Week of January 11th

It's Friday already?!?

Welcome to another Week In Review for Room 204.  This has been an action-packed week, and our first official full week back since the Winter Break, as we spent half the week at Lake St. George last week. 

We got back into the swing of things, and continued our work on our holiday essays.  Throughout the week, we've been writing the body of our essay (the paragraphs about the three activities we've chosen to write about), and we started to learn how to write a good introductory paragraph to an essay.  I showed you how to begin by talking about the essay's main idea generally (in our case, how everybody thinks about holidays), then becoming more specific (how our families think about holidays), and finally writing about the main idea very specifically (how was my holiday).  We also discussed giving your readers a quick glimpse at the activities they would be reading about later on in our essay by briefly listing the subjects of our 3 body paragraphs.

In math, we did really well on our final decimals test.  We took them home last night (Thursday) to be signed and returned to school.  If you haven't brought back your test for me yet, please do so as soon as possible.  Today we started our new unit on data management by interpreting data in graphs and tables.  We thought this was a breeze, and sailed through the assigned questions!

In Social Studies, we began to play the Headbands game using famous Canadians as our subjects.  We had a great discussion on the role of women in history, and how important it has been and continues to be for brave people to stand up and fight for what they believe in.  Women like Nellie McClung and Agnes Macphail showed incredible bravery, and we thought they are very inspirational!  We will be using these people to create timelines of important moments in Canadian history next week.

In Science, we started our new unit about Forces On Structures.  We learned that we measure force with Newtons (N), and we practiced measuring force using spring scales.  We had a lot of fun running around the room looking for the items with the most force.

This was a difficult week for the world.  The devastation in Haiti after the earthquake provided a perfect opportunity for all of us in Room 204 to stop and think about how lucky we are to live here in Canada, and about the responsibilities we have as citizens of this country.  After watching footage of Haiti and seeing photographs, you all wanted to do what you could to help those in need. 

Grade 5s, I am always so proud to be your teacher, but at that moment, I couldn't have been prouder.  Arissa, you led the class by asking what we could do as a class to show our support for the Haitians.  Thank you for your maturity and sensitivity!  What a caring and empathetic response. 

We spent time this afternoon making posters and writing announcements about our upcoming Dance-a-thon to raise money for the Red Cross's efforts in Haiti.  Click on the Red Cross for a link to see how the money you raise will help. 

Above: Writing announcements to help spread the word

Above: Creating beautiful posters for our hallways

By helping to organize our Dance-a-thon, you are all proving what a difference children can make in the world.  You are all inspirations for us adults!

Above: Using the computer to research Haiti

Above: Working together to make our Dance-a-thon a success!

One of my favourite quotations is from Mahatma Gandhi, a man who dedicated his life to peace.  He said,

Be the change

you want to see

in the world.

By demonstrating your concern and compassion for those in Haiti, you truly are, Grade 5s, being the change we need to see in the world.

See you Monday.

-Ms. Lewis.