We forged through moving into our new building and Halloween on a Monday!  We were excited to open the doors to Lakeshore School and finally welcome you to our new building.  The grade 5 team would also like to welcome 4 student teachers from St. Mary’s University: Kyle Smith (paired with Mrs. Quraishi), Jessie Olson (paired with Mr. Polsky), Christine Eastham (paired with Ms. Shoults), and Riley MacDonald (paired with Ms. Hamilton). They will be with us till mid-December and are very keen and excited to work with the grade 5s.  Here’s what’s coming in November!

Important Dates

Friday Nov 11th - Remembrance Day (no school for all students)

Monday Nov 14th - Traditional Indian Food Lunch

Tuesday Nov 22nd - Picture Retake Day

Wednesday Nov 23rd - deadline to bring Seniors Secret Service items

Wednesday Nov 23rd - Parent Teacher Interviews (4-8 pm online)

Thursday Nov 24th - Parent Teacher Interviews (4-8 pm in person)

Friday Nov 25th - Parent Teacher Interviews (8-10 am in person)

Secret Santa for Seniors

As a grade 5 team we have decided to be a part of the Seniors Secret Service. With that each grade 5 class has been given a senior recipient that is in need. Together, this service will be bringing cheer to over 6000 isolated seniors this Christmas season. There will be a list of  items that each senior has put on their wish lists, posted in your child’s classroom that they will sign up to bring. If you wish that your child does not sign up, please communicate that with them. If you are able to contribute, please have your child bring in a monetary donation in an amount that you and your family are comfortable with. I will also be asking for a parent volunteer to take on the responsibility of doing the shopping once we have put together a budget and shopping list. More information to follow. Thank you in advance for your kindness!

Remembrance Day Information

This is the week where Lakeshore Remembers. Our students will gather on Thursday and everyone will be provided with a poppy. We are asking that each student donate to the Poppy Fund. In addition, students are encouraged to bring a non-perishable food donation to the Veteran’s Food Bank. Our assemblies will be for students and staff, but we are hopeful to be able to open things up to the community in coming years.

Powerschool

Parents please make sure you are able to log in to PowerSchool and check your student’s marks.  The grade 5 team has been posting all summative assessments on this platform.  If you need any support or have any questions about PowerSchool, please feel free to contact your child’s teacher.

Language Arts

The Global Read Aloud continues to be a huge part of our language arts.  As we dive deeper into “Thirst” we are realizing the importance of water and how fortunate we are to have access to clean running water. To celebrate the ending of the book we will be hosting a traditional Indian lunch at school on Monday November 14th.  The cost of this event will be $10/student. Parents, if you can kindly pay this fee online, through your MyCBE/PowerSchool account, we can plan for numbers etc for that day.  The menu will include naan, butter chicken, aloo gobi (potatoes & cauliflower), veggie samosas, & jalebis for dessert. If you had ordered a hot lunch through healthyhunger for that day feel free to cancel it or your child can bring their lunch home.

Alongside the Global Read Aloud, we are working towards our upcoming unit of figurative language and poetry. Furthermore, students continue to regularly use ReadTheory to support their reading development – something they are welcome to log into at home (logging in with their Google @educbe.ca account).

Math

We have recently finished our work on patterns and relations. As it will be a new month, students will be, or already have, completed their November Fact Frenzy (basic math facts assessment). These will be brought home for your review afterward. Daily practise of their basic math facts remains an expectation for all students, allowing for steady and consistent growth of their skills and confidence. 

With Patterns and Relations finished for now, we have begun work on concepts related to the Statistics portion of Statistics & Probability. We began with a look at first hand and second data for surveys as we developed our own questions and gathered our own data. We studied the parts of a graph allowing us to understand how we can use different graphs, such as a bar graph or double bar graph, to show our information in clear, informative ways. With these concepts mastered students will take on opportunities to engage in problem solving where they will need to read and interpret different sets of data or graphs to build an inference or conclusion.

Science

Classes 51-54 have begun their investigation of classroom chemistry and classes 55-58 have been looking at electricity. After a couple months we will swap and work through the alternate unit. For the electricity unit your child is encouraged to bring in a D size battery to keep at school and use throughout the unit.

Homerooms 51-54 (we are Homeroom 5-1) have begun our unit on Classroom Chemistry, which is a fan favourite. We will learn 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. When conducting experiments we always focus on the core concepts of the scientific method and use this to ensure fair tests. We have some pretty cool experiments coming up so stay tuned! As always, we 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.

Homerooms 55-58 have begun studying Electricity & Magnetism. They are flying through our Electricity & Magnetism unit at a “shocking” pace (haha). Students began by exploring what electricity is, and will soon begin understanding circuits, identifying materials that are conductors and insulators and how batteries work. This week we’ve been focusing on the core concepts of what electricity is and how electrons flow. Students will eventually master the ability to  build different circuits (series and parallel) based on the advantages and disadvantages they possess while also exploring how we use switches and resistors to solve everyday problems. From there we will move into an exploration of magnetism, how magnetism works, how we can harness this powerful force and even create magnets using electricity. For any and all information or resources on the unit, please explore the links in the Electricity and Magnetism section of the website as well as those shared on the Electricity & Magnetism Web Links page.

Social Studies 

We have begun our work with the Regions of Canada unit.  Resources, links, and information for all things Regions can be found here: Regions of Canada Resources. We encourage you all to take time to explore this with your child as Canada is one awesome place.

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

Sincerely,

Daniel Polsky

Grade 5 Teacher | Lakeshore School
Calgary Board of Education | cbe.ab.ca
Twitter | @mr_polsky
Instagram | @mr.polsky

Website | mrpolsky.com