Friday 26 February 2016

Friday February 26th!

Thank you to all students and parents who came for our Tanga Night last evening!  It was great to see almost everyone there.  We always enjoy seeing our past students as well so thank you to those who came back to say hello!  The students were very proud of their art and their writing.

Sorry for the undefiled blog today!  The most important reminder is for Monday!

Monday February 29 is National Cupcake Day!
Cranston will be celebrating national cupcake day in support of the Alberta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Alberta SPCA).  As a part of our Community Building work at Cranston School, students will have the opportunity to purchase one cupcake on Monday February 29th for $1.00. All of the proceeds will be donated to the Alberta SPCA. Please have your child bring exact change ie. (loonies,quarters). We do expect that there will be extra cupcakes and students will be given an opportunity to purchase a second cupcake later in the day. A huge thank you to the volunteers who are donating cupcakes for Monday!  If you signed up to volunteer please see message below:
To all Cupcake Volunteers for Monday February 29th!


Thank you for volunteering to assist on Monday February 29th!  Parents will be dropping off their cupcakes first thing in the morning.  We will gather in the staff room at 9:00 am to begin organizing the trays of cupcakes.  Please sign in through the office prior to 9:00.

Each volunteer will be assigned a classroom to sell the cupcakes and gather the money.   Once each child has had an opportunity to purchase a cupcake, we will reload the trays and offer a second one prior to lunch break if they have brought another loonie.

Thursday 25 February 2016

Thursday, February 24th, 2016 - Tanga Day

Good Afternoon Everyone,

Monday February 29 is National Cupcake Day!
Cranston will be celebrating national cupcake day in support of the Alberta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Alberta SPCA).  As a part of our Community Building work at Cranston School, students will have the opportunity to purchase one cupcake on Monday February 29th for $1.00. All of the proceeds will be donated to the Alberta SPCA. Please have your child bring exact change ie. (loonies,quarters). We do expect that there will be extra cupcakes and students will be given an opportunity to purchase a second cupcake later in the day. A huge thank you to the volunteers who are donating cupcakes for Monday!  If you signed up to volunteer please see message below:
To all Cupcake Volunteers for Monday February 29th!


Thank you for volunteering to assist on Monday February 29th!  Parents will be dropping off their cupcakes first thing in the morning.  We will gather in the staff room at 9:00 am to begin organizing the trays of cupcakes.  Please sign in through the office prior to 9:00.

Each volunteer will be assigned a classroom to sell the cupcakes and gather the money.   Once each child has had an opportunity to purchase a cupcake, we will reload the trays and offer a second one prior to lunch break if they have brought another loonie.


Was there something in the water this afternoon?  Hmmmm I think we had a bit of full moon after effect.  It was a little crazy this afternoon and we had to have a bit of discussion about what being a friend is and what it is not.  Yesterday was a great day to celebrate no more bullying and today... well we need a bit of a refresher course.

In math today we continued learning about multiplication through problems.  Mrs. Bowles started off by going to her favourite Vietnamese restaurant.  The problem started with how many chopsticks would I need?  Then I got a little lonely so I invited Mrs. Zwack, Mr. Demman, Mr. W., and Ms. H.  Then how many chopsticks would I need?  We looked at different strategies to try and figure out the problem.  Some used drawing a picture, some used tallies, some used repeated addition and some doubled the number of people.  Then we decided to make a party out of the visit to the Vietnamese restaurant and invited everyone in the class!  We had 29 people and we had to find out how many chopsticks we would need.  Again, everyone had some great strategies.  We did find out that we would need 58 chopsticks.
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In our science inquiry, the scientists did some research. We looked at what transpiration is. We will continue to research this and share what we learned with everyone.  Some of the other botanists were looking at the scientific names for the parts of the plants.  If you are going to be a scientist you are going to have to use the correct terms.
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In gym, we continued our work on dribbling.  We played a couple of games to help us get better at ball control.
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1.)  Don't forget that tonight is Tanga Art Sale - all of our work is for sale for $10.

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What did you learn from completing your Tanga project?  What are you most proud of?  What would you do differently next time?

Wednesday 24 February 2016

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 24

Pink Shirt Day - End Bullying Today

This morning was very calm and productive as we worked diligently on our Tanga projects.  Mrs Zwack worked with students on adding stamps and finishing touches to sparkle up the book covers.  Mr. Demman worked with Guided Reading groups to see where our students are at!  In between, students worked on Daily 5 independently.  We were very impressed with how the students worked in such a focused manner and were patient, kind and helpful to one another.

During our Social Studies Inquiry we worked in our groups to finish the sentence

IF I WENT TO SCHOOL IN  ________ (name of country) I WOULD . . .

We listed ideas about what we would wear, how we would get to school, what our classroom might look like, what we would bring to school and what we might learn about.  These ideas will be the basis for our presentation at the assembly on March 4th!

Our afternoon totally flew by!  Even with dance being cancelled due to our instructor being ill, we definitely had enough to fill our time.

In math, we continued our work on multiplication. We re-examinded the work that we did with our Candy Boxes yesterday.  Today we looked at what an array was.  We learned the difference between rows and columns.  We defined an array.  Students learned a new game called Cover Up.   We also looked at how to write a multiplication equation using our arrays.

In our science inquiry, we continued to delve into our projects.  The botanists looked at a blog from Mars-One about the experiments that they have done growing plants for their trip to Mars.
Here is the link to the blog. Check it out and see what they are doing and how it compares to what we are doing.

https://community.mars-one.com/blog/category/food-for-mars

We also talked about how we are planning on fertilizing our plants... can you say urine and feces?  We are going to investigate my these are important and how we would do that.  DON'T WORRY - we will not be using human waste to fertilize our plants :0

We looked at the plants we grew last week. THEY HAVE GERMINATED. We wrote down our observations and measured and watered our plants. We were really excited.



The engineering group worked with Mr. Demman and looked at their plans. He had many questions that made them think about their plans and where they should go next with them.

We finished off our afternoon with Pink Shirt Day.  We watched the The Story of Pink Shirt Day. If you would like to watch it click on the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjmf3I1_ZhU


We wrote our our promises to end bullying.

Things to Remember:
1.)  Tanga Thursday 6:00 - 7:30 pm.  If you cannot attend and would like to purchase your work -please email Mrs. Zwack and we will put a sold sticker on the work.  All art work is $10.

2.)  Cupcake Day - please bring a dollar for cupcakes on Monday.

Question of the Day:

How has bullying affected you?  What can you do to be the change you want to see in the world?

Tuesday 23 February 2016

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2016



Good Afternoon Learners,

This morning was very busy preparing our writing for our Tanga projects and working on our Word Work in between Tanga jobs!   Mr. Demmon was a big help in working with students and assisting with typing.  Our project has taken a great deal of time, patience and heart to complete!  We have been writing about the Right to education and what our personal thoughts and feelings are about this important topic.  We are very impressed with the depth of thinking of our students and we think you will be too!  Tomorrow we will be adding the finishing touches to our projects and if all goes well, we will be ready a day ahead of our Tanga event!  This will be a "first" for Mrs. Zwack!!

If you are not able to come to our Tanga event but would still like to purchase your child's art piece, please send Mrs. Zwack an e-mail to let her know.  You can send in your $10.00 and we will out a SOLD sticker on your child's piece.  It will then be sent home on Friday if payment has been received.  If you are not interested in purchasing your child's art piece, please let us know and we can then allow it to be sold to someone who might be interested or it will become a gift for school visitors.  We look forward to seeing you at the Tanga event on Thursday evening!

After a snack and movement break,we worked in our Inquiry groups to brainstorm our Wonders and What we Want to know about education in our chosen country.  We focused our lesson on asking deep and rich questions rather than questions with short or one word answers.    Tomorrow and Thursday we will be looking for sources of information to try to answer our questions.

Our afternoon was filled with wonder.  Firstly, in math we looked at a problem that had to do with candy boxes. Yum!  Our challenge was to find all of the boxes possible for 24 candies.  Boxes had to rectangular and one candy could fit in each square.  The candies could only be packed one layer deep. All of you took this challenge very seriously and used unifix cubes and squares to create your designs.  Looking at the pictures below and predict what this challenge has to do with multiplication?



In science, we continued to connect communicating our scientific understanding with writing.  Today we looked at the 3 R's of Science Writing:  Reiterate, Reflect and Relate.  Today we wrote about 9 sentences that fit this writing plan.  We will share them with you soon on our KidBlog.

In gym, we continued to work on dribbling.  We played a game of 52 Card Pick Up while dribbling. Tell you parents all about the game.
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1.) Tomorrow is Pink Shirt Day - please wear a pink shirt to show your support for anti-bullying.
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2.)  Cast members for Annie you have your first official practice tomorrow at lunch.
3.)  Important note from Mrs. Jones:
We began our pre corder unit in music class today. Students who ordered a precorder through the school have each received theirs and it has been labelled. Students will bring their precorders to school every Tuesday for instruction. They will then practice throughout the week at home and be prepared to play and learn again in class on the following Tuesday. (Similar to taking a music lesson.) Students can choose to print off the music or simply play along on the computer. Occasionally the students will need their precorders on Fridays, so keeping them in their backpacks is what I have encouraged the students to do. The website below is the one we are using has everything your child needs to practice. I would suggest bookmarking it so your child can find it easily. Please email or call me if you have any questions or concerns. Happy performing!

http://portablerecorder.weebly.com

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Mrs. Bowles' head is so stuffed up she can't think of a question of the day.  Please help her out for suggestions for a question.
Thanks

Monday 22 February 2016

Monday, February 22nd, 2016

Good Evening Everyone,

Welcome Back to Mr. Demman our student teacher.  Mr. Demman will begin to take over the class under the guidance of Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Zwack over the next eight weeks.  We look forward to his ideas and teaching.

In math today we began our preparation for our multiplication and division learning. Today we did a self-assessment and reflection on our learning of addition and subtraction.  We also had the chance to do a pre-assessment on multiplication and division. We are getting really good at understanding that these help the teacher prepare our learning around what we already know and what we need to be successful.

In our science inquiry we focused on the "writing of science."  We looked at the writing skills that scientists use to document their understanding and the experiments that they are doing.  We listed that scientists need to be able to write about:
Procedures
Observations
Journals/Notes
Experiments
Findings
We then took some time to write about what we are currently doing in our science inquiry.

In gym today we continued our work on dribbling and control in basketball.  We warmed up with completing laps around the gym while dribbling. Mrs. Bowles introduced us to a new warm up called Dribble Tag - we had to knock away others basketballs while controlling our own.  If our ball was knocked away we had to leave the game area and do 25 jumping jacks.  We also worked on our dribbling skills with two relay activities.
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1.)  Tanga Night is this Thursday Evening
2.)  Mrs. Bowles will be away this Friday and Mrs. Zwack will be away next Monday and Tuesday.
3.)  Monday is our Cupcake Day  - please bring a loonie for a cupcake.

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Tell us about what you are currently doing in our science inquiry.  Write 3 sentences about what you are working on.  What have you learned or noticed?  What are you planning on doing next?

Thursday 18 February 2016

Thursday, February 18th, 2015

Good Evening Everyone,

This morning was a Crazy Cranston morning!  We worked on our Tanga Book projects, got our new Words Their Way words (except for one more  group!!) and worked on our Right to Education Inquiry.  We were fortunate to have Miss Hadala and Mr. W. in to help and Mrs. Zwack was extremely grateful!

This afternoon in math we "Showed What We Know" about addition and subtraction. Students were to find their best math hiding spot to complete the questions.  I know that some of this was frustrating for some but we know that our brains don't grow until we are a little bit frustrated and learn to how to overcome and problem solve.

Our science inquiry is taking over our lives!  We have changed some of our thinking as we learn more about Mars, structures and plants.  The structures group continued their work on planning more of a colony building. They are making sure that they have added bathrooms that we can collect the solids from for fertilizer.  The botanists in their planting found out that there is moisture on the dome of the containers of the planters. Their task is now to find out why this moisture is there.  They also talked about using this to water the plants and maybe even use for water for humans.

In gym we are continuing our work on basic ball skills.  Today we worked on moving while dribbling the basketball.

Wednesday 17 February 2016

Wednesday February 17

This morning students worked well to complete three rounds of Daily 5 and three groups read with Mrs. Zwack in Guided Reading.  It is great see our students working independently at their literacy tasks and building their skills together.  Some groups received their new Words Their Way words if they are in Mrs. Peterson's groups.  Mrs. Zwack's groups will get theirs tomorrow!

After snack, read aloud and a quick movement break, we started working on our Tanga Book projects.  As can be expected, the process took a little bit longer than Mrs. Zwack anticipated!  The grade 3's have all painted their book covers and they are now ready for collage work tomorrow.  It was interesting to see what colors each student chose to work with as they lay down their base "abstract" coat of paint.  They are looking fantastic so far!  The grade 4's will do their painting tomorrow.

This afternoon was exciting to say the least.

In math, we continued our work on addition and subtraction word problems.  We looked at how questions can be worded in a variety of ways that may sometimes confuse us. We we can figure out what they are trying to ask us.  We also investigated ways to check our work to see if it is correct by adding the numbers for our subtraction questions.

In our science inquiry, we looked at some information from the mars-one.com
We found out that they is actually a mission planned for people to go live on Mars. They have selected a number of people already. From this information we looked at how they plan to live on the planet.  The engineer group decided to adapt their prototypes of their structures to create more of a colony.  The scientists today continued to look at plants.  Today they planted some tomato seeds in a container to see how fast that they would grow.  We will use the container as part of our structure later on.  Tomorrow we will continue to plant some of the best choices of plants - healthiest as well as fast growing.




Our dance was cut a little short because one of our friends got sick.  We want everyone to know that she will be fine and that we hope that she will be back in class tomorrow.  Thank you to everyone for staying calm and helping out.  We are lucky to have such great students in our class.

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1.)  Hug your parents
2.) Friday we will be going on our Nature Community walk please dress for the weather.

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In the book Auggie and Me, Grandmere said,  But the good thing about life, Julien, is that we can fix our mistakes sometimes. We learn from them we get better.  You will learn from your mistake too. One mistake does not define you."

What do you think Grandmere meant when she said this? Do you agree with her?  What are your thoughts about Julien now?



Tuesday 16 February 2016

Tuesday, February 16th, 2016

Welcome Back,

We started the morning Working on Writing as a whole class and we are working hard on our goals which we will reassess at the end of next week.

Next, we had a presentation about Natural Resources from a representative, Megan,  from Inside Education. She taught us all about the natural regions of Alberta, renewable and non-renewable resources and jobs in Alberta around the natural resources.  Thank you to Inside Education for the great presentation.





After read aloud and a movement break in the beautiful sunshine, we met with Mrs. Peterson's class to begin preparing for our Right to Education Inquiry.  We reviewed the various countries that we have studied so far and students chose one to do some more inquiry around.  Small groups will be focusing on one of the 9 countries and we will be sharing our learning at our assembly on March 4th!

This afternoon we started with music.

In Math, we continued our work on addition and subtraction word problems. We looked at a number of problems and highlighted the phrases or words that helped us to decide if it was an addition or subtraction problem.  Mrs. Bowles met with many of us to see what we know and what strategies that would help us with both addition and subtraction.  We will be having a "Show What We Know" on Thursday afternoon about addition and subtraction.

Our Read Aloud is VERY intense!  Today we learned about Julien's Grandmere who lives in Paris. She told the story about her life in France growing up during the second World War.  We had to keep reading and so we missed our science inquiry.  We will take more time tomorrow to continue our work on Mars.

Please if you have any of the following materials that you could share with us to help us build our structures it would be greatly appreciated:
Things We Will Need for Building:
1.)  Toilet Paper Rolls
2.)   Straws
3.)  Lego
4.) plastic rope
5.)  play dough
6.) marshmellows
7.) duct tape
8.) tinfoil
9.) cardboard boxes - cut down into bases for our designs
10.) ziplock bags
11.)  siran wrap


Things to Remember:




Please return National Cupcake Day forms for baking and volunteering (pink sheet sent home last week). Thank you to those who have already responded.  We appreciate your support of this school wide fundraiser for the Alberta SPCA.


TOMORROW will be the LAST DAY OF AUDITIONS.

We are looking to see anyone who missed an audition or call back due to illness or family holiday.

They need to bring their lunch to the music room tomorrow and be prepared to read lines and / or sing tomorrow.



Thank you all for your support! 

Question of the Day:

What did you think about Julien's  Grandmere's story today?  What were you feeling as you heard it?  Do you have any wonders?