Happy October! We made it. We did it. We survived September. What a ride. We’re back where we belong and we couldnt be happier. Thank you to each of you for making this possible. We’re having an amazing time and can’t wait for the month ahead. As promised, I will be sharing monthly updates with you all about important dates as well as key curricular information about what we’ll be covering in the coming weeks.

Important Dates 

Friday, October 9th – PD Day (no school for all students) 

Monday, October 12th – Thanksgiving (no school for all students) 

Thursday, October 22nd – Photo Re-take Day (and those who missed original Photo Day) 

Thursday, October 29th – Halloween Celebration (Stay tuned re: Halloween procedures) 

Friday, October 30th – PD Day (no school for all students)   

Language Arts 

Throughout grade five, we will complete a variety of class novel studies. Our first novel study was Marty Chan’s “The Case of the Graffiti Ghoul” and we just finished reading it on Friday! Chan is a local author who visited our school a few years ago, and hopefully your child had been sharing some of the hilarious hijinks of Marty and his friends over the past few weeks. Our next novel study will be “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio. As well as completing daily independent reading, small group guided reading, and one-on-one reading in the classroom, students should also be reading at least 15-20 minutes per night at home. Throughout September and October, we will be focusing on improving our paragraph-writing skills, by working on topic and concluding sentences, as well as the supporting sentences in between. Our writing tasks will be a mix between hand-written assignments and online assignments through Google Classroom. Last week, we also read a number of picture books and completed a writing task tied to residential schools and Orange Shirt Day. This weel our writing focus is on a letter to our favourite teacher as well as a thankfulness-themed task.

Math

We are fully immersed in our Number Sense unit as we learn about place value up to millions, and the reading and writing numbers of numbers in expanded, standard and word form. Next up, we will be rounding, and comparing and ordering numbers (up to millions). As it is a new month, students will be completing a basic facts assessment (Fact Frenzy) this week. Students should be practicing their basic facts for all four operations each night, and we will be reviewing these at school as well. As mentioned in my previous email, we will be using the online program Mathletics to supplement our in-class units. All students have been given their log-in information and they are welcome to make use of the program at home. Please let me know if you need a copy of their account information.

Science

We are continuing to look at Alberta’s Wetland Ecosystems. We really enjoyed both our field trips down to Fish Creek Park, as the students had a chance to explore the wetlands first-hand, as well as complete a number of outdoor activities. Over the month of October, we will continue to study the four different types of wetlands and why they are so important, producers, consumers, and decomposers, plants and creatures found in wetlands, as well as animal adaptations. We will also focus on the impact of human interactions on Alberta’s wetlands. I encourage you and your child to explore the links and resources posted here on the Science Resources page as well as the Wetland Ecosystems Weblinks page. 

Social Studies

We have wrapped up on study on the provinces, territories and capital cities and have moved on to explore the continents and major world oceans. Our mapping unit will also have us looking at hemispheres, cardinal directions, as well as latitude and longitude. 

This year, we have the exciting and unique opportunity to participate in the Ship to Shore project. This is a project that will connect students from only 3 Calgary schools with the crew of HMCS Calgary and HMCS Tecumseh. We will be able to explore the ship with them as the crew of HCMS Calgary prepares for deployment as well as while they’re at sea. There are a vast number of curricular connections and we can’t wait to transport our classroom to the deck of a Royal Canadian Navy vessel. What an opportunity! Stay tuned for more information, videos and images as we begin this exciting and year long project. 

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I’ll leave it there and hope you all have a great week. As always, please let me know if you have any questions and I will make sure to get right back to you. Thank you for everything you do and have done to make the school year such a success already. Here’s to the coming adventures!

Sincerely,

Daniel Polsky
Grade 5 Teacher | Learning Leader
Fish Creek School | cbe.ab.ca
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