'Twas the Last Week Before Christmas

I can't believe the last week of December is here! Here is a list of this week's events and activities. I am sending this out on Saturday in hope that it will reach everyone by email before the week begins. Unfortunately, there seems to be some sort of delay from when I write on the blog to when the emails are sent out. I don't have any control over this and I apologize if the information is getting to you too late.

Monday

Advent Liturgy for Week #3-Joy at 1:30

Tuesday

Junior Craft Morning-please wear old clothing. We will be using permanent paint and markers. I am looking for any volunteers who wouldn't mind supervising a craft table with my grade 6 class.

Wednesday

Grade 6 retreat to Divine infant has been CANCELLED. We will be rescheduling for sometime in January. We apologize for the short notice. Please send your child to school with a lunch on Wednesday and it will be classes as usual.

Thursday

Junior Advent Liturgy for Week #4-Love at 10:00

Sing-a-long 10:50-11:50 

Our grade 6 class and Ms.Zurwerra's 5/6 class will be singing and signing Mary Did You Know. Please practice the signs at home.

The Breakdown Video

Mary Did You Know

Friday

PJ & Movie afternoon for Junior Students

iWalk Day Tomorrow

Wednesday, December 13th is iWalk Day! It is a day on which we encourage students to walk or wheel to school as part of our Active Transportation and healthy lifestyles goals for our school. All students who are able to walk, bike, roller blade, scooter, or wheel to school are encouraged to do so. If you can't walk or wheel the whole way, we invite you to Drive to 5! This is a concept in which students are encouraged to drive to a location close to school, and walk the remaining distance to school. We now only have 1 location for Wednesdays which is the Parking lot of Marcel Lalande Park, 2157 Northlands Drive

Important Information for Wednesday, December 13th

Grade 6 PJ Day

The grade 6 class has earned a reward for working so hard this year. We will be celebrating by having a PJ day. Please ensure your son/daughter is wearing a fresh pair of PJ's when they leave home in the morning.

Grade 4 Commercial Work Period
The grade 4 class has been working hard on their cereal box assignment. Tomorrow is supposed to be their last day to make their commercials. If they are working hard and a bit more time, I will happily provide them with extra time. If your child requires any special clothing or props, please ensure they bring them to school on Wednesday.

Mrs.Marchant

Grade 4 Geometry Quiz

The Grade 4s have been preparing for their quiz for the past few weeks. I feel they are more than ready to write tomorrow. I have made sure their red duotangs were sent home today so that they can review for tomorrow. I have included pics of some of our anchor charts as well as a strategt=y for answering problem-solving questions.

For the quiz, students will need to know:

• benchmark angles (90 degrees-right angle), straight line (180 degrees), acute (less than 90 degrees), and obtuse (greater than 90 degrees)
• identify a benchmark angle on a picture or real life example
• types of lines (Ex. perpendicular, parallel, intersecting, etc)
• identify all lines of symmetry on a 2D shape as well as draw the other half of a symmetrical object
• identify different quadrilaterals based on their characteristics (Ex. a quadrilateral with 2 pairs of parallel lines is a parallelogram OR a quadrilateral with 1 pair of parallel lines, 2 acute, and 2 obtuse angles is a trapezoid)
• Students should be able to identify different quadrilaterals based on their pictures
• compare polygon (2D shape with 3 sides) to a quadrilateral (2D shape with 4 sides)
• understand that there are different types of parallelograms (rhombus, rectangle, square)

Christmas Project

The  St. Clare Me to We Club is encouraging our students to “Pay it Forward” to students at another school as our Christmas project. Our Lady of Mount Carmel School is holding a Christmas Store for their students.  This enables students to purchase gifts for their family members.  All funds raised will be used to support the students at this school enabling them to go on field trips and to purchase school supplies and to provide food and clothing for families who need assistance.  A portion of the funds collected by the Christmas store will also be given to charity or another school in our board that requires support from the community. 

We are looking for gently used:

-jewelry- books- toys- christmas ornaments- and anything else you feel would be appropriate as a gift for the students to purchase

We need the donations sent to our school by December 15.

Thank you for your support! Merry Christmas!

Grade 6 Math Quiz-Patterning

Tomorrow the grade 6s will finally have their math quiz. They have been studying at school and most of them have taken their notebooks and duotangs home to study. For our quiz, they need to demonstrate the following:

• create a table of values for growing patterns, given pattern rules in words (ex.start with 3, then double each term and add 1 to get to the next term). 
• determine the term number of a given term in a growing pattern that is represented by a pattern rule, in words or table value.
• describe pattern rules that generate patterns by adding or subtracting a constant, or multiplying or dividing by a constant, to get to the next term (Ex. for 1, 3, 5, 7, 9..., the pattern rule is "start with 1 and add 2 to each term to get to the next term).
• determine a term, given its term number, by extending growing and shrinking patterns that are generated by adding or subtracting a constant, or multiplying or dividing by a constant, to get to the next term.

Here are some of the anchor charts posted in our room.

Severe Weather

There is currently a Winter Weather Travel Advisory in effect for the Ottawa area tonight according to the Weather Network. If the school buses are not running tomorrow (Snow Day), you can check your local radio station for updates, visit http://www.ottawaschoolbus.ca OR follow OSTA@OttSchoolBus on Twitter to stay informed of any cancellations. The school is still open regardless of what mother nature has in store for us.

Blog form is working again!

My apologies to anyone who submitted the form on the blog and did not get a response from me. Upon further investigation, the notification settings were somehow turned off. The notifications are now working and I look forward to hearing from anyone needing to contact me.

November Update

Bible Ceremony

Thank you to all of the parents and grandparents who came out to our Bible Blessing Ceremony on Friday afternoon. It was great to see so many of you! The children were so excited to receive their very own bibles, and wanted to read them as soon as we got back to class! A big THANK YOU to school council as well, for purchasing the bibles, and to Mrs. Desjardins for inscribing them for each student. They were much appreciated.

Progress Reports

Last Thursday progress reports went home. Please send back the brown envelope with a signature so that we can use it to send the next two report cards home. If you wish to meet with me regarding your child(ren), please sign up online.  Just go to https://clare.youcanbook.me/, click on the name of the teacher you want to book with, choose a time, and fill in your name. Once you click "Confirm", the interview is booked and appears on my calendar. If you would prefer a telephone interview, or would rather meet at a different time, please send me a note through the blog. The information was sent home with progress reports. 

Grade 6 Keepsake Clothing

If your child would like to order clothing with everyone's signatures on it, please ensure that the form has been completed with payment by Wednesday, November 8th.

Student Portal. 

By clicking on the link, you and your child will be able to login to all of the sites OCSB has provided access to. All your child will need is their username (firstname.lastname@ocsbstudent.ca) and password (unique to your child).

Mathletics

Over the past few weeks, students have been introduced to a site called Mathletics. It is used to provide students with grade level practice questions for knowledge and understanding. In class, we will be focusing on solving "thinking" questions that cause students to use the skills they have learned and apply them to logic and problem-solving questions. I would like students to practice Mathletics for 20-30 minutes, 3 times per week as homework. The information collected is used for planning purposes. It allows me to see where students need extra practice and where there may be "gaps".

Friday at 10:30 a.m. we will be observing Remembrance Day with a liturgy. Parents are welcome to attend.

Math

Both grade 4 & 6 are working on our Patterning unit in Math. The grade 6s will have a quiz on Tuesday, November 14th and the grade 4s will have a quiz on Wednesday, November 15th. I will post more information with anchor charts in the next few days. Starting tomorrow, we will be working on a larger patterning assignment. Students will have 2 blocks to complete their work; collaboration is not required but is encouraged. Our next unit will be Geometry.

As part of our Math program, our school has been using a resource called "Number Talks". We have been working on strategies for addition in September and October. This week we started multiplication strategies (Ex. repetitive addition, factoring numbers, doubling half, etc).

Language

Grade 4: We have wrapped up our unit on Making Connections and will start a read aloud this week for Evaluating, a funny book named "Nibble, Nibble, Jenny Archer. The students will really enjoy it! 

Grade 6: We are reading Part II of Wonder (Via's perspective) in reading. As a writing component, students are working on writing a proper paragraph with 3-5 sentences using the ROPES (Restate question, Opinion, Proof and Evidence, Summary) strategy. Students have received feedback on "Halloween" responses in a student-teacher conference. Now students are asked to use that feedback to "bump up" to the next level. We will also have another session with Mrs. Campeau-Leblanc, the facilitator from the board who will help us to learn all of the ins and outs of Google Read and Write on Tuesday, November 7th.

Crazy Hat/Hair Day Friday, October 20th

A reminder that the next United Way student event is this Friday, October 20th. It is Crazy Hair/Hat Day. Bring in a loonie or a toonie to support those in need! Thank you in advance for your generosity!

Grade 6 Math Test- Thursday, October 19th

Our grade 6s have been working hard on their Number Sense and Numeration Unit. We have been collaborating to solve more complex, multi-step problems and now students will be reviewing all necessary skills needed to prepare for next week's test. The concepts and skills needed for next week's test are outlined below with an anchor chart to assist your child to study for the test. We worked on a review of our unit this week and the class will be going over the answers on Monday. Students are not required to know each strategy for addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. All I ask is that they use a strategy that they feel comfortable with. I provide them with a variety of strategies to explore so that they can see what works for them.

Students need to be able to:
-identify the place value of an underlined digit


-write, read, and draw numbers in standard, expanded, word, and base 10 form

-identify the value of an underlined digit and say what that digit is worth. For example, in the number 257 931, the seven would be in the thousands place and it is worth 7 000.









-find the product (multiplication), sum (addition) and difference (subtraction) in word problems (1 mark for showing their work, 1 mark for the correct answer, 1 mark for a proper sentence that answers the question.

-using < and > symbols to identify which number is greater/less
-round numbers to the nearest ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, or hundred thousand.

   

-identify prime numbers and draw a factor tree for composite numbers. An example for a factor tree below.
   

United Way Fundraising Fridays

Sent to be the Good News

October 2017

United Way

Give. Change A Life.

As you are aware, the United Way/Centraide of Ottawa-Carleton has launched its 2017 Campaign to support those in need in the Ottawa area. United Way/Centraide supports many programs in over 100 member agencies. This year, the staff and students of St. Clare school are called to make a conscious decision in taking an active part in the community by continuing to care for those in need. This supports our Board’s theme, “Sent to be the Good News.” We have designated three Fridays, October 13, 20 and 27, to raise money for our neighbours from the Ottawa area who are in need. Although we ask that students donate a loonie or a toonie for our special days, they can donate anything they can afford to participate in the activities outlined below. Students can do chores in order to earn money to donate to this cause.

You have touched the hearts of many people with your previous, generous support as seen with the Terry Fox walk and the Thanksgiving St. Vincent de Paul food drive. Please help us support United Way.  Your contribution is most appreciated.

Here is the outline for the three days:

Friday, October 13th: Board Game Day

Bring a toonie and a board game to play during a block today!

No electronic games, please.

Friday, October 20th:    Crazy Hair and/or Hat Day         

Students can wear a funny hat and/or have crazy

hair all day for a loonie.

Friday, October 27th: Black & Orange Day and Movie Day

Bring a toonie and come to school in Black & Orange clothes.

Let’s enjoy a movie for this last afternoon before Halloween.

Thank you for your continued support of the United Way in our community of Ottawa-Carleton!

                      

United Way Campaign Starts Next Week!

Friday, October 13th: Board Game Day for United Way

Bring a loonie or a toonie and a board game to play during a block today! No electronic games, please.