First Project (and a more general update)

Dear Parents,

I sent home a timeline project outline earlier this week with students, which I hope you've had a chance to look at. Please let me know if there's been any slip between home and school. I've given a month, but I know that Halloween will be very busy for everyone, so please plan accordingly.

In my letter yesterday, I said I'd show some examples of other student projects from the web to inspire you. Here they are. The balance of words and pictures will of course depend on student ability. There are 6 events requested, and I would advise chunking this to do one a night with students.







In class, we've also brainstormed some questions for students to ask their parents. Here's a sample student letter and the big list of questions we generated this morning. The letter went home on Wednesday afternoon.





















In math news, we continue to work on triangle numbers and using manipulatives to help count bigger numbers. I'm noticing students using their own patterns to help them sort things in the wild as well:

Organized by colour

10 of light, 10 of black

Matching numbers is more fun with a magic cube

These guys made their own triangles

Dice games help build counting skills

In Social Studies news, we looked at residential schools as part of the Orange Shirt Day initiative. I used the book, "When I was Eight" and we compared our school experience to that of its protagonist, Olemaun. There's a display up in the hallway to show our thinking:

Olemaun had to sleep at school/I get to sleep in my own bed

Olemaun did not like the school/I love school because I love math

 You can see that students are relating their own experiences to those of Olemaun. It's not always clear if students get the big picture yet, but by introducing these things early and building empathy, one hopes to start the process.

We also read another book called "Shin-Chi's Canoe" about a little boy sent to residential school, who keeps his toy canoe. Students talked about what they would keep from home to remember. Answers ranged from photos of their families to stuffies that grandmothers had given them.

In reading news, we played some games with letters. This group was practicing using magnetic letters to make their words and then using some fancy writing skills to write them on the white board:

Hope this gives you a good picture of the work we're doing together and a sense of the kinds of games we play to help us learn.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan