Cruisin’ down the hall in my 6-4...Alright, alright.. what I’m trying to say is something along the lines of “Yeehaw, we survived the first week!” How’d I do? All jokes aside, welcome to Grade 5. This is going to be an awesome year and I am looking forward to all the adventures (and shenanigans) that come with it. We’ve got a great group and have already begun curricular work, there’s no slacking off in the fifth grade! I wanted to reach out to you all for a couple reasons while also saying ''Hello.'' I wanted to send this out earlier however I held off until I had contact information for everyone so as to avoid a piecemeal introduction. As mentioned in the introductory classroom letter, we have begun working with the students on adjusting to the new expectations and routines. If at any point during the year you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to email me.

I have had the opportunity to a meet a few of you in passing and look forward to meeting all of you in the coming weeks and months. Going forward, I will work to communicate with you all on as much of a regular basis as possible so that we are all up to date on what''s going on. At the very least, you can expect a monthly update such as this to let you know what we’ve been up to and what we have coming down the pipe. I do kindly ask that you take the time to read it as much of what we will be doing is covered in these updates.

The Website

As we progress through the year, this website will evolve right alongside as I work to develop, find and source out resources, information and links to supplement the work in class. Content, links and information will be added frequently with students will be referring to the site often as we move through the units. I encourage you to bookmark and then revisit the site regularly, especially if you ever have questions about what we are up to, have coming up or even curious what the units/assignments are all about. At any point, please let me know if you have any questions - email is the best and easiest way as I’m not going to lie to you, I’m pretty terrible at checking the voicemail on the school phone. (Like really bad - Honestly don’t know how to and, for example, I got a voicemail in April of last year that had been left in November informing me that a student was confused regarding an assignment - oops).

Math - Basic Facts, Operations & Place Value

A major focus of the year will be on solidifying and improving basic facts knowledge as this directly translates to greater confidence and success in all areas of mathematics. Specifically, I mean the strong knowledge and rapid recall of basic multiplication and division facts. On the first day of school last week I spoke to the students about the need to be practising their facts on a daily basis (even if it’s not explicitly written in the agenda). My expectation is that come June, they all have a strong basic facts foundation to support continued growth in mathematical understanding. I strongly encourage and request your support in this at home as it goes a long ways in supporting the work done here in school. Each month, all students will participate in a timed ‘Fact Frenzy’ on all 4 operations with their achievement tracked and graphed, which will then be initialed by you the following day.

We will spend the first few weeks reviewing and practising our operations skills, focusing on the accurate and confident use of the basic algorithms and procedures to solve problems. On the Math Resources pages, you can find demonstrative videos, sheets and explanations for each operation. I particularly want to draw your attention to the DMSB for Long Division explanation, these Long Division Class Notes and the Division Danger Zones and lastly information on multi-digit multiplication.

Please review these with your child should they be at all confused or unsure. Once this is finished, we will move onto our Number Sense unit with an initial focus on Place Value, focusing on the reading and writing of large numbers with Expanded Form and Standard Form.

D2L - Information

As mentioned in the classroom outline, D2L is the online tool that we will be using primarily as an online agenda and message board where the students, and yourselves, are able to see the current assignments and their due dates. I reviewed the process of signing on with the class and they should all be able to sign on (their user ID is their CBE student number and the password was just changed last week). Should they need their password reset, they can do so online via the CBE Online Password Tool. The agenda will be posted on D2L daily for students (sometimes ‘Daily’ is a lofty goal that I don’t do so well at meeting but ‘Daily’ sounds better than medium-often-mostly-regularly) to use as a backup should they misplace their written copy.

Please remember that the students are expected to have their agenda signed by a parent or adult every day so please help your child with this responsibility (they know it is their job to remember, not yours).

Class Calendar

As we move through the year I will be updating the Class Calendar with important events, information as well as important project due dates. This calendar is always accessible from the home page, as a link to it is found in the bottom right corner. Furthermore, you can subscribe to the calendar from your fancy futurebox (aka smartphone or computer), allowing those important dates to be automagically entered into your own calendar.

To subscribe now, click on the format required by your device - iCal  |  XML  |  HTML

Science - Wetlands and a Field Trip

The first unit that we’ll be doing in Science is that of Wetland Ecosystems. Please take a minute to check out the unit resources on the Science Resources page where you can find the Unit SLE''s, Web Links, Wetland Ecosystems Vocabulary as well as resources and projects that students will be using as the unit progresses.

As part of our Wetland Ecosystems unit in Science, we will be visiting the Fish Creek Environmental Learning Centre at Shannon Terrace. We are currently finalizing the details of the trip, including costs, however for the sake of scheduling, I wanted to let you know that both our class and Ms. Day’s class will be going on the full day trip on October 1 while Mrs. Flanagan’s class and Mrs. Sampson’s class will be going on October 9th. Permission forms and more information will be coming home shortly.

Language Arts - Wonder by R. J. Palacio

We have kicked off our first novel study of the year with a great book about August Pullman, an extraordinary young man, who has just begun the fifth grade at Beecher Prep. I have uploaded some resources to the Language Arts Resources page such as character information, a trailer for the book (yes, as in a movie trailer for a book - apparently that’s a thing now) as well as information on the author.

Mr. Polsky’s Camera - First Day of Grade 5

I have uploaded some pictures that we took of the students on the First Day of Grade 5 as part of the kickoff to our ‘season’ if you will. Over the course of the year, I will be periodically uploading pictures of our adventures and please feel free to save any of them for your own personal use. These pictures will be fun to look back on at the end of the year to see just how much the little humans have changed.

I do have to ask that should you choose to save any of them that you avoid sharing images of other students with their faces shown for reasons of FOIP, unless you have their parents express permission. Otherwise, feel free to enjoy and share the pictures as we cruise on through the year. You can always find the photos by navigating to Mr. Polsky’s Camera, or from the home page.

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Wrapping this up though, as I’m sure you all read this line by line and took notes for the quiz you’ll all get on this (I guess we’ll see if I’m joking...), I just wanted to say ‘Hello’ and welcome to what I am sure will be an awesome adventure. I am very much looking forward to working with both you and your child so as to make this as great an experience as possible for all involved.