Welcome to (maybe?) the craziest month of the year where everything seems to be happening at once and everyone’s busy all the time. Oh but don’t forget to be calm and festive and polite to Aunt Susan (we all have one) when she serves that aweful jellied salad again (bleh). Anyways…. it’s December and we’re looking at under 3 weeks until we wrap up 2021 - which I think we are all okay to see in the rearview mirror. That said, we have less than 10 days to winter break! We got this!! Here’s your December Update:

Important Dates

Thursday, December 16^th – Spirit Day: Pajama Day & Fun Lunch (Boston Pizza)

Friday, December 17^th – Last day of class before Winter Break (12:10 dismissal) & Winter Break classroom party (see below) & last day for Mrs. F-M (our student teacher)

**Tuesday, January 4^th – School Resumes

On Friday, December 17^th, we will have a classroom party prior to winter break, similar to our Halloween celebration. We will also be saying goodbye to our one and only Mrs. Fernandez Maldonado (we just call her Mrs. FM) - who the students have become quite attached to. I am once again hoping that 5-6 families can provide snacks for our classroom party. I would love the following: veggie platter/fruit platter, cheese and cracker platter, juice boxes, and a couple dessert trays. Let me know if you’d be willing to help out!

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Language Arts

We have just finished part 1 of ‘Wonder’ which was from Auggie’s point of view. We will now be heading into part 2 which is from Via’s point of view.

Fractured Fairy Tales: If any of you watched Rocky and Bullwinkle you may recognize this but… Our first creative writing unit of the year is based on Fractured Fairy Tales. After reading a selection of fairy tales and fractured tales, students learned the difference between the two and discovered the elements of each. Simply put, a Fractured Fairy Tale is when you take a classic story that everyone knows and change it somehow (ex: Instead of ‘The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf’ we’d have ‘The Three Wolves and the Big Bad Pig’). With a good grasp of different examples of each, they will now begin to plan and write their own fractured fairy tales and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product. These NEVER disappoint.

Math

We have just finished our Data Analysis unit and once the unit test is marked, it will come home to get signed. Before winter break, we will be completing a ’12 Days of Christmas’ math task where students will be calculating the current cost if they actually had to purchase all the items in this song. Really we’re calculating the cost of true love - and it aint cheap folks! We are also hoping to begin a quick geometry unit on Transformations, which includes learning about rotations, reflections, and translations.

Students had their December basic facts assessment last week and they should have come home to get signed. In the new year, our focus will move to using larger computations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in both our Patterning unit and the second part of our Number Concepts unit. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a strong grasp of their basic math facts. If you are noticing weaknesses in a certain area, please-please-please have your child practice those facts each night! For more explanation of grade level expectations and examples you can take a look at these really informative documents: My Child’s Path to Number Fact Fluency and the Number Fact Fluency Supporting Document.

Science

We have just finished off our Weather Watch unit and are heading right into our unit on Classroom Chemistry, which is maximum fun. Students will be performing hands on experiments to learn about the three states of matter and how they react with one another. This is a really messy unit where we’re hands on as much as possible, making a mess and working to understand how different substances interact. Yes, this is when we can finally answer the questions of “What happens if I combine this with that?” Stay tuned for some super cool experiments. In the meantime, students/you are welcome to explore any and all the links on the Science Resources page or the Classroom Chemistry Web Links.

Social Studies

Our Social Studies topics are keeping us very busy these days! We recently kicked off our unit of the geographical Regions of Canada and our version of ‘The Amazing Race’! We are working our way East to West and so we kicked things off with a look at the Atlantic Region - yes b’y! Students were very excited to receive challenges on the Atlantic region which we recently finished up. We will be moving right into the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Lowlands for our next region. 

French

Over the course of the last month, we have focused on some basic elements of the French language, including the alphabet, numbers up to 100, colours, and specific holiday vocabulary.

If I don’t see you before we break for the holidays, have a great holiday season and I hope you all enjoy some time with family with plenty of sleeping in. 

Sincerely,

Daniel Polsky
Grade 5 Teacher | Learning Leader
Fish Creek School | cbe.ab.ca
t| 403-777-6400 f| 403-777-6409
twitter @mr_polsky
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