Tuesday October 28th Update

Good evening everyone!

I thought I'd do a quick post on a couple of things!

Tribes

I forgot to put it on the calendar, but our Tribes assembly is this Thursday, so wear your house colours! I've put it on the calendar for the rest of the year; it's the last Thursday of every month :) Also, Gatestone has "Tribes Tuesdays" where students can wear their house colours and receive a token. Mrs. Tortola and I have decided as a team to not hand out tokens. Tokens are given out when a student demonstrates great behaviour or wears their house colour on Tuesdays. We are focusing on students being intrinsically motivated to demonstrate exceptional behaviour because they want to; not because they get a token. We aren't trying to go against school practice, but we feel as though this is the best fit for our students. Sorry for any confusion!

Homework!?

I told the students today that they had some homework to do tonight (or in the next couple of days). This stems from our V.I.P. Every student who has been V.I.P so far starts with the letter A. On Tuesdays, the V.I.P writes their name on the SMARTboard and draws a picture of something that starts with their "special letter". 5/6 students drew an apple, even after we had a discussion of drawing different things. Today during our V.I.P, I asked students, "What are some other things that start with the letter 'a'?", and the immediate responses were "apple tree" and "apple juice", hehe. Although humorous, I challenge every student to think of 5 words that start with the /a/ sound or the letter a :)

Math - A Sorting Game

Today during math, we practiced sorting students based on one rule. I started out by having some girls stand in one group and the boys in another group and asked students "How did I sort our friends?". Students quickly realized the boys were in one group and the girls were in another. We sorted by gender, or, by boys and girls :) Then, I grouped some blondes in one group (both boys and girls) and some brunettes in another, and students were thrown off. Some students said, "But there's boys and girls in that group". This tells me that we need to practice sorting using different rules. We will continue to practice this during our math lessons using objects next time instead of people. At home, practice sorting objects based on one rule. Example; by size, colour, shape, toys with wheels or without, etc. Have fun with it!

Introducing the Word 'an'

Today during literacy, we met a friend of mine named Dan! Watch the video below to learn about our literacy lesson- I thought I'd do it a bit differently this time! :)

Thanks for reading!

~ Miss Pliura & Mrs. Tortola