Feb 28

Today we had a surprise lockdown and I am super proud of how well everyone handled it.
In French we spoke about carnivorous plants and the differences between them. We then started a class novel study called Où sont les ours? (Where are the bears?)

Ask me what the following words or sentences mean:
Papier tue-mouches.
Les plantes carnivores se nourrissent en partie d'insectes.
Certaines plantes ont des fleurs très collantes.
Attirer: Les couleurs et les odeurs qu'elle dégage attirent les insectes
Dépaysé: Il n’avait jamais vu une montagne. Il se sentait complètement dépaysé.
Essentiel:  On dit que les choses importantes sont essentielles
Vide: Il n’y a rien dans le panier - c’est vide.

We worked on our journals and did some social studies in which we compared some traditional Ukrainian festivals with the celebrations we have in our homes.

Science

Recently we have been working with Google drive to try and get students more used to using technology. We have been researching animal hearing and we are planning to put this information into a Google slide or Google Doc. Students should have their login information at home, but should you require it, please send me an email and I can give you your login information.

Students are asked to work on their project over the weekend. It needn't be long, the idea is to just get students used to copying, pasting, searching and generally getting used to working with the Google Drive platform. 

Things to consider:- What frequencies is your chosen animal able to hear?- How are their ears better or worse than humans? How are they different?
- Try and include some pictures and/or a video related to the hearing of your animal if you can find it. Pictures may be hand drawn or off the internet. 

When finished it can be shared with me on parichardson@educbe.ca. by hitting share in the google drive platform.

If you have plans this weekend and will not be able to work on it this weekend, it’s ok if it comes sometime next week. 

Wishing you all a lovely weekend,

Mr. R

Feb 27

Today in French, we talked about butterflies and why they come in different colours. We learnt the different types of ways that butterflies can protect themselves from predators and the role these colours play in courtship.

Ask me what the following words or phrases mean:

" Les couleurs des papillons ne sont pas seulement jolies, elles sont utiles"
" Elles leurs servent de camouflage. Ça leur permet de passer inaperçus dans la nature pour échapper à leurs predateurs : les souris, les oiseaux et les renards"
" Le noir et l'orange du papillon monarch veut dire qu"il contient du poison"

In preparation for Calgary Opera coming to perform The Town Musicians of Bremen, we looked at different voices in opera including : sopranos, mezzo, tenor, baritone and bass. We talked about how many operas are performed in different languages such as Italian, French, German and Spanish. In order to ensure we understand the upcoming performance, we read the plot and acted it out. It was great fun pretending to be cats, donkeys, roosters and robbers!

We practised our cursive writing with the letters M and N and in English we wrote poems based around our roles from yesterday : bully, bullied or bystander.

We read some more of the Greek myths during snack time and we are eager to hear how Zeus punished humans for accepting the gift of fire from Prometheus.

An early reminder that Monday is library day.

We are still waiting for Pysanky eggs to come back form being polished. We will send them home as soon as possible and update if we have any more news.

Next week we will have a visit from Elder Randy and Sound Kreations. Sound Kreations will take place during PE and there will be a performance for families on Monday 16th March at 18:30-19:30. It will be a festival seating style performance, with families sitting on blankets. Please plan accordingly, should you wish to attend. I hope to see you there.

Scholastics order deadline is Friday the 6th of March. They can be submitted online through the Scholastic website. 

Feb 26

For Pink T-shirt day, we each picked a slip of paper from a bag that contained one of three roles : bully, bullied or bystander. We got into groups of three and discussed how people feel in each role when bullying is involved. We had some powerful reflections:

" Sad, scared, small and alone"

" I'd feel brave as a bystander. You have to say something"

" Even if you don't feel brave enough to say something to the bully, say something to an adult"

" I might be angry or sad. Something might be going on at home and I could be taking it out on the people around me. You never know what is going on in someone's life"

" You could try and reach out. Just saying "hello" could make someone's day"

We then designed our own T-shirts.

In French we worked in groups to review question words and then wrote some questions for a special guest in the afternoon. We then watched a video on ' Why we shear sheep' and used our whiteboards to try and write a summary of the video. We chose 3-4 important or interesting pieces of information to note down and checked our summary against the summary at the end of the video. 

In the afternoon we FaceTimed ( in French and English) with Dr. Jasmine Hasselback, who works as a public health doctor. This was in response to some comments students had made about coronavirus.

Dr Hasselback answered our questions about coronavirus and explained what Canada is doing to ensure the public stay fit and healthy. She told us what quarantine was, how her job is different to other doctors and how she works with many different groups such as firefighters, schools and police.

Before we packed up, we read from a book of Greek mythology about the Titans.

We also had P.E and Math where we had a multiplication assessment.

Ask me: 

Why do we shear sheep?

What happens if a sheep gets too hot?

What should we do if we cough?

Why did Cronus attack his father?

What did Cronus do to his children?

What happened when Uranus' blood hit the sea?

Feb 25

Just a reminder that there are 3 science resource quizzes available on the previous blog post, 2 in English and 1 in French. The French one is designed to be tricky, so keep practising!


We have 2 lots of homework tonight:

Maths

• For math homework tonight, students are asked to explain repeated addition, one of the multiplication strategies we have been learning. example: 5 x 5 is 5+5+5+5+5 

• Students can explain: 5 x 4 or/both 7 x 8

English

A booklet went home today based on The Iron Man. We started this in class today and some students finished. Students who did not finish were asked to take it home to complete.

In French, we have been looking at writing summaries/synopses. We watched a short video in French that explained how pimples are formed. We broke down the video and then asked ourselves "What were the 4 most important pieces of information in the video?" We found the video to be interesting and a great way to learn new vocabulary. We were most amazed by our white blood cells or our " body's soldiers".

In social studies, we started to read a text on the history of Ukraine and we will be looking at making a summary of this text going forward.

In science, we played quizzizz to review hearing and sound. Links to these can be found on the previous blog post. 

We practised our wiffleball skills with Monsieur Trevor.

Tomorrow is pink tshirt day.

Feb 24

We had a really packed day. We started off with a GOTD - How do parrots talk?

We then did some cursive writing, practising g,c,a,d and o.  We then practised these letters with some of the letters we have previously done to spell words such as : stairs, dog, carts and goats.

We played Poubelle with our morning kindergarten buddies, encouraging them to speak French and help with their number sequencing. 

A huge thank you to all the volunteers that came to help with Pysanky eggs. The kids had a blast!

In the afternoon we watched the first 10 minutes of The Pagemaster and compared it to the book.

In French we continued with our book/film/video game recommendations. We explained the need to talk about the characters, the setting, the problem or adventure and our favourite parts. We know not to include the solution or ending to our recommendation, but to try and describe it in an exciting, yet vague way.

We finished the day with some silly poetry from ' It's raining pigs and noodles'.

If you would like to practise your cursive writing at home, we are currently on lesson 5. Files can be found here. 


Practise quizzes  in English for hearing and sound can be found here. and here . Students are encouraged to try and do it at home. They can do it as many times as they wish and they should not need to create an account.

A French version can be found here ( with different questions). This is designed to be challenging. If you struggle at first, that is ok. Keep reviewing your mistakes and keep trying. Turn off the timer so that you can take the time to read the questions carefully.

February 21

Monday is Pysanky eggs.

We started the day with some silly poetry, comparing the rhyming sounds in a poem called " I've had a bad day".

We then practised our cursive writing.

We listened to a story called The Diary of a Worm.

Mr Trevor came and helped us upload our audiobooks and our gymnastics routines into IRIS using Google Drive.

Madame Moreau came to work on matrices with us in Math.

Spanish club: Please find attached some websites to practise what we have done so far.

Numbers 1-10

Numbers 1-10 song

Numbers 1-31

Colours

Pets

Greetings

Greetings song

Review games  1-7  ( We haven't done 2 yet, skip for now)

Nice upbeat Spanish song " Mother Earth"

Lyrics in English:

We must give love if we are to ask for it later

We must forgive in order to keep going

Remember that we have a one-way ticket

And that we must always be thankful for life

 

For life

For life

For life

For life

 

Listen

Open your eyes

Look up

Enjoy the good things that you have in your life

Open your eyes

Look up

Enjoy the good things that you have in your life

Lala lala

 

When you're lost and you don't know where you're going

Remember where you came from and how good you will feel

The rain always goes away

This is a mother's advice

That you'll get there with the blessing of your ancestors

Drum, drum, drum, the drum is calling

Drum, drum, drum of Mother Earth

Drum, drum, drum, the drum is calling

Drum, drum, drum of Mother Earth

 

Listen

Open your eyes

Look up

Enjoy the good things that you have in your life

Open your eyes

Look up

Enjoy the good things that you have in your life

Lala lala

 

Upwards

Lala lala

 

It's okay to fall but you have to get back up again

Don't throw stones at your neighbor if you have a glass roof

Don't be scared of the barking dog because it won't bite you

You'll get there with the blessing of your ancestors

 

Drum, drum, drum, the drum is calling

Drum, drum, drum of Mother Earth

Drum, drum, drum, the drum is calling

Drum, drum, drum of Mother Earth

 

Listen

Open your eyes

Look up

Enjoy the good things that you have in your life

Open your eyes

Look up

Enjoy the good things that you have in your life

Lala lala

 

Listen

Open your eyes

Look up

Enjoy the good things that you have in your life

Open your eyes

Look up

Enjoy the good things

Feb 20

Today we helped our Kindergarten buddies with their numbers and sequencing by playing a card game called Poubelle.

Today we looked at the story of Arachne and her weaving duel with Athena and watched the story of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. We read the story of the Trojan horse in both languages and learnt how to use Google drive on the iPads. Tomorrow we will be using this to share our audiobooks to IRIS and to work on sharing our science research on how animals hear.

We practiced our cursive writing with the sentence : sit stir its sir.

We also had music, maths and we played hockey in P.E.

Feb 19

Thank you to the parents who spotted the mistake in my email. We are of course doing Pysanky on the 24th of February, not January. We now have enough volunteers for Monday.
We had PE and then went to the library while Madame Courtney read us a book about à hockey jersey as part of our celebration of Canadian authors.

After math, we had lots of fun playing Kahoot to review hearing and sound. Some students have asked for this to be uploaded to blogger which I will do, but the questions will have to be moved to a different site as Kahoot is more for multiplayer classroom situations. We combined this with French to look at what extra clues we can gain from closely examining information in sentences. We also practised some cursive writing and looked at the letters IRT&S. How many words can you make from theses letters (you don’t have to use all of them). Can you write them in cursive?

In English we continued to work on our booklets on The Iron Man, practising spelling and summarizing the events of the story.

Our GOTD was ambergris. Ask me how whales could make us very rich.