Welcome to February! It’s a short(ish) month in terms of school days with the Family Day Long Weekend, but that’s not stopping us from flying at a crazy pace. Between coding workshops, video calls with our sailor aboard HMCS Calgary, working on our Awesome Writing projects and dominating the world of multiplication and division, we barely have time to breathe. Not only that but we have a full month of Flames games! Everything is awesome. Here’s a run down of what we have coming up.

Important Dates

Wednesday, February 3^rd: Report Cards available (virtually)

Wednesday, February 10^th: Valentine’s Day Celebration (pm)

Wednesday, February 10^th: Fun Lunch (Booster Juice)

Thursday, February 11^th – Friday, February 12^th: Teachers Convention (no school)

Monday, February 15^th: Family Day (no school)

Tuesday, February 16^th: Patrol Training (am)

Thursday, February 25^th: Spirit Day (Dress like a teacher)  

Patrols

Our grade 5 students will be taking over Patrol duties beginning at the end of February. We spoke about the opportunity with all grade 5 students yesterday, and if they were interested, they took home a blue package. There is no obligation to be a Patrol so if your child was not interested, please disregard this message. If they are interested, we will need the package signed and returned as soon as possible because Patrol training takes place on February 16^th.

Valentines Day

As you may have heard, our Valentine’s Day celebration is looking a bit different this year as students are not able to bring in Valentines or snacks from home. Therefore, we will have a little party in the afternoon of Wednesday, February 10^th where students will make their own cards at school and the grade 5 teacher team will provide a little ice cream treat. I mean come on, it doesn’t get better than ice cream!

Language Arts

We have been reading through and sharing passages from “The Book of Awesome” and “The Book of (Even More) Awesome” and students have loved coming up with their own ideas for what is awesome. We’ve explored the 1000 Awesome Things page from the author and explored how we share the emotion behind just how awesome those things are. We’re talking things like “putting on socks straight from the dryer” or “the perfect chocolate chip cookie” or even “the other side of the pillow." They have been writing very detailed paragraphs of their own and we will begin to publish our favourite ones soon to make our very own “Book of Awesome”. 

Math

Students were given a pop quiz yesterday on double-digit multiplication and these were marked and sent home to you yesterday. Please review the test with your child as all errors were identified and explained. Of course, it’s a new month so you know what that means… Fact Frenzy! We will be doing this tomorrow and the students are all excited to see their improvements on their charts. We began introducing long division today, so again I ask that some extra practice at home might be in order, both with multiplication and division basic facts, as well as with double-digit multiplication and long division. Let me know if you need a refresher on how to do long division, but I teach it the same way I learned when I was in elementary school! Later this week I will be sending home to you all an email with resources, links and guides on long division so that you are fully equipped to help your child with this work. You can always turn to the Math Resources page as well where I have shared practise questions, video guides and explanations of the division algorithm, concepts and skills.

Science

We will be finishing up our Weather Watch unit in the next week or so. Students looked at different fabrics yesterday to see which were best for cold weather and which were water resistant. We will also be taking a look at some weather instruments as well as some wild weather phenomenon (tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.) before wrapping the unit up. Our next unit of study will be the electrifying study of Electricity & Magnetism (bahahaha classic science pun - you’re all welcome).

Social Studies

As I mentioned above, we are still connected to HMCS Calgary and had the opportunity today to have a video chat with S2 Liam Wright as they prepare for their 7 month deployment. We spoke about where they will be going, how they help fight against piracy (the students were shocked to hear there are still pirates today but we also shared how they are way less cool now than they used to be). We are also continuing on with our study of the Regions of Canada. Currently we are looking at the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence Lowlands Region and then moving on to the Canadian Shield.