November 21 -25, 2022

Thank you to all the families that were able to take time out of their busy schedules to connect during our student conferences. I  really enjoy being able to share your child's progress with you. I am so proud of all the students in room 3. I look forward to connecting with a few more families next week. If you did not have the opportunity to connect, please feel free to reach out and we can arrange a time to meet. These meetings will be held virtually.  

Over the past few weeks we have started creating our classroom Sound Wall. A sound wall is a way to organize and display the different sounds, phonemes, we hear in speech.  Our sound wall highlights what our mouths and tongues are doing when they produce the sound with both real and graphic photos.  During our shared learning we have explored the sounds /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/. During our shared learning students practice making the sounds while some students are using the phonetic alphabet on the AAC device to make the sounds. A sound wall matches our speech sounds to the written representation of the sound, grapheme. On individual whiteboards students are practicing or exploring printing the letter. Another activity that the students really enjoy is our item sort.  In this activity we are showing an item and then isolating the initial sound of that item and sorting it accordingly. We look forward to sharing more of this work with you in future blog posts. 

This week we had some fun during literacy with the Pixar animated short For the Birds, https://youtu.be/Q6X80IWdS6s. After viewing the video, we brainstormed the characters, the setting, and a few of the events that took place in the short. Using our generated list, students created their very own writing. Some students used predictable writing and visual picture symbols to create I see or I liked sentences.  Students then got to share their writing with their classmates in our special Authors Chair. 

This week we took advantage of the beautiful weather to go on a community walk. Before the walk, we read a social story about crosswalk safety and then watched a video about how to safely cross the road. During our walk we pointed out the different street signs and talked about their meanings. Next week some of our morning tasks will focus on the different environmental print we can see all around us. We walked to a nearby community playground and had lots of fun playing on the different play structure. 

If you are looking for a way to give during this holiday season, please think about supporting our community hamper. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out to me. 

The predicted forecast for next week might have us enjoying more activities indoors. We still try to get outside whenever possible, even for short periods of time. Keeping to our routines and schedule helps some of us stay regulated throughout the day. We will continue to take outdoor breaks until the temperature drops to -20 degrees with the windchill, so please be sure to pack extra's hats, mitts and socks for the cold weather.  With all the extra's around the classroom, please take a moment to label your students belongings. This is greatly appreciated! 

Upcoming Dates

• Dec 2 - Community Walk, weather permitting
• Dec 5-8 - Scholastic Book Fair
• Dec 5 - Deadline for Gingerbread House Decorating Night
• Dec 10 - Deadline to donate to Christmas Hampers
• Dec 10 - Deadline to order for Dec 15 Healthy Hunger Lunch (Mucho Burrito)
• Dec 15 - Gingerbread House Decorating Night
• Dec 22 - Last day of classes (8:00 am to 2:30 pm)

Have a great weekend!

November 14-18, 2022

This week, as a part of the Fall Showcase, we took a closer look at each of the four seasons through targeted tasks, songs, stories and art. Our focus was on learning to identify the season using weather patterns, a tree's life cycle, and the different types of clothing that can be worn in each season. Although it looks like winter outside, students learned that the seasons change every 3 months and that it is actually still Fall or as some call, Autumn. Our targeted tasks included reading comprehension where some students had to read a statement and pick the corresponding season visual that most closely matched. Other students worked through a task where they were shown a picture and given a choice of three different clothing options and had use a clothespin to indicate the best clothing choice.  Some students worked on sorting different pictures into the four seasons. In another task, students matched like pictures of the seasons most common traits.

During our morning shared learning, students get to choose songs, stories and activities that highlight key concepts being learned such as proper greetings, days of the week, months of the year, weather and seasons. Here is an example of our Seasons page, where each picture is a link to a targeted song or book. Students have to take turns making their choices. Following verbal and picture directions, waiting for your turn, not having your preferred song chosen, and dealing with disappointment are all skills that are reinforced during this time. After the song or activity students are asked different types of questions and respond verbally or by using our classroom AAC device to help them develop a deeper understanding of the concepts being presented. 

The story we highlighted in our shared reading this week was the book Tap The Magic Tree by Christie Matheson. This story was also the inspiration for our artwork. This is a fun and interactive story where students got to tap, rub, shake and even blow on the book to create changes to the magic tree and follow its cycle throughout the seasons. After reading the story, the student's created simple pointillism inspired art pieces using their fingertips or the tip of a pencil to paint Magic trees of their own. 

Student Conferences are coming up next week Thursday evening 4:30-7:00pm and Friday during the day 8:30am-12:30pm. These conferences will be taking place virtually using Microsoft Teams. When booking a conference, please do not forget to book 2 back-to-back times slots for a total of 30min. If you are unable to book a time, or need to make alternate arrangements, please do not hesitate to reach out. My email address is rlmyroniuk@cbe.ab.ca  

Please see the message below from your EMJ Parent Council about Healthy Hunger lunches. These lunches are optional and there is a fee for these lunches. Please note that the deadline to pre-order for this Thursday's lunch is tomorrow Saturday November 19. 

Healthy Hunger Lunches at EMJ

Dear Families, 

 

The EMJ Parent Council is excited to offer fun lunches, through the Healthy Hunger lunch program for Grades 1-6.  The first lunch (CocoBrooks) is next Thursday, November 24 (deadline to pre-order is Saturday November 19).

 

To register on the Healthy Hunger website, please go to: www.healthyhunger.ca  

Once there, you will be able to register your child(ren) by following the simple steps below: 

 

1.      At the Healthy Hunger home page (healthyhunger.ca) click on the icon “register student” 

2.      Fill in the information as asked - remember, your email address will be your login 

3.      You will be prompted to add a student (or multiple students) and to fill in all the required information (so convenient to be able to add multiple students!) 

4.      Once you have added your student(s), you will be sent to the calendar – scroll to the current month and click. 

5.      The menu will appear and you can choose your meal(s) and proceed to pay 

6.      The Healthy Hunger website will only accept orders up to five days (5) before the Fun Lunch date 

 

Easy as that! We are looking forward to being able to provide more fun lunches with this more efficient system of ordering.. 

Any questions, please connect with EMJ Parent Council - emjcouncil@gmail.com

 

In order to participate in the Healthy Hunger Fun Lunch, you will need to register your child(ren) on the Healthy Hunger website. For those who participated previously, you will need to re-register for this school year.

Important Upcoming Dates:

November 24 - Healthy Hunger Lunch (see above message if interested in purchasing a CocoBrooks Pizza Lunch.  

November 24 - Community Walk - weather permitting

November 24 & 25 - School Conferences - No classes November 25

December 5-8 - Book Fair

December 23 - January 6, 2023 - Winter Break - no classes

 

Nov 7 - 11, 2022

This week Room 3 spent time learning about why and how we honour Remembrance Day. Our central focus was on the importance of the Poppy as a symbol of remembrance. Everyday students mark their presence in our shared learning circle with an interactive activity that works on identifying themselves among their friends. For this activity, we start with the students first name and their picture. As students demonstrate mastery of identifying themselves with their name and picture we add their last name. After working with their first name, last name and picture we will remove their picture and they learn to recognize their printed first and last name only. This week, to honour Remembrance Day, students names and pictures were attached to a poppy and student's moved their poppy onto the steps of the Tomb of the Unknown solider, a monument found at The National War Memorial in Ottawa. 

We worked on learning the famous poem In Flanders Field, using an adapted version of the poem with picture symbols to assist us in identifying some of the words in the poem. Students worked to create their own Flanders Field pieces of art to help decorate the gym for our school wide assembly. 

We spent time this week practicing for our school wide assembly. The Remembrance Day assembly is an important time to gather together to remember those that have given their lives, those who have fought and returned to their homes, and those who are currently in service for Canada. We learned to sing Oh Canada, https://youtu.be/ehOZC52thsA with the children's group The Wiggles. We also practiced for our moment of silence using a calm breathing bubble https://youtu.be/iaQed_Xdyvw  We listened to the Last Post and the Reveille. Together, we used our handprints to make a poppy wreath to lay at the Remembrance Day assembly with wreaths from other classrooms. We had an opportunity for one student in our class participate in the wreath procession during our assembly. During our group learning we also used a core vocabulary picture board to highlight vocabulary that is associated with Remembrance Day. Students practiced their fine motor colouring skills while colouring a book that used some of our key vocabulary in a ''here is" repeated pattern book. During our morning work, poppies were used as part of our put-in tasks and numeracy work. 

Next week we look forward to learning more about the 4 seasons as we prepare for the Fall Showcase. Student work will be a part of the Fall Showcase however our EES students will not be preforming live. Next week's blog will highlight the work that is a part of the showcase. 

Important Upcoming Dates:

November 17 - Fall Showcase starting at 6pm. (no childcare available)

November 18 - Booking for School Conferences start. Please book 2 back to back time slots as EES students are given 30min per conference. 

November 24 & 25 - School Conferences - No classes November 25

December 5-8 - Book Fair

Oct. 31 - Nov. 4, 2022

 

What a fun week we had, starting off with a Halloween celebration on Monday. Students were greeted after their morning routine with some fun and educational Halloween morning tasks.  One of the favourite morning task of the students was the Witches Brew. This task combined number recognition with 1-to-1 correspondence, the ability to pair an object counted with a number, and following picture directions to make a witches brew. Other numeracy tasks such as counting a specific number of google eyes on different monsters, putting clothespin legs on spiders and matching 2 digit numbers to their base 10 blocks were completed by some students. There were different fine motor tasks such as stacking pumpkins on our "gate", from the story last week, putting spider rings on tubes, putting erasers into a container and tracing Halloween pictures. Finally, some students worked on matching different pumpkin shapes and sorting Halloween themed wooden shapes. We continued these tasks all week. 

On Monday we had an opportunity to go on a community scavenger hunt, trying to find all the items on our list. It was so fun to see the house in the neighbourhood that has all the blowup Halloween decorations out on the lawn. On our walk we stopped and at each intersection to talk about the importance of looking both ways and listening for moving vehicles before we crossed the road. I would say that our first community walk of the year was a huge success, we even found everything on our list!

We ended our pumpkin inquiry learning all about the inside of the pumpkin. All students got an opportunity to help pull the fibrous strands and the seeds from the pumpkin pulp. Some students used their hands to pull out parts of the pumpkin and others chose to use a spoon to scoop out the parts. After the pumpkin was all carved out, we had the opportunity to work together to create two a jack-o-lanterns.  Students were asked what shapes Mrs. Rachel should draw and cut out for the eyes, nose and mouth. Some of our students used our classroom AAC device to communicate their choice. Mrs. Rachel then put the pumpkins out on her doorstep in the evening to welcome the trick-or-treaters.  Our story on Monday was a social story all about Trick-or-treating. Social Stories are visual stories that support and explain social situations and  help students understand the expectations in these situations. Students were sent home with a social story strip to help them during trick-or-treating. 

At times during the day, like after students complete 3 morning tasks, students engage in some free choice. During free choice students are supported in play by our EES team. Toys, books, blocks and mazes are just a few of the choices students can make. During each day, we try to rotate the choices that are available for students to expose them to a variety of different activities. 

This is just a friendly reminder to families that we engage in outdoor activities every day, except when the temperature drops below -20 degrees with the wind chill, and indoor recess is announced for the whole school.  Please ensure that students come to school prepared for the weather conditions. If you require assistance with any items, please do not hesitate to reach out, we would be happy to help. Please also don't forget to pack some extra socks!

Next week we will focus on Remembrance Day and preparing for the Fall Showcase. Students will be participating in the Fall showcase through prerecorded videos. Some students will be filmed preforming poems, student artwork, and in-class work will also be showcased throughout the event. Families are welcome to attend the showcase, however our students will not be preforming live. There will be no childcare available during the showcase.  Our blog for the week of November 17 will also highlight the work presented in the Fall Showcase. 

Upcoming Dates

• November 6 - Daylight Savings
• November 8 - School Council & Parent Society Meeting (6 pm Online Meeting)
• Meeting Link will be shared the day before.
• November 11 - Remembrance Day (school closed)
• November 17 - Fall Showcase featuring Grades 5 & 6 and EES (show starts at 6pm)
• November 24 & 25 - School Conferences (see more information below)