November 12, 2020

Hello Families, 

I hope you enjoyed your mid week day off and found a way to acknowledge Remembrance Day as a family.

We have been gearing up for conferences by getting our work samples ready. This week we separated our regular weekend journal work down into 2 days, one day for the picture and one day for the writing, in order to ensure high quality work. We discussed the difference between quality and quantity when it comes to writing through the analogy of one delicious cookie versus 15 gross lollipops. All students agreed they would rather have the delicious cookie! We assessed our picture and our writing based on the rubrics below:

Students have been enjoying learning about the anatomy of the fish. We learned that instead of relying on their 5 senses (like humans) fish are dependent on their lateral line which senses vibrations in the water and tells them if there are food or predators near by. We are also working on our good copy work of generating and extending repeating patterns through our math art. We added self-assessment into this work based on "I can" statements. Here are some of the finished products and planning sheets:

Tomorrow, we will start talking about our community in terms of the community we live in, our Calgary community, and our Canadian community. Following our usual thinking routines, these ideas will extend to our rights and responsibilities within the communities we live in. 

Please ensure you are booking virtual conferences if you haven't had an opportunity yet!

Also, don’t forget the Virtual Book Fair goes live on Monday, November 16^th.  The book fair will be done completely online. All orders will be sent directly to the students home. 

Take care, 

Ms. Brown

 

Remembrance Day

 Dear Parents,

Rooms 16 and 17 are hosting a virtual assembly for LBS students on November 10th at 10:40 am, in honour of Remembrance Day.

Did you know that every year from the last day of October until November 11th, tens of millions of Canadians wear a poppy as a visual pledge to honour Canada's veterans and remember those who sacrificed for the freedoms that we enjoy today.

Students will be given a poppy on November 10th and can give a donation at the school office. If you would like to support out local veterans, the Legion is encouraging people to donate online this year. Please follow the link: https://legion.ca/donations to donate to the Legion's Poppy Fund.

 Thank you from Ms. Mumford & Ms. Burnham's students.

November 5, 2020

 Hello Families, 

Now that the Halloween celebration excitement is over we have been able get lots of work done this week. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Math

- Continuing our understanding of pictorial representations of patterns to solve problems

- November calendar including special dates

- Introducing skip counting by 2's, 5's and 10's

- Introducing our patterning art

2. Helping at School

We brainstormed ways we could help at school (during covid) and created mind maps with pictures and words. This was a continuation from the ways we help at home and connects to our Social Studies learning about rights and responsibilities.

3. Outside time

The beautiful weather has allowed us to take our Daily 5 reading time outside into the garden. We also learned about sentences and wrote a sentence with sidewalk chalk. Another day, we completed our first smudge, a First Nations ceremony of burning sage. 

4. Nature Observation Time

We looked at some interesting pieces of nature and made observations and guesses. We also learned about scientific drawings being detailed and including labels. Here are the cool artifacts we had in our classroom this week...

Take care, 

Ms. Brown

Book Fair

 Save The Date 

Our school’s Book Fair is going online, so save the date! 

From Monday, November 16^th – Sunday, November 22^nd discover the newest books hot off the press, from the comfort of your home. Bonus: Every purchase supports our school and keeps kids reading. 

October 29, 2020

Hello Families, 

We had a wonderful day celebrating Halloween today complete with some roll a monster work, creating a vampire card, and going on a pumpkin scavenger hunt around the school yard! The costumes were amazing and everyone had a great time!

This week has been busy and energy is high rolling into the excitement of Halloween!  We have been learning about pictorial representations, which means using pictures to solve problems in math. We talked a lot about organizing our work and setting things up effectively so it is easier to understand. We have been looking at and learning about repeating patterns and next week we will move into some fish M-ART (math art) to demonstrate our understandings of repeating patterns and the various attributes that can change. 

We also looked at different responsibilities in the home and learned a poem about helping at home. Students generated their own words and pictures about different ways they help at home. Many students were able to provide excellent examples of how they can be helpful at home, a beautiful alignment with our Montessori philosophy at school!

Our final of the 5 senses is sense of smell. We wrapped up this 5 senses work this week as we completed our collage for the nose. We will continue to build upon and revisit these concepts as we move on. Our next work will be traditional Montessori work of nomenclature books to learn the parts of fish. 

I hope everyone is doing well!

Important Dates:

November 3 - photo retakes for anyone who would like them and those who were absent on photo day

November 11 - Remembrance Day, no school

Take care, 

Ms. Brown

October 22, 2020

 Hello Families!

What a snowy week we have had in Calgary! The snow is bringing lots of excitement during outside play times. Because of all the snow and colder temperatures, we have started having our physical education time inside the gymnasium. 

We are wrapping up our animated literacy program with only a few letters left in the alphabet to review. Next week, we will begin moving onto familiar letter blends like /sh/ and /th/ etc. The students have been very successful with the animated literacy routines. I have also started completing letter and sound assessments on many of our classroom friends!

We have also been learning about the vocabulary for 3D shapes and labeling pictures. We know the following words: apex, vertices, edges, faces, and can describe 2D and 3D shapes. This week we also started sorting 3D shapes based on different attributes such as rolls and doesn't roll, and has an apex or no apex. We also learned some fun new Halloween math games that are located on the Google Classroom if you'd like to play at home. 

We have started talking about the groups we belong to including ourselves, family, school, and community. Today, we talked about detailed drawings using the tutorial below and drew our family. We will continue to build this understanding and work towards an understanding of our rights and responsibilities in these different settings.

We also continue to develop our vocabulary and understanding of how we use the 5 senses. This week we focused on sight and responded to a painting by Kandinsky by describing various shapes and colors we could see. Students then completed their collage of items they could see, adding sight words to the back.

Hope everyone is staying healthy and warm!

Best wishes, 

Ms. Brown

Halloween Celebration 2020

 LBS is planning low-key Halloween activities on Thursday October 29. 

 

If children are planning to dress up at school, please discuss plans with them for:

• a costume that is comfortable to wear all day: able to sit down, move around easily and complete school tasks throughout the day,
• regular sanitizing and hand-washing, as usual,
• using an AHS face mask, costumes with attached masks or other “Halloween masks” are not to be worn and are not suitable for preventing the spread of airborne droplets,
• school-appropriate themes (no gore, weapons and so on),
• no shared food to be brought to school.

 

Children are not required to wear costumes and may choose to wear orange and black. If your family does not participate in Halloween, there will be alternate tasks and activities provided.

 

Students will be looking at examples/non-examples of costumes in their classrooms.  Based on the weather, we may hold a costume parade outside. Students are asked to maintain physical distancing during this outdoor event. We will send an invitation via text to families if an outdoor parade will occur. Families will be invited to view the parade from outside the edges of our school field.

 

October 30 is a CBE system-wide non-instructional day. Please mark your calendars, as this is a ‘No School’ day.

 

October 14, 2020

 Hello Families!

I hope everyone is doing well. I am so happy to be back at school with all of the wonderful students in room 11! I missed everyone very much while I was sick. I am happy to report things are going great and everyone has settled into routines. 

Here are some updates for you:

Raz-Kids

- Raz Kids logins are being sent home today. There are instructions for how to access Raz-Kids on the Google Classroom. This is something the school pays for and is a great tool to support learning at home. Please keep the login information in a safe place in your home!

School T-Shirt Day

Friday, October, 16 is school T-shirt day for everyone at LBS! :)

Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a fantastic online platform to support learning at home. Due to Covid, we have more students staying home than usual. The Google Classroom is a great place to stay connected to classroom learning while working from home. Always feel free to extend or modify tasks to your liking, they are simply suggestions. Please refer back to my email sent in September to login to Google Classroom and acquaint yourselves with the resources. Google Classroom also gives an overview of our recent learning topics!

Photo Re-takes

Many students were away on our class photo day. Retakes will be on Tuesday, November 3. 

Hope everyone is happy and healthy! Best wishes!

Ms. Brown

Virtual Open House 2020

 Hello Families, 

Exciting news!! 

We have created videos to serve as a virtual open house this year at LBS! Check mine out  under Room 11 using the link below. Feel free to check out the other teachers and classrooms also.

LBS Virtual Open House 2020

Enjoy your weekend!

Ms. Brown

First Work Period on Google Classroom!

 Hello Families, 

I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy! Thanks for returning your demographic information in the brown envelopes. 

I wanted to inform you that some of our weekly work has been posted on Google Classroom under the heading "Work Period" as we have had several students absent from class this week. Please note these are simply suggestions for learning that can occur at home and there is no need to submit this work to me at this time. Basic reading, writing, and number practice is always a great idea, too!

Here are some important dates to note:

Friday, September 25: PD Day, no school for students

Tuesday, September 29: School Photo Day

Friday, October 9: PD Day

Monday, October 12: Thanksgiving Monday, no school

Take care, 

Ms. Brown

Terry Fox Run 2020

 Terry Fox Run 2020 

We will be having our Annual Terry Fox Run on Thursday, September 24, 2020. This year the Terry Fox Run is celebrating its 40th anniversary! Teachers will be discussing with students the life of Terry Fox and the contributions he has made to cancer research.  

Students can dedicate their run to someone who they know that has been affected by cancer. Please speak to your child prior to our run and if they choose to dedicate their run to someone they can share this in their class' sharing circle prior to or after their run. 

Should you wish to make a donation online, please use the following link to donate through the Terry Fox website:  

https://secure.terryfox.ca/registrant/TeamFundraisingPage.aspx?TeamID=918010 

Let’s keep Terry’s dream to find a cure for cancer alive! 

2020-2021

 Hello!

Welcome to our Room 11 classroom blog for the 2020-2021 school year!

Please subscribe to the blog if you haven't already as it is the best way to stay up to date with our classroom happenings!

The blog will be the primary place for ongoing family communication, and Google Classroom will be used to upload classroom resources in the event of absences from school. Think of it as Google Classroom being for students, and the blog being for parents and families.

Thanks for your patience and support during the new school year! I will do my best to keep you up to date with classroom happenings on a weekly basis. 

As always, feel free to contact me by email with any questions, comments, or concerns.

Take care, 

Ms. Brown

Connecting Kids to SeeSaw

Hello Families,

As our first Home Learning task was sent via email yesterday afternoon, here are some tips for getting your child on SeeSaw. Please remember it may be tricky the first few times (as all things technology related seem to be) but the children will quickly develop independence with this routine, we know they learn so quickly! :)

Many of you are already using the SeeSaw Family App at home, this is great and please keep this app installed on your device. To access SeeSaw Class you'll need to download a new app.

Go to your App downloader on the device your child will be using and search: SeeSaw Class - download this application.

After the app is downloaded, open the app and you will reach this screen:

Press the button that says "I'm a Student". Then you will see this screen where you can enter the text code that was sent via email. Please keep this text code somewhere safe or refer back to the email incase you are logged out and need to log-in again. 

If you need to switch between users on the device (for example, multiple children at home sharing a device) you log out by pressing the circle icon on the top left side of the screen, selecting child's name, and pressing "sign out".

I hope this helps, let me know if you are still experiencing difficulties and I can assist you!

Take care, 

Lindsay Brown