Ms. Vanderwel's Room

  Here's a look at our work this week...                --------------------------------------- In writing we continued to work through the research process learning about monarch butterflies. We learned how to create jot notes and turn them into sentences. Next we will add photos and captions. In social we began to examine the community of Metaghan in Nova Scotia.  We learned that Nova Scotia is a maritime community because it's near the ocean. We studied some of the geographical features that are common to this type of landscape such as beaches, cliffs, coves, and bays. We also learned that Nova Scotia has many trees and 75% of the province is covered in forests. In math we finished learning about patterns and engaged in some fun centres activities to review the concepts learned. Next week we will have a wrap up quiz before moving on to geometry.  In Health and P, E students have been tracking how much time they spend being active...

Happy May long, Everyone! I hope you all have a lovely & relaxing long weekend : )  Here's what we've been up to this week!               -------------------‐---‐------------‐------ This week we focused on the many different ways to spell the 'air' sound (i.e. air, ear, are). We watched a video introducing the sound, brainstormed words with that sound (I.e. hair, pair, pear, bear, bare, care, scare etc.) and completed some Making Words activities. We also looked at what happens to the spelling of a word that ends in /y/ when we add -ed (i.e. carry = carried). The last couple weeks we have been reading the Fly Guy  books by Tedd Arnold during Author Study.. These delightful and charming books are a wonderful choice for budding readers. They contain simple text and humorous illustrations that engage and entertain young readers while helping them to build their reading skills.. The students have really enjoyed this book series and are e...

Happy Friday! Here's a look at our week : )  ------------------------------------------------------------------ In ELAL, we looked at the suffix -ed. Students learned when we use it (i.e. to show past tense) and also how it affects the spelling of a word. For example, in some words you simply add -ed (e.g. jump = jumped) but or other words you need to double the last letter and then add -ed (e.g. hop = hopped). Students built words using their moveable alphabet listening carefully to the sounds. This week, we looked at the daily life of people living in Nunavut today and compared it to daily life in our own community. Students learned that people living in Nunavut have very similar lives to ours with some important differences. For example, they eat many of the same foods, go to school, have a variety of jobs and live in modern homes with the same modern conveniences. On the other hand, they eat many traditional foods (e.g. whale, blubber, seal, arctic char), learn about their own ...

Here's a look at our week... --------------------------------------------------------------- In language arts we looked at plural nouns. Students learned that when a word ends in x, s, ss, ch, z and o you add -es.  We played a fun online game and completed an activity sheet to reinforce the concept. Students continue to review the letter sounds, letter clusters, diagraphs and long vowel sounds that we have been learning over the year and use this knowledge to read increasingly challenging texts. In math, we began learning about patterns. We learned that a pattern is something you can predict. Some patterns repeat terms over and over such as: red/black/red/black. Other patterns repeat a number sequence such as: 2, 4, 6, 8 etc... (add 2 each time).  Students also learned to create patterns using a variety of criteria-- i.e. colour, shape, size, direction etc. Finally, they learned to identify the core and terms of a pattern.  In Science, we continued to explore living syste...