Wednesday

Hello all!

Now that Science Fair is coming to a close, we can turn our attention to the other units in our curriculum. We began our study of the Canadian Government today and this will continue for several weeks. Talking with your child about Confederation and the current structure of our government, as well as the division of services amongst the three levels would be a support to the material covered in class.

Our study of Holes is progressing well, and today the children were assigned a "Friendly Letter" (two blue pieces of paper with instructions and a checklist). The rough draft is to be completed by Friday, April 25th, and there will be time given in class to complete this assignment. Early submissions are welcome. I have given ample time because I would like students to take pride in this assignment and give 110% effort - this means doing some editing work of their own before handing it in for my help! We have been talking in class about what it means to Minimally Meet Expectation, Meet Expectations, Fully Meet Expectations and to Exceed Expectations. We all agreed that while students want to receive an "Exceeding Expectations", it is difficult to achieve and requires creativity, thoughtfulness and real effort. It must come from within, but I'd like to stir up that drive by challenging the class to give their full effort in class and achieve much more than their best.

The orange contact information for camp should be coming in as soon as possible, please (Friday at the latest).

We are still covering Decimals in Math -- some links to the left will take you to some fun games to reinforce the concepts we are studying, if you're interested. Children looking to take their study of Decimals further are encouraged to see me for some extension work -- I'd like to see everyone in my homeroom class achieve success in this unit.

The civvies Day on Friday in celebration of the Candy Drive coincides with a guest speaker for the entire Grade 5 class by Mr. Myron Sullivan who has graciously agreed to speak with us about oil spill clean-up technology. It will be great!

As always, please feel free to speak with me at any time about your child - I really do want this year to be a positive one for all of the members of our 5G community, and communication is the key!

Thank you!