Thoughtful Thursday, December 15, 2016

We worked in our different literature circle groups this morning. Our groups will continue after the winter break and we will have the opportunity to select new novels to read and discuss. Remember to read over the break.  We were adding the finishing touches to our trading cards today and are handing them in tomorrow. Some of our finishing touches included learning how to draw our animal. The assembly this afternoon was very well attended and fun to watch. We had the opportunity to learn the dances over the past few weeks and our turn is tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. Remember tomorrow is pajama day and early dismissal. Remember to dress for the weather!

Wondering Wednesday, December 14, 2016

We continued with our literature circles this morning. It has been interesting reading and talking in our groups about our books. We will be continuing the literature circles after the winter break and we are being encouraged to read over the break and share what we have read with our parents. The Public Library is a great place to sign out books over the winter break. We continued to finish the research and write up about our animal communication and hearing. In physical education we practiced our dance (Christmas Tree) for the assembly on Friday and we even learned a new dance today (Miracle). Reminder that tomorrow is red and green day and Friday is pajama day. Remember to dress for the weather!

Truthful Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Have you ever wondered how animals communicate with each other? We continued researching our chosen animals today to find out how they communicate, how the hear and what is their range of hearing. We discovered that some websites gave us really good information and others did not. Our trading cards are due on Friday, December 16, 2016 and we will be working on these every day this week. At today's assembly we watched other students perform their dances and sang carols. We perform our dance on Friday and spent our physical education and music class today practicing. During math we worked on estimation and word problems. Reminder there is early dismissal on Friday, December 16, 2016. Report cards are going home on Friday, December 16, 2016.

Thursday is red and green day and Friday is pajama day. Remember to dress for the weather!

Mindful Monday, December 12, 2016

Mindful Monday, December 12, 2016

Brrr! It’s cold outside… a line we hear quite frequently in our room every morning. Remember to dress for the weather coming to school. We started our day by reading our novels in our groups. After reading for a time we got into our groups and discussed our novels. One part that is interesting is that all of our group members are at different places in their stories, but we get to share our understanding with our groups. Sometimes we find an interesting phrase or we ask questions or I wonder about our stories. After discussing our books we then reflect on what we have read and discussed by writing. We continued to finish our human trading card. On our trading card we included how sound travels from the source through the three parts of our ear to our brain. The trading card also contains interesting facts, range of our hearing and safety and protection for our hearing and ears. Some of us even took home our cards to finish them. Today we started researching an animal and how they communicate and hear. It was great to see some students were eager to start their research and had brought in some facts and information. During math, we worked on estimation, basic facts and word problems. We continued to work on skip counting by fours.

Later we continued our visualization with the picture book The Mitten and we compared our visualizations to the actual book. During physical education and music class we continued to learn our dance that we will be presenting on Friday, December 16, 2016 at 8:30 am in the gym and parents are welcome to attend our assembly. We are just one of the dances that will be performed.

Here are our spelling words for December 12-15 (*Spelling test on Thursday*)

meat               meet               might              enough           fight                night

listen              where             bright             better             friends            tight

writes             little                talks                light                wonder           flight

should            quiet               than                high                street              fright

many

Friendly Friday, December 9, 2016

Happy Friday Everyone!

An important reminder for all students: please continue to think about an animal that you would like to research and learn about in relation to hearing and sound. Please consider how this animal hears and the landform in which is lives in! We will be wrapping up this learning next week.

Today we worked on our human trading card, demonstrating our understanding of the different parts of the ear. How does sound travel through it? We also have started exploring some mental math strategies and challenged ourselves with math word problems. 

A few important updates for next week are below - have a great weekend. 

Week of December 12th Updates / Reminders

Hello Parents / Guardians, Here are just a few reminders before we break for Winter Break. Weather Please ensure your child is dressed for the extreme temperatures (hats, mitts, boots, snow pants and warm jackets).  The students will have some outside time for recess when the temperature is warmer than -20c including windchill.  Donations If you and your family have any children’s (G rated) DVD’s that you would be willing to donate for indoor lunch/recess, please send them to school on Monday. Christmas time is traditionally associated with a time of giving and sharing. In keeping with the spirit of Christmas, we will be running a Christmas hamper campaign from December 5th through to December 13th. During this time please send your cheques or cash donations to the school in a sealed envelope marked ‘Christmas Hampers’. We will be distributing gift cards from all funds collected to Evanston families who would appreciate a little extra during the holiday season. Caroling Students at Ken Taylor School have been participating in a Creative Movement unit for the three weeks in December. Together we have learned about a variety of cultural celebrations and dances that are from around the world. Each class will have an opportunity to share what we have been learning during our Caroling Assemblies next week. Below is a list of dates and which class is performing when. We welcome parents and guests to come and share in the magic of the season with us. Tuesday, December 13 @ 9:30am  Pearson/Stewart Brar/Bakkan               Thursday, December 15 @ 1:00pm  (Red and Green Day) Hargreaves/Sayani PM Kindergarten   Friday, December 16 @ 8:30am (Pajama Day)  Carstairs/Witczak AM Kindergarten  Steckly/Fraser/Jordan  Lost & Found We have accumulated many lost items in our lost and found.  Please take a moment with your child to make sure none of the items belong to you.  We will be donating any items left over after December 16th. Spirit Days We will be having 2 Spirit Days next week Thursday Dec 15th Red and Green Day Friday Dec 16th Pajama Day Last Day of Classes Dec 16th is our last day of classes before Winter Break.  Please note this is an EARLY DISMISSAL FRIDAY which means students will be done school at 11:30 and there will be NO PM Kindergarten that day.  Report Cards will be sent home on this day as well.   The Staff at Ken Taylor would like to wish your family a relaxing Winter Break.

Thoughtful Thursday, December 8, 2016

On Friday, December 16 @ 8:30am we will be participating in an Assembly...carolling, dances and fun! Parents are welcome to come and join in. 

Wondering Wednesday, December 7, 2016

We continue to review hearing and sound and in the process of researching and creating trading cards. The first card we are working on is on human hearing, and the second on hearing of an animal of our choice. This has been a fun way for us to communicate all the knowledge we have gained over the last few weeks.

  During our mornings, we also have been reading in our grade 3 reading groups - looking into the books, making connections and generating great group discussions. In gym we have also learned a few new dances during Creative Movement. 

We wondered about the synonyms for "swooped". This is a descriptive word used in the book that we continue to visualize and reflect. We were able to see that the owl was the animal taking this action (as the bear, mole, mouse, and fox had other verbs describing their movement). This is a word that we identified as a verb (action word) that is already replacing/a synonym for 'walked' or 'moved'....

"zoomed down"

"whooshed down" 

"whooped down"

"swept down"

Truthful Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Today we worked on our visualizations. Although we still don't know the title of the book and haven't seen the illustrations, we have been able to identify descriptive language and translated that into pictures. Tomorrow as we finish our drawings, we will take a look into the following words to add more detail to our drawings, and perhaps reconsider how to more effectively communicate our visualization with detail by narrowing down one or a few of these details...

Describing the mitten...

 "white as snow" 

"snow white mittens" 

"swelled and stretch" 

"pulled and bulged" 

Instead of walking or moving...

"tunneling along" 

"hopping by" 

"wiggled in" 

"snuffling along" 

"bumped and jostled" 

"swooped down" 

"lumbered by" 

"nose his way in"

"wriggled into"

Mindful Monday, December 5, 2016

Yikes! The weather was chilly chilly today. Thank you to all the students who came in, cleaned their boots and took them off before walking in the hallways. 

Reminder: Library tomorrow! Please returns books and plastic bags

Fun lunch on Wednesday! 

Today we worked in groups to represent one 3-digit number in as many was as we could think. 

 


















Mrs. Steckly also started to read a book without showing us the cover, pictures, words. This is a part of visualizing to build the pictures in our heads. 

Good readers visualize! 

When I visualize, I...

- use the 'picture words' in the story to help me create pictures in my mind
 - use my own experiences to help
- pay attention to my other senses, like feelings, sounds, smells and tastes 

I'm visualizing...
I can see that in my mind...
I'm picturing...
I'm imagining...

Friday December 2, 2016

CHRISTMAS MARKET - DECEMBER 3, 2016

Christmas Market – Our Christmas Market is this Saturday, December 3 from 10am-3pm in your school gym. 40+ local vendors, Santa Photos, Face Painting, Tattoos, food samples, cotton candy, cookie decorating and so much more! Share our FB event with friends and family “Ken Taylor Christmas Market”

Thoughtful Thursday, December 1, 2016

The week has gone by quite quickly and we continue to explore a variety of landforms. We have shared our information amongst our group members and are currently completing using a Frayer model to display our information. We then had the opportunity to use the computers again to fill in any information that we may have missed.

 From our information we have collected and presented next week we will be choosing an animal and researching how it communicates and hears and explore how its environment may impact its communication and hearing. This information will be presented as a trading card. In physical education and music we continued to explore creative movement to the music of Jingle Bells, but we really enjoy the "freeze" activity. We will have the opportunity to share one of our dances the last week before winter break. Tomorrow there is no school.

"Active listening is when we hear something and understand it."

Truthful Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Creative Dance continues in the physical education as we added more movements with a partner. There is a lot of smiles and effort being put into each creative piece.  We look forward to sharing these moves with the rest of the school the last week of December before break. With a partner today we explored how sound traveled through a variety of mediums. It was interesting to hear the different sounds. We also finished collecting information about our chosen landforms and will be sharing the information with our groups tomorrow. Tomorrow is Toonie Treat Day and we can purchase a bag of popcorn! Just a reminder that there is no school on Friday, December 2, 2016.

Toonie Treat Day

Tomorrow is Toonie Treat Day!

Bring $2 and buy a popcorn this Tuesday and Wednesday!

Mindful Monday, November 28, 2016

Today we watched a video about landforms and then brainstormed types of landforms. In groups of four we are using the following website, http://www.pkearthandspace.com/ to collect information about specific landforms that we will share with our group. As a class we practiced making jot notes about caves and how we did not have to write complete sentences, but just the important ideas. Our information is being collected in a chart form.  Also today we started our reading new novels that we selected after book talks from last week. We read for twenty minutes, then discussed what we found interesting or what we visualized while we were reading. After our small group discussions we wrote about our conversations and what we had shared. For the next three weeks physical education and music will be combined for creative movement. We look forward to sharing what we have learned in three weeks. Reminder there is no school on Friday, December 2, 2016.

Thoughtful Thursday, November 24, 2016

Today we reviewed parts of the ear and had an opportunity to demonstrate our understandings in relation to hearing and sound. In the afternoon we looked at more of the heart values and continued to write about personal experiences (for example, writing about a time that we showed kindness/helpfulness/empathy/acceptance/respectfulness/truthfulness). It is our goal as a class to become more empathetic (ask me what empathy means). We realize each day is an opportunity to show empathy and will be looking at being more intentional with the HEART values at Ken Taylor. 

Reminder: No School Tomorrow 

Wondering Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Today we had a Spirit Day and a fun lunch. We wore our favourite colours and talked about the "why". Most of us mentioned that the colour makes us feel happy.

We have been learning about being Ambassadors at Ken Taylor School. We considered some values and virtues today that have been acknowledged as a part of Ken Taylor School's 'HEART'...

Helpfulness 

Empathy

Acceptance

Responsibility 

Truthfulness 

Yesterday we identified that ambassadors should be kind. 

We identified different colours for each value/virtue and then tied it into a personal experience. We will continue to work on these as we build on our ambassador like qualities and characteristics. 

Truthful Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Our Tuesday was full of writing, reading, reflecting and visiting the Learning Commons. Today we learned about Mr. Dyck's favourite colour (it came us as a surprise!) and watched a video of him reading a great story "Harold and the Purple Crayon". The book was full rich examples of creativity and problem solving. We noticed that no matter what the main character, Harold, got himself into, he was able to use his creativity to solve it. 

We know that a good leader, or ambassador, is usually an effective problem solver. Our class brainstormed some ideas of the other characteristics or values of an ambassador including: kindness, patience, being friendly, thinking outside the box, being calm and alert. We will continue to strive to all be ambassadors at Ken Taylor School and in our community just like Ken Taylor was!

A reminder: Tomorrow is Spirit Day - please wear your favourite coloured t-shirt and be prepared to talk about WHY it is your favourite colour :) 

Mindful Monday, November 21, 2016

Today we reviewed the Zones of Regulation. We thought about how we felt right after lunch, and were prompted to share a synonym for the word we were thinking of. For example, one student was happy but chose "joyful". We will continue to swap out the words in our speaking and writing to build our vocabulary. This will also make our writing more interesting for our readers. We then practiced mindfulness and how to relax each part of our body, and then came back to the circle answered the question "What zone am I now? Did the mindfulness activity change the way I feel? Am I ready to learn?". We wrote down our answers as a part of our reflection.

We continued learning about "Hooking Our Readers", and wrote about our weekends. So far, we have learned about making our learning more interesting by starting our writing in two ways:                    1) onomatopoeia and  2) question. Today we learned another hook, 3) Setting. By describing the setting (where and when the event/story takes place) we can draw our reader in.

We will continue to work on developing our hooks around the setting (where and when) of our stories. We want to create vivid pictures in our reader's head.



Reminders for this week:

Wednesday is Spirit Day - please wear your favourite colour t-shirt, Fun Lunch Today

Friday is P.D. - no classes for students

Thoughtful Thursday, November 17, 2016

Today we worked on goal setting and what we were going to do to help us achieve our goals. We will finish this tomorrow. In physical education we played a game that required large group cooperation. It was called "ins and outs". We really had to keep moving! Just a reminder that tomorrow is early dismissal.

Wondering Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Wow! What a busy day we had as we learned about mediums that sound will travel through  and that dolphins and bats use echolocation to find food or find their way in the cave. We know that sound waves travel away from the source of the sound. Did you know that the Rhinoceros Hornbill lives in the Borneo rainforest? During our virtual field trip to the Borneo Rainforest we heard the sounds four different animals make and we had to guess which animal made those sounds. Tomorrow we are creating a poem about loud and soft sounds and sharing our chain reactions with the other students. We can't wait to hear and watch other groups ideas.


In the afternoon, an occupational therapist named Miss. Erin came in to talk about Self Regulation. This is a pretty big concept we will continue to explore, and we learned that it is a way we recognize how we feel (feelings are okay!) but then how to regulate (bring ourselves to a happy, ready to learn place). We learned some strategies including breathing (in through our nose and out through our mouth), taking body breaks, and using our words to communicate our feelings.

Here are the 4 Zone of Regulation we learned about:


                                                         




Our target is always the Green Zone.



Looking for some great math games? Here are a few links:


http://www.eduplace.com/kids/mw/swfs/rockhopper_grade2.html

http://www.eduplace.com/kids/mw/swfs/rockhopper_grade3.html

http://www.ictgames.com/football2.html

https://nrich.maths.org/9283

Truthful Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Today we continued working on the Rube Goldberg machines and will start presenting them tomorrow. We also are looking forward to our Virtual Reality Field Trip (in the gym) on the acoustics on the Borneo Rainforest. We will take what we learned from our field trip and then create haiku poems. In math today we worked on place value and a fun word problem (similar to Mad Libs) and then play a Frog Hopping Math game, which can be found here. (a great way to reinforce basic math facts!). How high can you get on the game?

Reminder: Picture Retakes are tomorrow :) Please photo package and/or note along with your child if they are needing retakes.

Mindful Monday, November 14, 2016

Today we reviewed the meaning of narrative and expository texts, and then had the chance to write our own narrative. We continue to learn about making our writing more interesting, and looked at
writing hooks.

The students were asked "What do you think this means?" before we looked at the meaning. Here are a few of their responses:

"when you do buddy reading, get into the book...trying to get into it"

"you put your arms together"

"getting your readers interested in a high level book, 200 page book, if you're in grade 6"

"getting a big group and reading to them"

"when you read the book, sounding the words"

"when you're writing a story, be very descriptive, so the readers want to read more, they will get interested in it, add action, motion, drama"

"you get interested in a book and you want to read more" 

"they really love the book"

"trying to make the book you are writing more interesting"

"get your reading partner interested in a book"

 

After learning what a hook is, we were able to summarize it as "making the book interesting from the first sentence. If you're a really good writer, from the first word! "

We wrote about one event from our long weekend, but had to use an onomatopoeia. Ask your child what onomatopoeia and event they wrote about. If their red scribbler is in their backpack, please review and ask them to finish their writing from today.

To wrap our day we worked on mindfulness and did a bit of mindful colouring while listening to some calming music. We continue to learn new strategies to be in control of our bodies and enjoyed this one!



Reminders: Half Day this Friday 

School Photos - all orders are due Tuesday, November 15 and Picture Retakes are on Wednesday, November 16. If you would like retakes for your child please return the original proof sheet with retakes requested on the envelope.  If you no longer have the original proofs please send a note requesting retakes.

Wondering Wednesday, November 9, 2016

We have finished our iMovie for the Remembrance Day ceremony with our grade 1 buddies. This morning we practiced and recorded our parts of the poem with our buddies. We also practiced our song this morning with all the other grade 3 students. We continued working on our designs for our Rube Goldberg machines to produce a simple sound and it was interesting to hear all the conversation surrounding the chain reactions that we could create. We are very excited to start building the machines. Reminder, please bring food donations for the Veteran’s Food Bank tomorrow. Remembrance Day Ceremony is tomorrow at 9:30 am. No school on Friday, November 11^th.