Happy Holidays!

Dear Parents,

Wishing you the best over the New Year break. This time of year always brings out nostalgic memories of crafts and baking, so we sewed ornaments out of felt this past week and decorated gingerbread cookies. I've also sent home thank you notes for all kind gifts I received. Just in case they don't make it out of the backpacks, thank you very much again.

I've mostly done sewing with younger grades before and it's astonishing how much more Grade 6's can accomplish independently, but also what a wide range of skills and experiences they come with. On a personal note, this was deeply satisfying because one student in particular who hasn't been excited by any of my grand schemes so far this year was really happy about his newfound sewing skills.

We made circles

This badly cropped photo also shows some of the paper crafts we've been working on. This student embroidered a name into their pillow. 

This one is a snowflake

Here's a star

Here's the collection from Friday morning. You can also see a gingerbread man or two in there. 

 We mixed icing sugar with lemon juice and students used that to attach their candies and help create their gingerbread personalities:

In the afternoon, we watched Polar Express and I made hot chocolate, by student request after the Holiday Sing A Long.

Again, hoping you have a wonderful break. See you in 2020!

Sincerely,

Lisa Goegan

Literature Circles

Dear Parents,

Literature Circles are like book clubs for students. Each student has a role to complete and is marked on both their written completion of it and their oral participation in the group's meeting. We will also complete a spelling program and a Reading Response based on these books.

Each student takes a turn completing a different role. The roles I've chosen may change as students become more comfortable with the format and/or need to practice different skills. Each student received a package with all their role sheets and reading expectations in class. They will be given some time in class to complete but may need to bring work home, depending on their reading speed.

Extra copies of the role sheets can be found under the Language tab on this blog, in case students lose them.

For the first books we're reading students have chosen books that link to our social studies curriculum:

4 of these books link to different experiences of First Nations peoples and 3 link to other Canadian immigrant experiences (English/Irish, Chinese, and African). We wanted to give students lots of choices, so there's been some shuffling of books in the last week as new books I'd ordered arrived.

I have read or vetted all these books personally, and tried to pick books that were engaging, historically accurate, written by people from the community it discusses whereever possible, and age appropriate. If you have any questions or concerns about content or even how lit circles should work, please let me know.


Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan