TWAS

Hello Families of 51 A and B,

We’ve had a wonderful week here at Cranston. Hopefully your little ones are already out there loving this beautiful start to the weekend, and are enjoying some much deserved Rest and Relaxation!

Our class was given a VERY special gift this week: a new student came to us.  His name is Carson and we are so thrilled to have him with us.  He is lovely, and, of course, our wonderful students have made him feel so welcome.  Welcome to Cranston, Carson and family — you will love this beautiful community J!

Our week started with a SCRATCH coding lesson with Ms. Handlesman to get us prepared for Canada Learning Code Week, CanadaArm2 http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/iss/canadarm2/Default.asp next week. The students will be learning to code the space arm to move in space!  We also had a brilliant Artist in Residence, Rebecca Ellison, join us for three afternoons to teach us how to create fantastic background scenes for our puppet theatres and green screen story telling.  We learned how to build background, midground and foreground independently of each other and then put them together to create eye-popping definition.  The students made beautifully painted and decorated sheets of card stock, and then shared with each other.  They cut and trimmed from everyone’s creations to design and make brilliant works of art! You’ll soon be seeing them in their green screen movie creations.

It was also literacy week at school.  The scholastic book fair was a very busy place; thank you so very much to all of the volunteers who came to help with this.  51B were able to have a look at some interesting biographies of some of their favourite authors. The students were also treated to a “teacher swap” story read.  We also had DEAR (drop everything and read) day.  When the bell rang we ALL dropped everything (A even dropped in gym) and read, twice. Speaking of gym, this was our last week of Drum Fit.  Such fun.  We had gym today and were able to enjoy the beautiful sunny weather playing football or bouncy cush ball (I think it’s called that; the children will know the proper name I’m sure). 

We continued to work on our literacy in Daily 5, storytelling, reflective writing and then celebrated/showed off our literacy at Literacy night.  It was wonderful that so many families were able to make it at this busy time of year!

In math, 51A continues to look at word problems.  What information do we need and don’t we need?  What are the facts? What is the question? What are the different ways that we can solve this problem? What is the answer? The students are getting really good at answering these questions, and are using a wonderful variety of strategies to get to the final answer.

51B is looking back at different types of math that they have done, and seeing if they can figure out what strategy to use where.  They are testing their skills, independently, through a variety of assessments and then talking through the areas that are solid and those that need a little refreshing. 

We continue to look at temperature in science, and are beginning a STEAM project on bridges in social studies.  It feels like our days are getting shorter and our workloads longer, but the children are fantastic.  They’re working so hard from 8:20 until 3:00 each day; we’re very proud of them!

We would like to send a very special thank you to those of you on school council who treated the teachers to a wonderful dinner after school on Thursday.  It was heavenly to be pampered like that.  Everything was delicious and so beautifully presented.  Like I tell the kids all the time, I HAVE THE BEST JOB IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD!  Thank you parents, always, for your support and for sharing your wonderful little people with us J

We hope you all enjoy a beautiful and restful weekend,

The 51 A and B team!