Open houses for Grade 7 for Glen Ames, Quest and EAST

The flyers below will be coming home with students today. Please note:  there is additional information from Glen Ames regarding their French programs and also their application form.  The Glen Ames application is due by February 6th. 

Data Management anchor chart!!

December 4th

We will be walking up to Malvern right after lunch to see their Winter Concert -

Feel free to join us for an afternoon of music!!

Science Centre Trip was a HUGE Success!

What a day!!  We had an amazing day at the Ontario Science Centre today in their Challenger Space Centre.  Students were highly engaged in the simulation to start a lunar habitat on the Moon.  The even had to navigate their way through disaster scenarios.  One group had issues with the humidity in the spacecraft being too low, the second group was hit by a Coronal Mass Eruption from the Sun that knocked out all communication (except 1 headset and 1 camera without sound).  Students successfully worked together as a team to sort out what to do and managed to land on the Moon in the knick of time.  Many thanks to Gwen, Lisa and Tiffany who came along with us for the day!

Interviews:  Next Tuesday progress reports are coming come, with student-led interviews being held Thursday evening and Friday morning.  If you are unable to meet at those times, please let me know via email and we can schedule another mutually convenient time.  My email is leigh.salter@tdsb.on.ca

We're finishing off space and jumping into social studies.  Our social studies unit will focus on Canada's role in the world community.  In math, we're going to continue on with Patterning and next we start geometry (angles, shapes).

Happy November!!

Leigh Salter

From Mme. Helder: Les Correspondants

 In French class, room 26 is starting a pen pal project. They are writing to a grade 6 core French class at the TDSB school, Charles E. Webster. This is an excellent opportunity to practice French writing with a real purpose. They have already started writing about themselves, for example, their favourite colour, food, sports, etc., and they will receive their first letter next week. They have been discouraged from sharing personal information such as last names, phone numbers and addresses. The goal is to have the classes meet at the end of the project.

Mme. Helder

Mission Patch Success Criteria

Oct 14 - 17

Welcome back after a wonderful long Thanksgiving Weekend!!

I didn't give homework packages this week, but students will have some things that need to be worked on at home (but not in a formal package).

Today, they should have their mission patch for an upcoming field trip!  We're going on a mission to the Moon at the Science Centre on November 4th (no you haven't missed anything, the forms will be coming home later this week).  The patches are to be like those that NASA has for each of their space missions (we "Googled" them to get a sense of what they look like).  I'll get the success criteria posted ASAP!

We have also started another mini project where students will be creating a short multimedia presentation on a topic related to the Sun/Earth/Moon relationship.  I've suggested that they might get some research done at home, and that I'd like to have it ready to present starting (hopefully) this Friday and through next week (it'll be a rolling due date).  Students are welcome to use Prezi, PowerPoint or another program (just please ask them to run it by me first!).

Centennial!

We are looking for both student and parent volunteers to help with our Centennial Celebration on October 25th (during the day).  Please let me know if you're interested in helping out. 

Handing work in...

I've had some issues with students not completing and/or handing in completed work.  Please encourage your child to stay on top of their work to avoid any surprises or mass amounts of work going home for completion!

Book Chats
Each student chose a day to do a book chat between now and the end of November.  Please double check the date that they chose.  Each student has a sheet outlining what a book chat should have and also the rubric that they'll be marked on.  We will be adding one question - What challenges did a character in the book face?  How did they overcome those challenges?

Thanks!!

Leigh

BEDMAS Anchor Chart

Long Division anchor charts

Lattice Multiplication

Update - September 29, 2014

Happy Monday!  It's hard to believe that this is already the last Monday in September.  Also, we'll be starting extra help sessions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after school, unless I have a meeting. Students are asked to bring questions or things that they'd like to work on. 

Here's what we're up to:  We've moved on to long division and will next be looking at order of operations (BEDMAS, as you may be familiar with the acronym).  Students will be introduced to how brackets are used in math, but we will not be covering exponents (they are not part of the grade 6 curriculum).

We will be wrapping up our first science projects with presentations of the information posters that students have created.  The projects have been largely completed in class, with some students choosing to print some pictures at home.

Please note that we have now started reading responses that will be due each week.  Students have been given both a notebook and a page that gives them the outline of what to include as well as a marking rubric.  Their responses should be between 3/4 and a full page long.  They are due Monday through Thursday, depending on the student.

We've been having some interesting discussions regarding Terry Fox and Malala, perseverance and resilience.  Our inquiry question, how can we learn from failure and what does it take to overcome challenges, has been rather timely.  In the context of space, we've also read some excepts from Chris Hadfield's "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth" to discuss some of the challenges that he overcame in his journey to become an astronaut and eventually commander of the International Space Station.  Looking forward, students will, as part of their homework package, be asked to interview a parent regarding a time that they didn't succeed, and what was learned from that valuable experience.

Monday Update!

Hello!

Happy Monday!!

Our homework package this week included multiplication practice (yay!).  We're also launched into our cursive writing program.  Later in the year, we will be doing more cursive writing in class by submitting assignments that are in cursive.

For multiplication, we've gone over 2 different ways to multiply big numbers - traditional algorithm (the way that I learned in school with cross multiplying) and lattice.  Here are links to YouTube videos of each:

Traditional Algorithm:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k3aWF6_b4w
Multiplication Lattice:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS6TfWUv97I

I'm going to work on putting up a section on the blog that I can post useful website to, but it's a work in progress to learn how!

Thank you for your patience while I figure all of this out!

Leigh Salter

Important Dates and Homework!!

We've had a busy couple of weeks!  Students have been working on math with large numbers.  They have been comparing and ordering, using word/expanded/standard forms for writing numbers.  We've also reviewed addition and subtraction strategies.  Today, we started looking at multiplication strategies for large numbers - tradition algorithm and lattice (I'm going to try to post links to YouTube videos where you will be able to see them demonstrated).  In writing, we have been focusing on the writing process and using strong adjectives.  In science, we have begun our learning about space.  Students are working in pairs or threes to research a planet or other space related topic to create a fact sheet.

Upcoming Dates:
* Curriculum night tomorrow!
* Terry Fox walk - next Wednesday, pledge forms will come home this week.

Homework:
* Practice 3 and 4 times tables
* Read for 20 - 30 mins per day - This is very important!!
* Look at the YouTube videos to review strategies for traditional algorithm and lattice multiplying

Thanks for your patience while I learn how to blog!

Leigh Salter

Welcome to Room 26!

Welcome to Room 26!

This year I will be using our blog to communicate homework, class activities and also useful resources to help parents (and students) to be connected to our classroom.  Each week, I will be adding a post that  will have homework, things we've been working on in class and any upcoming important dates.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at leigh.salter@tdsb.on.ca.

Thanks!!

Leigh