November 3rd, 2023

Dear families,
A few weeks have gone by, and our students have been busy at work in the classroom. Here are a few highlights from the past three weeks:
In Math, we have started a new morning routine to review concepts of multiplication like finding factors and multiples, and solving three step word problems. The students have been collaborating while answering to 10 daily problems that range in difficulty. Our students are demonstrating pretty good acquisition of math concepts. We have also started practicing measurement using metric and standard systems.
During our Daily 5 block, students have finished their book report on character change, finding the major and minor characters in their books, and inferring character traits from dialogues, actions, feelings and thoughts narrated in the book. They have also found the major event that causes the characters to change, and the type of character conflict. Log into Seesaw to see their book reports. Additionally, we have been learning about the setting, and how the change in setting affects the characters, and we are currently learning about the different stages of plot development. 
In writing we continue working on our personal narrative, where students are learning to "show", not "tell" during the edit of their first draft. 
During Social Studies, our students continue learning about how maps give us information about land and people.
The mindful practices that we have recently incorporated into our self-regulation tool box are: body awareness, anchor spots and anchor words. Students have learned about three important parts of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, that get affected by stress and anxiety, and how breathing exercises and using our anchor spots can help us calm down and return to a place where we are able to learn again.
We have also incorporated cursive handwriting as a calming mindful activity to do at the end of the day, when our brains are tired, and our bodies get fidgety. Students work at their leisure focusing on the repetitive movements of tracing and writing cursive letters. Eventually, students will practice writing in cursive those words that we will catch from their reports and personal narrative and that need to be spelled correctly :)
And we have also started our "Reading Buddies" activity with Mrs. Pilkington's kindergarten students. Our students have paired up with one or two little ones to help them with their reading. Our students were well prepared, and showed fantastic teaching and mentoring skills, being patient, cheerful and so caring. They read a book to the kindergarteners and asked comprehension questions. It was such a cute thing to witness!
As a final note, students have continued earning tickets for their fantastic participation and collaboration skills, and have exchanged them for rewards. Recently some students exchanged their tickets for songs, and we ended up the day with some karaoke and dancing!
It is my intention to move my blog to Seesaw in the near future to incorporate student pictures that will be password protected. I will let you know when it happens.
Have a fantastic weekend!