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Whats happening in

Gill-Ville Jr. Area Comp . November 2012

http://teachers.wrdsb.ca/GILLK

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Mark your Calendars

Photo Retake Day Friday, Nov. 2nd Reports Go Home Monday, Nov. 5th Horseback Riding
Tues Nov. 6th, 13th, 20th

Character Education:
During the month of October, our focus was on the SPEAK WITH GOOD PURPOSE key, which means to use kind words and have good intentions when communicating with or about others and ourselves. Our Student of the Month winner, by a class vote, is Shelby, who has been working hard to be positive and speak with good purpose. During the month of November, we will be spending time talking about the INTEGRITY key. Students learn that its important to do the right thing. When you know what is right and your actions match, you are showing integrity.

Horseback Riding:

Pita Pit Lunches

Wed, Nov. 7th & 21st Remembrance Day Assembly Thursday, Nov. 8th Parent Teacher Conferences Thursday Nov. 8th & Friday Nov. 9th
R.M.i Lunch Days

We will finish up our weekly horseback riding sessions at Pride Stables this month. Our last lesson takes place on Tuesday, November 20th. Weve really been enjoying our time with the horses. Check out all of our public pictures on our class flickr site! Sign in to your account and become our friend to see the private pictures that show faces.
http://www.flickr.com/photos /gill-villeans

Progress Reports:
You will receive an Alternative Progress Report Card that will have information about your childs literacy, numeracy, and learning skills progress so far this year. Any questions you may have about the report card can be answered during your parent-teacher conference scheduled Thursday evening (Nov. 8th) or Friday daytime (Nov. 9th). If you are unable to make your scheduled time, please contact us via planner, phone or email to arrange another time.

Wed, Nov. 14th & 28th Museum Trip Thursday, Nov. 15th Little Chefs Cooking Monday, Nov. 26th
School Spirit Day: Bright Day

Homework:

Friday, Nov. 30th

It is important to read your homework story for a few minutes each night. Repetitive DAILY practice will help your brain recognize and recall common words and solve the trickier words faster.

Upcoming Trips:
We will continue with our weekly horseback riding and grocery store shopping trips as usual. Our Little Chefs cooking lesson with Chef Jimmy is scheduled on Monday, November 26th. We hope you enjoyed your chicken marsala that we made in October. Remember that we take lots of pictures on our trips and post them for you to see on our class Flickr site. On Thursday, November 15th we are going to the KW Museum to take part in featured exhibits; China and Avatar. We will also be using mobile technology to participate in their Technically Speaking program. Please sign and return the permission form and $5.00 by Tuesday, November 13th.

What We Are Learning:

Global Read Aloud : We really enjoyed participating in this project again this year. We have been connecting with students in the United States in different Edmodo book groups. Through this site we have shared our thoughts on the story, favourite characters, and predictions for what would happen next. At the halfway point of the story, students wrote a blog post retelling the first half of the story. We also added short stopmotion animation videos to our posts. We created plasticine characters and used the iAnimate app on the iPad to create the videos. We created a second global read aloud blog post that has a talking voki avatar students created to share the point of view of Bob, a character in the story. You can read our posts and leave us comments by visiting: http://kidblog.org/gill-villeans We are now wrapping up the project and learning about the real Ivan, a real gorilla that the story was based on. We will continue with some research on species at risk such as the western lowland gorilla.

Family Technology Day in Gill-Ville:

Id like to take a moment to thank all of the families for coming out to our Family Technology Day on October 3rd. I am thrilled that we had the opportunity to show off our learning tools and include our families in our online activities. If you have questions or need support with any of our sharing sites, please let us know. We are all learning this together!

The Global Childrens Challenge will be wrapping up on November 9th. We have been enjoying recording our pedometer count each day and learning of new ways to be active. During the challenge our class has ranged anywhere between 2100-2600 position in the leader board scores. We will continue with our own challenge within our classroom once the global project is over and use the data for projects in math and gym activities.

Nutrition Tracking:

We have been using Edmodo, another social networking site designed specifically for schools. Edmodo looks and functions, in many ways, like Facebook but is only open to educators. Teachers set up an account, which is then verified, and then students join with a code provided by their teacher. Our class is involved in groups within this site. We have a class group and each student has created their personal profile page with cartoon avatar and is earning badges for the work and contributions they are making. Students are writing and tagging learning journal posts in this group on a regular basis, which will create an on-going record of their learning over the course of the school year.

Kenyan Fundraising:
Information will be coming home in the next couple of weeks about our online silent auction that our class will be hosting to raise money to support our blogging buddies in Kenya. We will be auctioning off the amazing handmade crafts made by local artists and sculptors that visit their school. We hope to assist in raising money to rebuild the washrooms that were destroyed by floods.

Starting in November, students will begin to record their daily food intake at school. Well be looking at balanced meals and sorting food into the four main food groups. Students will be developing a greater awareness of healthy eating practices and setting nutrition goals.