Tuesday 26 January 2016

Questions for Novel Study Books

This week students began reading novels as part of a novel study. Each week they will read a number of chapters and answer some questions. When they are finished the novel, they will have a choice of culminating task to show their understanding.

Here are the questions for this week (Week 1).


Monday 25 January 2016

Characteristic of Good Presentations and How to Persuade

As part of our Entrepreneurial Adventure, today we learned how to create quality presentations that will get people's interest. We also learned about how to persuade others to get what we want. We learned that there are 6 basic principles to this. The below video is the one we watched in class.



Here is a link to the website we looked at which describes the elements of a quality presentation:

Quality Presentation

Wednesday 20 January 2016

Joy of Read Bookmark Sale

Does reading bring you joy?  Does it take you on a new adventure to places you’ve never been before?  Wednesday, January 27th is Family Literacy Day, a day which encourages families to take 15 minutes to read together. ALL Saint Anne students will be able to wear pyjamas and bring a stuffie to school to celebrate this special day.  

The Grade 2 classes will be selling bookmarks to help raise money to buy books for families in need.  For one loonie, you can purchase one beautiful origami bookmark or two lovely ribbon paperclip bookmarks made by a grade 2 student. Please bring one dollar to school on Wednesday, January 27th and you can help spread the joy of reading to others.  

Monday 18 January 2016

Entrepreneurial Adventure Progress

Today we started working on our entrepreneurial adventure program project by developing a business proposal. I helped students with this by giving them a template to start working with and we wrote part of it together using an imaginary company - Mr. Pouliot's Schoolyard Snack Shack!

Our goal is to hopefully finish the written proposals by Thursday, and then work on an oral/media presentation next week to present our proposal to our judges. We would like to choose our business by having a "Dragon's Den" style presentation from each group. So far, the business ideas sound really good!

Here is the template for the business proposal that we have begun in class. Once a business has been chosen, we will begin assigning roles to all of the students and begin developing our business ideas. 

Wednesday 13 January 2016

Science test Wednesday, January 20th

Next Wednesday, our afternoon class will be having a test on everything we have learned about electricity in our recent unit. Students have learned a lot about this unit in the last couple of months, so I think they will understand most of what they need to know. Below is a link to some study notes for the test. The test will only cover items that are on the study notes. These notes were handed out to all students today in class, and I asked them to place them in their agendas. Please review these with your child so that they are prepared for our test next week. If you have any questions, please contact me at the school any time.

Electricity Science Notes


Tuesday 12 January 2016

Our Entrepreneurial Adventure Begins!

Today Mr. Adam Barrett, a volunteer from BMO came to our class and helped us get started in our Entrepreneurial Adventure Program. In this program, our class will be starting a small business and then donating the proceeds to a charity of our choice.

We began today by gathering some ideas for a charity that we might like to donate to, and then students presented their ideas to the class by trying to "sell" their charity to the class. In the end, we chose to donate our proceeds to the humane society. All of the ideas from students were great and students were able to clearly tell why their charity was a good choice, even given the limited amount of time they had to prepare their ideas. Great work!

Our next step is to choose a business that we would like to start. Today students gathered and started brainstorming some ideas for businesses. Next, they are going to gather and develop a business proposal that they will present "Dragon's Den" style. Perhaps we'll call it the "Lion's Den"!
In the next couple of weeks, they will present their business proposal to the class and then we will vote on the business idea we think is most achievable and appropriate for our class.

I am very excited about this program, because I think it will tie together many concepts in math and language, as well as provide some valuable experience for students in a real life situation. I will be updating often to demonstrate student progress, as well as to demonstrate the links between the curriculum and this project.


Monday 11 January 2016

January 27th is Literacy Day!

January 27th is Literacy Day, and students are being asked to wear their PJ's to school and have some time to get into a good book. On that day, I will be spending some time doing a read aloud which I hope students will enjoy, and then they will have a good amount of time to read a favourite book of their choice. We will be discussing what makes a good book in the days leading up to Literacy Day.

If you are interested in joining us to either read a special book to the class or simply read for a while with your child, please feel free to come to our class on January 27th to do so. We will be reading together from about 11AM until 12PM. All are welcome!

Image result for literacy day 2016

Tuesday 5 January 2016

Welcome to 2016!

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday and is ready for a busy New Year. The rest of the year will fly along in Grade 6 as we prepare for Confirmation, EQAO testing and our Leaving Ceremony. Don't blink!

This month, we are beginning new units in both Language and Math. In Language, we are beginning a unit on making predictions. We will be reading fictional news articles written from the point of view of neighbourhood dogs, and making predictions about them throughout. When teaching this skill, I try to emphasize to students that as readers we make predictions all through our reading, and adjust them as we read new information. I also try to emphasize the importance of treating a prediction as an educated guess, in which we use what we already know in the story, as well as our own experience, to help us make our "guess". When writing about our predictions, it is important to explain this background evidence in order to fully justify our thinking. As a writing component, we will be writing news articles, and reading them out loud in a newscast to practice our oral language skills.

In math , we are beginning measurement. In this unit, we will be learning about calculating the surface area area and volume of rectangular prisms. We will also learn how to compare cubic centimeters to cubic meters, and we will develop a deeper understanding of units of capacity and units of mass. Reviewing the concepts of area, perimeter and converting metric measures will be important during this unit as well.

Below is a blendspace unit I put together to review the main concepts we will be studying. I will be adding to it throughout the unit, so please bookmark it and come back to it often to review the concepts with your child. If you notice your child struggling with any of the concepts, please let me know early through a phone call or note in the agenda, so I can better assist him/her. This can be a challenging unit for many students, so I like to ensure we review past concepts and build on the new ones for this grade.

Unit 6 - Measurement Blendspace


Converting Metric Measurements


Surface Area


Volume of Rectangular Prisms