T.W.A.S. Shared Writing

Dear Loved Ones,

Happy Mother's Day!  This week we were doing Mother's Day gifts.  Shhh...we're not going to tell you.  You'll see on Mother's Day. We really hope that you'll enjoy the present.

Earlier this week we started to learn about Plants and Soils.  We watched a video explaining the different parts of plants.  We started learning about Roots yesterday.  We got papers that gave us information about Roots and we learned the difference between tap roots and fibrous roots.

Yesterday Aboriginal dancers came and performed.  The first one was the Grass Dance.  The second one was the Fancy Shawl Dance.  The third was the Jingle Dress.  The fourth one was the Man Traditional Dance.  The Hoop Dance was last, then they gave out prizes which were t-shirts and key chains.  Their drum circle was called Buffalo Red Thunder.  We learned about the dreamcatcher.  The dreamcatcher is supposed to catch bd dreams.  The dreamcatcher is blue, just like the Earth and it goes in a circle just like the Earth and like the seasons.  Humans are connected to the animals because we all breathe air, we all drink water, and all of our blood is red.

Have a wonderful Mother's Day Moms!

From Room 20

T.W.A.S. Shared Writing Post

Dear Families,

This Monday we started swimming!  We went with the Grade 3s from Team 24.  Some people had lots of fun, others didn't.  Cortana said that she couldn't put her face in the water, but she did it TWICE!  We all are proud of her.  Tatum unfortunately did not like her instructor, but Delaney, Seth, and Toby did.  Alec, cody, Dougie, and Madison get to use the diving board and the slide next Monday.  After swimming a bit, some people got moved to different groups.  Dougie and Cody for example, started out in one group but got moved to be with Alec and Madison.  We're waiting for next Monday to go swimming.

Today we have Fun Lunch and there's no daycare.  Earlier this week we started mummifying apples.  We each got half an apple and Mrs. M. wrote our names in Sharpee on them.  We washed them then too out the organs (core and seeds).  We buried them in baking soda and salt.  We are going to leave them in there for a week. On Tuesday we are going to check them out.

We hope you have a great weekend!

From Room 20

T.W.A.S. Shared Writing

Dear Loved Ones,

This week we learned a lot about Ancient Egypt. Yesterday we learned about 3 pharaohs, Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, and Tutankhamun.  Cleopatra was the very last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.  She kidded herself with an asp.  Hatshepsut was a queen who became the king.  She wore a fake beard.  Tutankhamun was a boy who because king at 11 and died at 20.  When scientists studied his mummy, they discovered that he head showed injuries like he had been hit with a heavy object.  They believe his vizier Ay killed him..  His tomb was made out of gold and it is the most visited tomb today.  We made a "famous Pharaohs" foldable with information about them.

We learned a new Math gamed called "Domino Salute".  The person who was the caller would pick a domino and tell the sum, then cover up one number with their thumb.  The other players had to guess the number they were covering.  Whoever guessed it got a point.  We also learned about multiplication.  Mrs. Deyoe showed us a way to represent multiplication called an Array.  This is how you do it.  For example, if you have 2X5, you would draw 2 dots vertically and then you would draw the other 4 horizontally.  Then it would then give you the answer.  It equals 10.

In Music we learned"Merrily We Roll Along".  We're also doing free play on recorders.  For the Volunteer Tea, we are going to sing about Scallywags.  In Scallywags, we're talking about pirates, astronauts, dinosaurs, and the wild wild west.  We can't wait to perform.  We hope you have a great long weekend.  XOXO

From Room 20

T.W.A.S. Shared Writing

Dear Beloved Families,

This week was an EXCITING week!  Yesterday was LeighAnn's last visit.  We also had our final day of gymnastics.  We wonder what we'll do next.

On Wednesday we made self-portraits from Ancient Egypt.  We learned that the higher a person is on the pyramid of life, the larger they are in art.  This shows how important they are.  Like artisans from Ancient Egypt, we drew the face sideways and the eye facing forward.  The body faces forward s well because they like their art like that.

We learned about the pyramid of life and how slaves held up the society.  Next came the farmers and it continued to the Pharaoh, who was at the top.

We are learning about multiplication.  Multiplication is "groups of".  We used beans and plates to figure out how to multiply Mrs. Deyoe would give us an equation to figure out with our beans and plates.  We're finding multiplication really easy!

That's how our week went.

Love Room 20

T.W.A.S. Shared Writing Post

Dear Families,

We learned something new!  We learned about the concept of fractions.  It's new to some people, but for others it's familiar.  Some people find it challenging.  An example is 1/3.  One third is when you have 3 pieces of something and you take 1 away.  We did an activity on the Smartboard where we sorted different shapes and pieces.  We stuck them into two boxes, one said fractions, the other one said whole.  

Yesterday we learned a new Math strategy to add and subtract double-digit numbers.  the strategy is where you take a number sentence like 64-24 and you subtract 20 from the 60, then you take away the 4 from the 4 and your answer is 40.

Next Monday, Mrs. Deyoe is going to be changing our reading groups.  She read with everybody in the class.  You might have some of the same people in your reading group as before or not, but everyone is going to be in a group.  You might be higher than before.

This is how our week is going.  We wish you a happy weekend.

From Room 20

T.W.A.S. Shared Writing post

Dear Room 20 Families,

We had a fun week!  On Monday, we had a guest teacher because Mrs. Deyoe was learning more about Math.  Our guest teacher had a BAHA, which is a Bone Anchor Hearing Aid. When she wants to listen to Music, she goes to her BAHA app on her phone and sends music to it.  She can also control the volume on her phone.  Most people thought it was cool, but others thought it was gross.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Deyoe was back from learning about Math.  She went to learn about Math so she could be a better teacher.  When she was back we started our 100th Day activities.  There was a booklet with activities in it.  Some were on your own and some were with a group.

On Wednesday we built boats!  We built the boats and attached paperclips on them to see if a magnet will make the boat move.  Some people used paper, popsicle sticks, and straws to make their boat.  Today we are testing them in water.

Have a great weekend!

From Room 20 

T.W.A.S Shared writing post

Dear Families,

Happy Valentine's Day on Sunday!  We celebrated Valentine's Day today by having a party.  We are going to be having our party the last 2 periods of the day.  There's going to be lots of cards.

This week we had a busy week.  We learned about magnets.  We learned that if you drop something that is magnetic, a magnet is a quick way to pick it up.  We went around the classroom testing things that we thought or knew were magnetic.  We did an activity that everybody had paper cards and 2 people had magnet cards.  One magnet went to the horseshoe table and 1 magnet went to the mailboxes.  Everybody else had an item.  When Mrs. Deyoe said "attract", if people thought the item was magnetic they would go to a magnet, and if they thought they weren't magnetic they would go to the carpet.  We also watched a video about magnets.  Mrs. Deyoe put up the Theme Studies board on a bulletin board inside our classroom.  It said what magnets do.

We are writing poems for our poetry book.  We started editing and publishing poems.  Everybody's thinking they are great!  Mrs. Deyoe is typing our poems up.  You are only allowed to get 3 poems published, illustrated, and typed up.  Sometimes people make shapes out of their poems and sometimes they make shapes in their poems.  

We started getting lots more table points and higher scores because Mrs. Deyoe has been saying "slean up" and the first table ready gets, 2, 3, or 4 points.  We were taking too long to clean up and now we clean up quicker.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL!

From Room 20

This Week At School (T.W.A.S.) Shared Writing post

Dear Families, 

We had a very "Indian" week! (ha ha ha)  Our week was really busy because we were trying different things they do in India.  One day we were trying lots of foods.  There was chai tea, curry, basmati rice, naan break, mango chutney-which is like a kind of jam, apricots, and dried banana chips.  There was lot of spices.  The next day we made a game called Pachisi!  It's a game from India.  We made it, then played it.  We need four players to play.  It's not like any other board game we've played in Canada.  Plus it's ancient!

This week we were busy because we were doing lots of poetry.  We were reading and writing poems.  Some of the poems were silly.  Mrs. Deyoe made a poem too.

Today we had an assembly and we performed two poems in front of the whole school.  Our first poem was called "Dogs Rule", and our second poem was called "Video Games".  Five people had speaking lines.  The first person was Evan, the second person was Cortana, and then it was Alec, Jaden, and then Madison.  We practiced and practiced our poems.  This is how our week went.

From Room 20

This Week At School (T.W.A.S)-Shared Writing Post

Dear Families,

This week we've been starting stations for Word Study and Math.  In Word Study there is one statin on the iPad, there's on with Scrabble tiles, you can stamp your words in your notebook, etc.  We got a sheet where you colour in the space for the station you've done.  If you do 3 in a row, you get a blue and gold ticket.  We do our Math stations every Day 3.  They are fun!  We do 1 to 2 every class.  The Math stations are kind of like the Word Study stations because we had fun.

This week we had Art class.  We made Asian elephants because we were talking about India.  We made the elephants step-by-step.  We made the wrinkles with white crayon and when we were done, we painted them with water colours.  We set them off to dry.  Some people were having trouble making grey.  When they dipped their paintbrush in the black they watered it a tiny bit, but you're supposed to water it a lot.  It turned out black, but then it dried and turned grey.  They all turned out AMAZING!

The week have been good and fun.  We are looking forward to next week.

From Room 20

T.W.A.S. (This Week at School)-Shared Writing Post

Dear Families,

This week was an exciting week because it was the first week of January!  We started cross-country skiing and it is a lot of fun.  Mr. Sarahs taught us how to tie our boots and put on our skis.  We go cross-country skiing in the field.  We fall a lot but it's still lots of fun.  Mr. Sarahs also taught us how to get up.  We are learning how to jump on our skis too.

We continued measuring in Math.  We were measuring "Where the Wild Things Are" papers and classroom objects.  Our rulers only have millimeters on them, but we cut off the last zero to make it a centimeter.

Mrs. Deyoe started a new thing.  It is called Table Points.  If we get to 25 Table Points, we get an extra period of choice time.  Your table has to be "Checked 5" to get a point.  You can also get a point by working quietly, listening, working together, and having a clean table and floor space.  Table 2 reached 25 points first!  We hope all the tables get 25 points!

Have a good weekend!

From Room 20

This Week at School (T.W.A.S.)-shared writing post

Dear Families,

We had an extraordinarily busy week!  Buddy did some pretty crazy things.  He was hanging on the screen on Monday.  On Tuesday he was up on our word wall.  On Thursday, Buddy slept in the bed that Haylee and Alec made him.  That day was the Winter Concert.  We had a dress rehearsal in the morning.   When we came back from the afternoon concert, he was still sleeping.  He must have been really sleepy!  He left us a note saying he was tired form all his travelling.  Today Buddy was sitting in our mailbox pocket.

This week was our Winter concert.  We had to perform two times, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.  In the afternoon there weren't as many people in the audience as in the evening.  At the evening concert there were snacks-popcorn, penguin pops, and water bottles.  Our Winter Concert went great!

A large box was delivered to our classroom.  No one knew what it was except Mrs Deyoe.  IT WAS A NEW MAILBOX!  Mr. Darr put the new mailboxes together and we replaced our old ones.

We hope you have a great weekend!

From Room 20

P.S. AWESOME week!

This Week at School (T.W.A.S.)-Shared Writing Post

To Loved Ones,

We got an Elf on the Shelf, and on the third day he left!  He appeared on December 1.  We kept finding clues like reindeer prints and sleigh tracks.  We think that's how our elf got here.   We read the book and it said "please do not touch me, my magic might go".  Guess what we did?  WE TOUCHED HIM!  He disappeared and went to Room 24.  He wrote a letter to us and he said "please treat people with respect and I may come back".  He also reminded us not to touch him.  Some of us wrote letters to Buddy.  Buddy is our elf.

We learned new math games with Mrs. Page.  They were extremely fun!  Mrs. Page came 2 or 3 times this week.  Before we played our math games, we played "Four Strikes, which is our Math warm up.  If you remember, Mrs. Page is a special Math teacher. She teaches us Math strategies and new Math games.  She works with every classroom.

That's how our week went.

From Room 20

This Week At School (T.W.A.S.) Shared Writing Post

Dear Loved Ones,

We had the best week!  We've been working very hard on our portfolios to show you.  Lots of other amazing things happened too.

We have been writing letters to Santa.  They're turning out great!  We hope to hear back from him soon.

In Music we were practicing our lines without our scripts.  It went excellent!

On Monday we were glazing our masks with all different colours.  This was when Jen returned after our last session.  Jen is the guest artist who taught us how to work with clay.  She had already fired our masks in the kiln, and now she will do it a second time.

We've been practicing reading for parent-teacher conferences.  We each chose one book to read, which we will be reading to you when you come.  We finished working on our portfolios as well.

That's how we ended the best week!

This Week At School (T.W.A.S.)-shared writing post

Dear Families,

We had a crazy week, because we had a day we needed to do over.  It was Tuesday.  Luckily, the rest of the week went really well!

Yesterday, we did fitness dodgeball in Gym.  It was A LOT of work!  Fitness dodgeball is when you get hit by a certain colour of dodgeball, you have to do a specific fitness activity.  We also did Art yesterday.  We made a person catching snowflakes with his or her tongue.  After we were finished our people, Mrs. Deyoe took a picture of us with our picture and then we got do a free Art.

In Math we were finding partners to make 10.  We learned a new mental math strategy, it's called "Make 10" or "Partners for 10".  In the game we played, we had to find our partner to 10 silently.  Alec and Haylee ended up being partners twice!  So did Emily and Delaney.

Mrs. Page came in to do Math with us.  Mrs. Page is a teacher who helps with Math.  She said to get a white board and make a big tic-tac-toe grid.  We did 9 different kinds of math questions on each square of the white board.  One of the math questions was how many days are there in a week.  At the end, we solved all the math questions together.

That's how we ended our crazy week!

Don't forget to check out our classroom Instagram account.  

room20_heritage

From Room 20

This Week at School (TWAS)-Shared Writing Post

Dear Beloved Families,

We had a kind of weird week, because we had three days of school and usually we have five.  However, we had a fun eek. We did TONS of things.  This is what we did.

We had Math and Music.  We had lots of fun!  We practiced our Christmas Concert and we got our lines.  The title is called "How the Penguins Saved Christmas".  It's exciting to practice.

On Tuesday we had our Remembrance Day assembly.  We watched some Remembrance Day videos and sang "O Canada".  The choir and Mrs. Neufeld sang "In Flanders Fields".  We stood for "The Last Post" and we had two minutes of silence.  Every classroom laid a wreath.

Every day we wrote in our journals.  We did a free write.  That means we write whatever we want in our journals, but no pictures!

Every morning Mrs. Deyoe hands out a little sheet and we solve it.  This is our daily Math Journal job.  When we are finished we read quietly on the carpet until the next period starts

We had a very exciting week!

From Room 20

Writing a Class Book

Today Room 20 began writing a new Class Book for our classroom.  

Yesterday Mrs. Deyoe was away and not all of us treated our guest teacher respectfully.  Because of this, we discovered that our room had a need.  We needed to treat our guest teachers with respect, the same respect that we show Mrs. Deyoe so that they feel welcome and happy when they visit us.  So to help them, we are writing a class book.  This book will help the guest teacher know our routines and what the expectations are both in our classroom and our school.  Together we wrote the first page of our book as a shared writing piece, letting guest teachers know what they can expect from us.

Here is our writing...

Welcome to our classroom!  We are Team 20.  We hope you are happy during your day here.  Do you know what our classroom rules are?  They are:

~Keeping our hands and feet to yourself.

~No talking when someone else is talking.  DON'T interrupt!

~We believe in keeping our classroom clean and tidy.

~Be respectful to everybody even if they aren't being respectful to you.

We believe that guest teachers should be treated nicely and we will treat you like we treat Mrs. Deyoe.  Please ask us if you need help.  We hope you feel special here.  Enjoy your day!

Next we are going to brainstorm ideas for what guest teachers need to know to be successful in our school and each student is going to write on one of the ideas.

Another Excellent Shared Writing Poem

Kittens

Written By Room 20

Their fur is soft,

       like silken snow.

They are fun to play with,

       like catching rain and sometimes water.

They like to eat fish and mouses,

       like a hungry man longing for food.

They’re scared of water,

       like a curious bird frightened of hawks.

They can be furious,

       like a snake hissing at a bug.

Beginning Poetry

Over the past week, Room 20 has begun reading and writing poetry.  We have begun each of our writing classes with reading several different poems from a variety of authors.  After we had read a few day's worth and had discussed some of the things we had noticed, we made a list of things poems could have.

This morning we wrote our first shared writing poem together as a class.  On Friday we had begun one, but it ended up being more like a list, so today we decided as a class to start fresh.  After all authors decide they don't like something and start again, so why can't we?

It took us a bit of time, but we came up with what I think is a great first poem.

Hockey Day

Written By Room 20

Listening to music as I get dressed

My team listens to “I Got the cougars” while it plays on the    speakers

The warm feeling as I slip my foot inside my skate,

I tie my skate tight or my skate will fall off.

The feel of cold air on my body, like winter wind, as I skate on    the ice

Get the puck,

       Skate down the ice to the net…

              YOU SHOOT, YOU SCORE!

The announcers calls “He shoots, he scores!”

The game ends

I get undressed

The bonfire begins

I hear the sizzling of the burning firewood.

Our Ouch Stories

We are all finished with our latest writing project, our Ouch Stories.  

Over the last week and a half, we have been working on these during our writing time.  We began by reading several Ouch Stories written by previous student authors at our school.  Mrs. Deyoe then wrote her own Ouch Story for another example.  Our next step was to discuss what we needed to have in our Ouch Stories.  We decided that our stories needed to contain lots of details, a good hook, an interesting title, juicy words, and an ending to wrap our story up.  After that it was time for students to write their own.

Student worked on them for several days and they turned out great!  Here are a few examples of our published copies.  If you click on the picture they will enlarge for easier readability.

New Word Work Routines

Now that we are into Term 2, we have switched up our weekly word work routines.  We still spend a week on each set of words, and we still receive them on Monday and glue our sorts into our books on Friday. However, our practice activities have changed.  

Our week goes like this.

On Monday students receive their words that they cut up and practice sorting.  These words are based on their current spelling pattern they are learning (short vowels, long vowels, endings, etc.).  They get a chance to meet with Mrs. Deyoe with their group to go over their sort together.

On Tuesday students spend approximately 8-10 minutes practicing their word sort independently.  Students then get together with their group to play Slap It.  Each group selects a caller and every other student spreads out their words in front of them.  The caller chooses a word and reads it.  Each student needs to "slap" their hand over the word that was read.  The first student to do so spells the word.  If they are correct they get to put the word back into their bag.  The game keeps going until someone has all their words put away, that student is the winner.

Wednesday begins the same way with an independent sort.  Students then choose a partner from their group to play Spelling Battleship.  This game is very similar to the classic game, but instead of hiding ships, each student chooses 5 of their words to hide on the board.  They then take turns trying to find the words and figure out what the words are.

Once again, Thursday begins the same way with independent practice.  Students then work with a partner to spell their words.  They exchange bags and take turns choosing a word and asking their partner to spell it.  If they get the word correct they keep it, if not it goes back into the bag.  The first partner to get all their words back wins.

On Friday students do a final sort with their words and glue them into their word sort book.

This has been our first week of working with our new activities.  So far we have all had fun and it seems to be going fairly smoothly.