbell's Soups on the Go, students were enlightened as to just how important nutrition labels are. Next week we are unpacking how to read nutrition labels and what we need to watch out for when making some of our food choices.

The Arts

Many of our Querkles are almost ready to be mounted. With lots of hard work and ensuring that we understand the importance of value, we're getting closer to identifying the animals we are colouring.

Our plays are coming along nicely and next week might be showtime! We'll check in on Monday and see how confident students are at performing. The props that have been made are simply amazing!

Physical Education

This week in Physical Education, students continued cooperative games. Excitedly, we saw students leading the warm-up and a couple of cooperative games we played. Seeing how they supported their peers in understanding how to collaborate to play a game effectively was great.

This week was also our Terry Fox Run/Walk. I have to give it up to the students because they did an amazing job of running and walking along a route that was quite long. I was super proud of the students as they supported their peers and cheered others on. We have a great group of students in 5A.

Final Words

Monday is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day. If possible, students are encouraged to wear an orange shirt in recognition of this day. In class, we will be having discussions and recognizing the importance of this day.

We will also be having our book exchange on Monday. Students are reminded to bring in their books, even if they wish to renew them. Students are encouraged to sign out 2 books per week and are expected to read them at home.

Have a wonderful long weekend! See you on Monday.

September 20th, 2024

Things are going well in 5A. We're building a cohesive classroom community and students are hard at work in a variety of subject areas. Here's what we got up to this week.

Language

Our podcast continues, as does the excitement. As I read through student responses this week, I noticed that many students are taking the time to incorporate the feedback, whether it's working on their punctuation or grammar or making sure that their responses make complete sense to the reader. If you have a chance to spend some time together this weekend, consider conversing with your student about the podcast. There's so much going on and it would be great for them to explain their thoughts and ideas to you clearly.

Math

We started Data Management this week. On Monday, the students had a diagnostic quiz to see where they are in their learning, which will help inform my teaching over the next couple of weeks. On Tuesday we created a couple of anchor charts in the class to help us learn how to create bar graphs and how to determine the mean, median, and mode. The rest of the week was spent practicing these concepts using different data in small groups. Students have been asked to find a graph and bring it in for homework. We will use these graphs to help our work with interpreting data.

Science

In Science, we continued our Design Thinking project with students taking the time to create a prototype of their solutions. Whether they are creating a physical model or an app, students were creatively thinking about how they could bring their solutions to life to share their ideas with others. Their prototypes are looking amazing and our next step will be to share our ideas with other students to get further feedback.

Physical Education

Our cooperative games continued in Physical Education. This week we played Capture the Treasure and Soccer Baseball. Next week we will start to have some students leading our warm-ups and working towards creating cooperative games that we will test out and play. September is all about cooperation!

Health

Thank you to everyone who sent in food packaging. You made our exploration a great success! We started our exploration of food packaging to identify key features and the information that we can gather from them. Students were also tasked with identifying how food packaging influences food selection when grocery shopping with their families. The work continues next week when we will be exploring some of the claims made on food packaging.

The Arts

Students were in character and some were in costume this week as they continued to practice their play - Who Will Win the Third Annual Willow Grove French Fry Eating Contest. It was great to sit back and watch them support each other in reading their parts and thinking of fun ways that they could make the play even more interesting for the audience. The practice continues next week.

Our Querkles are coming along nicely with some students close to completion. When working to ensure that we are using our knowledge of value, our animals come to life. We can't wait for you to see them all.

Library

We missed our library period today because we had a drumming workshop. Students will instead have time to go to the library on Monday for book exchange. Please remind your student to bring in their books for Monday.

Another great week has come to an end. We have the Terry Fox run on Thursday of next week and please remember that it is a short week with Friday being a PA Day. Feel free to check out our What's On at Dublin Heights EMS page to keep up-to-date with what's happening in our classroom. I hope that you have a wonderful and restful weekend.

September 13th, 2024

Time is flying! We've completed the second week of school already and things are coming together in 5A. Here's what we were up to this week:

Language

This week things got intense with our podcast. Between meeting new characters and discovering more about Holiday, almost every episode left us with a cliffhanger. Along the way, students have been answering questions in short responses and sharing their ideas with the rest of the class. We had mini-lessons on punctuation, capitalization, and how to use part of the question in our answers. Students are encouraged to take their time to re-read their responses to our discussion questions to make sure that they make sense to the reader. Next week, the fun continues and hopefully, many students will see just how right they were with some of their predictions.

Math

We continued with our Math Challenges this week. It's been great seeing students collaborating to solve problems and supporting each other in demonstrating their mathematical thinking. The challenges this week were varied across the strands. A few students mentioned that they were going to try to test their family members' math skills so you may already be familiar with them. Below are a few of the challenges we explored.

The Ice Cream Challenge

Students were tasked with trying to find out how many double scoop- combinations were possible given different numbers of ice cream flavours - 5, 6, 10 and then 40!

Kaprekar's Constant

D.R. Kaprekar was an Indian Mathematician. He discovered a constant that is formed when you take a 4-digit number, re-arrange the digits to create the greatest and least number, and then subtract the least number from the greatest. Repeating this process, eventually you arrive at his constant.

Algebra Challenges

This week we learned about variables and how we might solve for them in equations. We had many interesting puzzles to solve. How students solved them was equally interesting.

Science

This week we dug deeper into our solutions by creating storyboards and getting feedback on their solutions. From apps to programs, there are so many incredible ways that students want to solve problems such as natural disasters, bullying, littering, racism and more. We can't wait for you to stop by and see them during curriculum night on October 10th.

Physical Education

We've almost got our warm-up down! This week we continued with collaborative games. We did an obstacle course this week and it was nice to hear students cheering on their teammates. We played a different version of defender ball and it was nice to see students taking turns between being on offense and defense. We also played basketball tag, which allowed us to practice dribbling, passing and spatial awareness skills.

Health

We're starting our Healthy Eating unit. Students were tasked with completing the first 2 columns of a KWL chart, writing down what they know and what they wonder about healthy eating. Many factors influence our food choices: family, media, religion, peers and more. Students were also tasked with considering what influences their personal food choices. Next week we will be investigating food packaging and nutrition labels. For homework, students were asked to bring one food package with a nutrition label.

The Arts

We've started Drama! Groups were formed. Students picked their roles and received their scripts. We have been reading the play as an entire class and then in their groups. Some have even made and brought in props. Next week we will focus on reading in-role and considering what actions can accompany different parts of the script. Students are encouraged to practice reading their scripts for homework.

We are working on value for the element of colour and students are creating a large Querkle of an animal. We hope to have them completed by curriculum night so that you can come in and see our animals come to life!

Library

Today was our first book exchange of the year. Students are encouraged to check out 2 books per week. Students can read these books in the classroom and at home. If you are reading with your child, you might consider some of these comprehension questions for rich discussions at home. Book exchange happens on day 4 of each week.

A final important note from the office:

Starting in September 2021, the TDSB launched a 1:1 Student Device Program for students in Grades 5 and 9. The program offers students a district-owned and managed Chromebook for educational use. This device will be assigned directly to the student and will stay with them for over four years, 24/7.

Students will be able to take them home each night, on weekends, and over holidays, and will be required to bring them to school each day to support their in-class learning. This Board-wide initiative supports learning through technology, digital citizenship, and our commitment to equity of access to technology.

Each year, incoming Grade 5 and Grade 9 students will receive their own Chromebook, too, until, by the 2024-25 school year, all students in Grade 5 and above, will have a TDSB-owned device.

Prior to receiving a device, families will need to opt into the program by completing a Device Agreement. The device agreement will be available through the digital start-of-the-year forms. Please complete the form in the email sent to you ASAP as the window to opt in closes on September 15th at Midnight.

Week 2 is in the books. Have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you on Monday.

September 6th, 2024

Welcome back to school and to 5A at Dublin Heights Elementary and Middle School!

Every week I will be blogging about what we have been working on in the classroom so that families can stay up-to-date and also support students at home. I hope that this sparks great conversations for families. Other pages on this site that might be of interest to you are as follows:

Classroom Schedule - Our 5-day schedule
Extra Work At Home - TDSB Homework Policy and activities for home
This Year's Learning Journey - Long-ranged plans
What's on at Dublin Heights EMS - A calendar of upcoming events

My door is always open and I look forward to working together this year to support student learning and growth.

Language

This week we started listening to a new podcast - Six Minutes. The serial podcast is about an eleven-year-old named Holiday being pulled from the icy water of Alaska with no memory of who she is or where she is from. While listening, students are working to visualize what was happening; making predictions; and summarizing episodes. With discussion questions after each episode, it's interesting to see the depth of understanding about the events and the creative ideas students have when predicting what will happen next. I must say that we have a very imaginative group of students in 5A.

Math

In Math this week, we had a series of challenges as we worked on collaboratively building what we believe to be the ideal Math classroom. Our ideal classroom is one where students can share their ideas and work together to find solutions when we might be making mistakes or are stuck. On Wipebooks, students were solving problems in small, randomized groups. Through many of our challenges, students were able to consider different ways of solving the problem and that there are often other ways of representing solutions. Below are a couple of the challenges we tackled this week.

The 1 to 100 Challenge

Students were invited to take turns to circle numbers from 1 to 100. Quickly, I noticed that there were many who were eager to help people find the next number quickly and a few students could see a pattern forming. We did a few 3-minute intervals and every time, groups could circle more numbers.

The River Problem

Students were tasked with solving a series of problems involving a canoe. After learning about contemporary Indigenous uses of the canoe, students were ready to tackle our problems. The first was:

Four adults have to cross a river. They only have 1 canoe. The canoe can hold 2 people and everyone can paddle. How do we get everyone across the river?

There were 3 different challenges with the last being the hardest:

A farmer needs to cross the river to get his chicken, fox, and grain to the market on the other side. They have a canoe that can hold themselves and 1 of the market items. Only the farmer can paddle. The problem is, the fox cannot be left alone with the chicken or it will eat the chicken. The chicken cannot be left alone with the grain or it will eat the grain. How does the farmer get everything across the river without anything being eaten?

Check in with your student and see what ideas for solutions they came up with.

Science

We started this week with a series of S.T.E.M. challenges and a Design Sprint. From cup-stacking to Lego Tower Building, students this week collaborated and were incredible Engineers.

Our Design Sprint started with students identifying and sorting a variety of problems that they see in the world around us. From there, students were tasked with picking their problem to solve and finding the story of their problem by considering the 5Ws and how the problem was already being solved. Next, students were asked to identify who they wanted to create their solution for, and away they went with ideation. After a quick round of Crazy 8s, students came up with different ways of solving their problem. Today we had the chance to work on storyboards and next week it will be all about building a prototype to pitch their idea to others in the class for feedback. Hopefully, your student can walk you through their solution and get some feedback before we begin to prototype.

Physical Education

We started Physical Education this week with collaborative games, specifically Defender Ball. It was great to see students participating in varied groups and communicating with each other to achieve a goal. We'll continue next week with a few other games to build our classroom community.

The Arts

This week, students were introduced to the Elements of Art: Colour, Line, Shape and Form, Space, Texture, and Value. They used colour and line to create name tags for their desks and lockers, they also did incredible continuous-line portraits that will be up on the wall when you come to visit for curriculum night. Here's just a sample of some of their incredible work.

It was a really busy week in room 217. Have a restful weekend and we'll see you back on Monday for another week of learning at Dublin Heights EMS!

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