September 22, 2023

This week in Social Studies, Students continued working on their LOST project. Students started by coming up with a group name and logo for their groups. After they completed these tasks, in their groups they had to come up with their group leader and figure out how decisions were going to be made moving forward. Some students decided to use voting as a strategy, other groups said their leader can make all of the decisions. Classes then discussed different types of government found around the world and had to decide what type of government their group is most like (democracy versus dictatorship). 

In ELAL, students completed different tasks to assess their starting point for literacy skills. This included a spelling test, reading/decoding task and vocabulary screening test. Students also completed their time capsule and letter to themselves. Finally, students learnt various journaling techniques while reading the book Shi-shi-etko, by Nicola Campbell. These various journaling techniques will be used throughout the year in various subjects, along with their Open Minds Field Trip. Students also completed their first reading assessment using the Common Lit website. This is a great tool to help students with reading comprehension and improving their reading strategies. 

September 8, 2023

We had a great start to the school year in our ELAL and Social Studies classes this week. What you may have noticed is that there is now an extra L in ELAL. This new acronym stands for English Language Arts and Literature. That is what you will see when we refer to your child’s English class from now on. 

 We spent the week getting to know your children through various activities. We went over some specific classroom expectations and school expectations with the students. There were also some team building activities where students had the opportunity to get to know others in the class and start to build relationships with each other. One activity was called Whose in Your Circle. This gave the students a chance to write down topics that interest them and allow them to see who else in the classroom connects with that topic. We also completed an activity called 1 to 100, where students worked in a group to highlight numbers as quickly as possible. This helped them develop strategies that they can use to work successfully in groups this year. Next week we will start looking into the curricular outcomes and getting students setup on Google Classroom. 

Weekly Updates

Each week there will be updates posted to let you know what is going on in the ELA and Social Studies classes. Please check back regularly in addition to visiting your child's Google Classrooms to stay informed on classwork.