mrpolsky

Straight outta Summer - September Update

Friday, September 10, 2021 8:15 AM

We’re back at it and fully up and running. Hard to complain about the start of the year as it’s been about as smooth as you could hope. We’re fully into curriculum and it’s been great to have some of the small things “back” that we took for granted pre-COVID - like playing together as a grade or physically going to the library and music room. Who would have thought that would be legitimately exciting? Here’s a run down on what we’re up to and what you can look forward to over the next couple weeks.

Important Dates

Wednesday, September 15 - Picture Day

Thursday, September 23 - Evening Conferences (Virtual)

Friday, September 24 - Morning Conferences (Virtual)

Friday, September 24 - No School

Thursday, September 30 - National Day for Truth and Reconciliation - No School


Required Forms

It’s not back to school without paperwork… amirite? On Wednesday, you should have received an email from Mr. Fero detailing the required forms for each child. I have received some of these forms but am still missing most of them. The forms we’re talking about are:

If you do not have a printer at home or are unable to complete the forms digitally, please email me and I can send home a hard copy with your child.

Language Arts

We have begun our first novel study, “Graffiti Ghoul” by Marty Chan. I really enjoy reading “Graffiti Ghoul” and the students are aleady big fans of his hilarious stories. It’s a great idea to test your child’s listening and comprehension skills by asking them to relay what has been happening in the book to you. We’ve begun our writing unit by focusing on paragraph writing, to help focus on basic skills such as complete sentences, proper punctuation and grammar, and adding details.


Math

Above all else this year, our goal is to massively boost each student’s math. The single greatest thing we, and you at home can do, is to work on solidifying and improving basic facts knowledge. 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, I spoke to the students about the need to be practising their facts on a daily basis. My expectation is that come June, they all have a strong basic facts foundation, able to complete 60 basic facts questions of each operation in under 5 minutes. 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 completed our first fact frenzy this week and your child should have brought it home for your review and signature. If you have not seen this yet, please check with your child.


In addition to my Math Resources, Math-Drills.com is a great resource for some good old fashioned practise questions.


Weve begun our initial focus of Place Value, focusing on the reading and writing of large numbers with Expanded Form and Standard Form and word form. From there we will be working on rounding, and comparing and ordering numbers (up to millions).


Science

We are very excited to kick off our Weather Watch unit with all the fantastic weather we’ve been having - fingers crossed that it continues. We have begun discussing the relationship between climate and weather, what impacts climate and how we can predict weather based on where we live. As part of this, students will learn how thermometers work and the history behind the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales. We will explore how warm and cold air moves around a room, why objects and substances contract and expand, and will also explore the science behind airships and hot air balloons. 

We will take time to learn how we predict weather and how to read a weather report and decode the weather symbols that are, sometimes, as intelligible as the laundry symbols on our clothes. Students will learn about, and hopefully build their own, weather instruments and learn about the different types of clouds and what their shape tells us. You’ll very soon have your own David Spence living with you. For reference here is the vocabulary for the unit as well as the Weather Web Links. The best part of the Weather unit is watching some really cool videos about tornadoes and hurricanes - weather is awesome!


Social Studies

We will begin the year with a look at Canada’s map and our geographic knowledge of the world with mapping. This will have the students learn the names of the Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories, as well as their capital cities. To support this I have loaded study guides, links and resources to the Social Studies Resources page under the “Where in the World” title. As part of this work with the map of Canada, we will also focus on other mapping skills such as latitude and longitude along with the continents and oceans of the world.


Have a great week and as always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Stay healthy and safe,


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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