Happy Friday! We made it through the first week post winter break and I think everyone was really, really excited to be back. At the same time, this whole ‘waking up early and on time’ thing is really hard. Adulting isn’t what it’s made out to be. That said, a genuine and full thank you for ensuring that your child has been coming to school all masked up and healthy.

Important Dates

Tuesday, January 18^th – Napi and the Rock Virtual Presentation

Thursday, January 20^th – Spirit Day (Comfy Cozy Couch Potato Day)

Thursday, January 20^th – Fun Lunch (Edo)

Monday, January 31^st – PD Day (no school for all students)

Monday, January 31^st – Report Cards available digitally

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Language Arts

We are still working our way through “Wonder”! I think we are roughly half way through. We have also begun working on the rough drafts for our fractured fairy tales. Each student has chosen a fairy tale to change up in some way. Feel free to ask your child which fairy tale they chose and how they’re changing it from the original. These are going to be fantastic and genuinely funny stories. I’m really excited for them to see the result of all their hard work.

Math

We had our January basic facts assessment (Fact Frenzy) earlier this week and that should have come home to get signed. Our current unit and all units from now will rely heavily on basic facts knowledge so please ensure your child is practicing these nightly. Students should also be practicing their skip counting if they’re still not confident on the recall of memorized facts. You/they can also make continued use of the resources in the Fact Fluency section of the Math Resources page.

Prior to winter break we moved through a quick geometry unit on Transformations (translations, rotations, and reflections). We have now moved into patterns where students will be looking at increasing, decreasing, and repeating patterns, patterns in t-tables, as well as geometric patterns. 

Science

We are well into our unit on Classroom Chemistry, which is a fan favourite. We have learned about the properties of solids, liquids, and gasses and this past week we explored what a mixture is, some of the ways we can separate mixtures of solids as well as the difference between physical mixtures and chemical bonding. We have also covered the scientific method and use this to run all our experiments. We have some pretty cool experiments coming up so stay tuned! As always, I strongly encourage all students to regularly reference and explore the resources in the Classroom Chemistry section of the Science Resources page as well as the links shared on the Classroom Chemistry Web Links page.

Social Studies

Not sure if you heard about our Amazing Race challenge prior to winter break but it involved a lot of maple syrup! It may have ruined maple syrup for your child and if that’s the case we’re sorry? Maybe? Maybe not? That said, so far we have finished the Atlantic Region, and we just wrapped up our study of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Lowlands Region. Next week we will be moving on to exploring the Canadian Shield.

Have an awesome weekend. As always, let me know if you have any questions.

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
instagram @mr.polsky

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