September 29, 2022

 Hello Families, 

We are still celebrating the incredible success of our whole school Terry Fox sharing assembly last week and the LBS Open House! We added the kilometers ran by the whole school during the Terry Fox run to our current distance and ended up at 1,118km from St. John's in a beautiful place called Truro, Nova Scotia. 

In writing, we are working on creating news articles to capture the success of the assembly and run last week. We learned that news articles are non-fiction texts that include the following elements:

If you were able to attend the Open House, I'm sure you noticed all of the amazing student work we have done in the first month of school! As we move forward, we have started reading the novel Wishtree, where the narrator is a tree.  This is connected to our future learning about plants and our Indigenous focused land-based learning. As a step towards reconciliation we spent time outside in the garden and observing trees this week while participating in smudges and sit spots. We also attended an awesome assembly by our little buddy class about Indigenous ways of knowing.

Why do we smudge? 

■ We smudge to clear the air around us. 

■ We smudge to clean our minds so that we will have good thoughts of others. 

■ We smudge our eyes so that we will only see good things in others. 

■ We smudge our ears so that we will only listen to good things about others. 

■ We smudge our mouths so that we will only speak well of others. 

■ We smudge our whole being so that we will portray only the good part of our self through our actions. 

Smudging is always voluntary.

Smudging allows people to stop, slow down, and become mindful and centred. This allows people to remember, connect, and be grounded in the event, task, or purpose at hand. Smudging also allows people to let go of negative feelings and thoughts. Letting go of things that inhibit a person from being balanced and focused comes from the feeling of being calm and safe while smudging. 

Smudging Protocol and Guidelines Smudging Protocol and Guidelines for School Divisions 2019

In math, we are learning about balancing equations and looking at place value with numbers up to 100,000. We have been playing games and practicing skills to develop both of these skills. We also continue to look at distance through our, now, 10 minute daily running across Canada. 

Art Cards:

 

Have a wonderful weekend, 

Ms. Brown

Orange Shirt Day

 Lake Bonavista School is proud to be honoring Orange Shirt Day on Thursday, September 29th. We encourage all students to wear orange in support of this important event. 

Terry Fox Assembly

 Hello Families, 

We would like to formally invite you to attend our school Terry Fox sharing assembly tomorrow (Wednesday, September 21st) at 12:40pm. We haven’t welcomed families into our school for a few years, so please take note of the following:

- If you would like to attend, please enter and sign in at the main office and make your way down to the gymnasium

- You’re welcome to stay and complete the Terry Fox run with us afterwards (approx. 1:10-1:45pm)

- You will not be able to visit the classroom or other parts of the school at this time

- Seating in the gymnasium is limited, and depending on visitor attendance there may be standing room only

- At this time, we are only inviting family members of Room 2 students

If you are unable to attend, I’ll do my best to record the assembly video and share it on Google Classroom. At this time, I am unsure about the rules around sharing videos of students but I’ll keep my blog updated when I find out more. 

Thanks for supporting our learning!

Ms. Brown

September 16, 2022

 Hello Families, 

We spent most of the week getting prepared and organized for the whole school assembly we are hosting on Wednesday, September 21 at 12:40pm! This week we worked in groups to continue our Terry Fox biography research and create a slide show to share with the school. Below are some slides made by the students. I will make the slides accessible in Google Classroom for you to view at home with your student when they are finalized. 

In terms of our run across Canada (2km a day), we are still in Newfoundland, however we have now collectively covered 583km. Some students have began seeking challenges in their runs and adding another 0.5km or 0.33km during the designated times. This has led to learning about fractions and decimals! We have also been working on completing the Alberta math assessments all week. 

Arguably the most exciting part of the week was when we got to meet Olympic marathon runner Trevor Hofbauer! In the spring he set a record as the fastest Canadian to have ever run in the Boston Marathon! Send him luck as he races in Vancouver this weekend.

We welcomed his expertise and generated questions to ask him to support with our inquiry. Our questions included:

- why did you want to start running?

- what kinds of mental exercises do you do as a runner?

- how do you deal with pressure before a race?

- what do you learn when you lose?

- what keeps you motivated?

Trevor taught us a lot about the importance of learning from our losses and staying disciplined. We also learned that he first became interested in running at school during a run across Canada challenge kind of like ours!

Here's a note from the Active Living Committee about the Terry Fox run next week:

Lake Bonavista School is proud to be participating in this year’s Terry Fox School Run. Our run will take place on Wednesday, September 21 at 12:40pm following Room 2’s sharing assembly. Let’s get our fundraising going and show everyone how we can “Try like Terry”! To donate: https://schools.terryfox.ca/LakeBonavista. Together, we can all make a difference. 
#terryfoxschoolruns #tryliketerry @terryfoxfoundation 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Ms. Brown

September 9, 2022

Hello Families, 

 

The first week and a half in room 2 have been wonderful. It seems like our new class is getting along very well and many students have made lots of new friends! We are working together to understand new routines and expectations to support learning. 

We begin each morning with a daily writing and math task before transitioning into our Montessori work period. This has been a very successful routine for students during our soft entry time. 

 

We will have a busy September as our class is leading the Terry Fox learning assembly on September 21st! We are so lucky to be back to "in person" assemblies this year. The new Alberta curriculum includes biographies, so we are working as a class to research and write a biography about Terry Fox that we can share with the school on assembly day. Additionally, we are running or walking 2km daily (broken up into 1km segments) to follow Terry Fox's journey across Canada during his marathon of Hope. We even brought our little buddies in grade 1 and 2 on one of our 1km's! 

We have been tracking our progress on a classroom map and Google Maps, we began our route in St John's, Newfoundland, and as of today we have almost made it to Gambo, NL. This has been a fun way to learn about measurement, and view the geography of various Canadian communities. 

Additionally, we drew a portrait of Terry Fox this week without any pre-teaching/learning. Throughout the week we are learning how to draw realistic parts of the face. We will apply these newly learned skills to draw a more accurate and realistic Terry Fox next week and be able to compare how our work has improved. 

    

Please note the Feastival information below:

Take care!

Ms. Brown