Snow Day, Holy Trinity, JA Program & Math Night

Happy Snow Day! Hard to believe this is the middle of April. Hope everyone is safe today.

This is going to be a busy week in Grade 6! On Tuesday, we are going Holy Trinity for Transition Day, which students always enjoy. We will be doing a tour of the school in groups, and then watching a presentation by the students of Holy Trinity. We should be back at St. Anne between 1:30 - 2:00. 

On Thursday from 6:30 - 8PM is our St. Anne Math Night. This was a very enjoyable evening last year, and I expect it will be just as much fun this year. During the Math Night, parents and children will have a chance to do some activities that students do in our classes. Mathnasium will be here this year as well with some games and door prizes. Looking forward to seeing you there!

On Thursday, the grade 6's will also be having volunteers come from the JA Program to teach us about Marketing and Business. Here is a description of the program from their website:

JA Be Entrepreneurial Junior (Grades 5 & 6) This is an interactive and engaging one-day program that introduces Grade 5 & 6 students to the fundamentals of starting a business and the opportunities and challenges of being an entrepreneur. Through key entrepreneurial concepts, including product, service, and competitive advantage and target market, students develop an understanding of how businesses thrive. 

Lately we have been practicing reading and writing for EQAO by completing an EQAO practice test each week. We have been writing the test one day, then taking up and self-assessing the next. After students have seen a good quality response, I ask them to try to improve it. After, we do the same process for writing samples. In the assessment folders, you will see the original answers on the practice tests, and the improved (hopefully!) answers on a lined piece of paper attached. For homework the next few weeks, we will be doing some reading assignments in a program called readworks.org. This website allows students to read an article, and then answer some multiple choice questions, followed by some short answer questions. This is excellent practice for EQAO.

In math, we have been continuing to learn about ratio and their relationships to fractions, decimals and percents. When working with more complicated problems involving fractions, I try to ask students to relate their responses to decimals because they can be easier to compare, and perform operations with. At this point, students usually begin to get a little confused by all the different ways we represent fractions (i.e. mixed numbers and improper fractions, decimals, percents, ratios). They need a good deal of practice to remember how to work with all of these. For homework, I will be assigning Mathletics for students to practice concepts we are going over in class. I highly recommend students complete any other assignments in addition to this. 

In science, we are getting to the end of our units on Conservation of Energy (Grade 5) and Space (Grade 6). We have begun a final project for each grade. The Grade 5's are designing a house that is energy efficient, and the Grade 6's are writing a report about a feature of space, and then constructing a model of it in the classroom. I imagine this will take a few weeks, after which we will have a test. I will send home their worksheets beforehand so that students can study. 

Have a great week everyone. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at school any time.