Ms. Vanderwel's Room

I cannot believe we are already nearing the end of another year!  We have been busy with lots of exciting learning and special experiences. In writing, students continued developing their stories. They completed storyboarding their ideas and have now moved on to creating their rough drafts. It has been exciting to see their creativity come to life as they begin turning their plans into detailed stories.   In math, we wrapped up our unit on graphing. Students reviewed the different types of graphs we have learned about, identified the important parts of a graph, and practiced reading and interpreting the information displayed on graphs. In social studies, we began exploring the different levels of government and discussing the responsibilities of each level. We started by learning about the role of the mayor and discovered who Calgary’s mayor is. Our artists have been hard at work creating unique self-portraits. Students were given half of their face and followed a directed dra...

Hello and Happy Friday! Here's a peek at our week. This week the students began creating a story about an insect that gets lost and can't find it's way back home. Students outlined the details of their story in their journals and then used loose parts (e.g. blocks, popsicle sticks, other small objects) to build the setting of and orally tell their story to a partner. After creating their story using loose parts, students began storyboarding the parts of their story using illustrations. Next week, students will begin drafting the rough copy of their stories.  In math, students continued to develop their understanding of graphing. This week they learned about bar graphs and line or dot plots. Students learned how these graphs are similar to and different from pictographs and why you might use one type of graph over another.  In social studies, we began to look at the different groups that we belong to such as our family, classroom, school and teams. We discussed how the indiv...

In Language Arts, we listened to a variety of stories and practiced identifying important story elements. Students learned how to recognize the characters, setting, problem, and other key parts of a story. After each story, students reflected on what they had learned and recorded their thinking in their journals. This helped students strengthen both their reading comprehension and writing skills. In Math, we continued our learning about graphs. This week, students explored how graphs can help us answer questions and draw conclusions. They practiced "reading" graphs by looking carefully at the information presented and determining what the data was telling them. Students worked on comparing quantities, identifying the most and least common responses, and using graph information to answer questions. In Science, we learned about litter and pollution. Students discussed the difference between the two and explored how human actions can impact the environment. We talked about the 4...