Week of January 30 - February 3, 2012

Friday HW
1.  Sentence Structure test on Tuesday February 7.  See notes below on the particulars of the test.
2.  Ski form and fee.
3.  Book Report due on February 23.
4.  Surveys handed in.

Thursday HW
1.  Math HW book pages 84-85.  Today we looked at money up to $10 000.  A special emphasis was estimation by rounding to either the nearest $50 or nearest $100 depending on the context.  The students are reluctant to use estimation and prefer exact calculation with a calculator, but we do need to build our capacity to use estimation across the whole Math curriculum.
2.  Sentence structure test on Tuesday February 7, 2012.  This test covers the grammar activities we've done this week.  Student have several practice pages in three packages to review and a study sheet at the end of the last package to help prepare for the assessment.  The focus was on types of sentences (declarative, interrogatice, imperative and exclamatory), sentence styles (simple, compound, complex) and sentence orders (natural and inverted).
3.  Book Report reading.  Next report due Thursday February 23.
4.  Ski form and fee.
5.  Surveys to return.
6.  Interview requests to return.  Thank you.

Wednesday HW
1.  Ski form and fee due on Tuesday February 7.  Please let me know your plans for the day if you decide not to attend.
2.  Interview request forms ASAP.
3.  Book Report reading.
4.  Return completed Parent surveys.  Thank you!
5.  Math Text book pages 211-212 # 2 to 9.  We worked on this today in class for about 50 minutes.

Tuesday HW
1.  Math HW book pages 82-83.  Today's activity focussed on the 24 h clock and on the calculation of "elapsed time".  We spent a fair amount of class time practicing the 'counting on' technique for determining elapsed time.  I think the students should use that method rather than the subtraction algorithm I also showed them.  Subtraction can be prone to errors because of the regrouping tweak of trading 60 minutes for an hour rather than 10 or 100, as our place value systems would otherwise lead us to think.
2.  Ski form and fee due on Tuesday February 7.  Please let me know your plans for the day if you decide not to participate in the trip.
3.  Interview request forms returned ASAP.
4.  Book report reading. 
5.  Return completed Surveys and Severe Weather forms.  Thank you!

Monday HW
1. Math HW Book pages 80-81.  We started a new unit on Measurement.  Today's lesson was on Time Zones, which we examined earlier in our Social Studies unit on Canada's Links to the World.  Many students struggle to identify the provinces and territories on a map of Canada and name the capital city of each.  We did review this earlier in the year with a map activity despite the fact that it was covered in grade four.  It is worth reviewing independently after today's in-class discussion.
2.  Ski form and fee for Cross Country skiing at Hardwood Hills on February 22.
3.  Parent surveys were distributed today.
4.  Book Report reading  The next report is due on Thursday February 23.