Miss Hillier's Grade 5 Class

 Good afternoon! Hope you are able to take part in some Indigenous activities tomorrow for National Truth and Reconciliation Day! There is NO school tomorrow in honour of this day! So please enjoy the long weekend. Please make sure that you fill out the consent to be photographed so I can post pictures of your children doing activities at school! I will be contacting parents who have not done this to double check their consent.  Today in PE, the students played Gaga Ball to start. Once the students were eliminated they were to take part in one of three Indigenous games. There was the hoop darts, which the students took  turns trying to throw a feather in the center of the hula hoop. The next game they could try would be double ball, where s tudents each use a stick to try and pass a double ball (two balls attached together by a string in the middle) to one another. The last game they got to try was the ring and the stick game, where s tudents will use a stick that has a s...

 Hello Lovely Parents and Guardians! Tomorrow is Orange Shirt Day! Please read the following: On Thursday, September 29, students are encouraged to wear an orange shirt (or an orange article of clothing if they don't have an orange shirt) to recognize Orange Shirt Day and National Truth and Reconciliation Day. Orange Shirt Day is an opportunity for everyone to come together in the spirit of reconciliation to show their support of a safe, respectful and caring school community. Orange Shirt day began in 2013 when residential school survivor, Phyllis Webstad, shared how her orange shirt was taken away on her first day at residential school. For more information about Orange Shirt Day please visit https://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/what-is-orange-shirt-day September 30 is a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation meant to commemorate the history and legacy of Residential Schools in Canada. The intention of this day is to recognize and honor residential school survivors, their fami...

 Good afternoon Lovely Parents and Guardians! I hope you had just as good a day as we had. A reminder to parents, please make sure that you sign the digital consent form for us to use your child's picture on our blogs. They have a lot of fun when they see themselves and tell you what they are doing. Also, please make sure that you are sending emails to me or calling the office in advance for appointments. The office can get very busy. Lastly, please make sure that you are booking appointments at appropriate times during the day or picking your child up at appropriate times, recess and lunch are difficult times to come and get your child.  In PE, today, the students played a version of dodgeball called Moustache Ball. The students had to throw balls into nets on the other team's side. Normal dodgeball rules applied and if the students got hit they needed to do an exercise five times on their side. The next round was where if students got the ball in the net they got to take the...

 Gooa Afternoon! Hope you had a great weekend and got out to spend some time in the fall colours! Today, in Music we started to discuss the concept of tempo. We warmed up with a song called "Boom Chicka Boom". We then learned about tempo and the composer well known for tempo named Antonio Vivaldi. We will look at his famous concerto "Four Seasons" on Wednesday! In Writing, we are beginning to discuss how to create our narratives. We discussed the different perspectives that stories could be written. We then discussed the important pieces that are needed in stories. The beginning, middle, and end. We will continue to discuss how to make a beginning engaging and attractive! In Math, we are wrapping up area and perimeter. We will do one final wrap up activity and then move on to number sense! I am excited to see what students know about their numbers! We read chapter 17 of Pax! We learned about the death of one of the foxes in the story. :( This afternoon, student read...

 Good Afternoon! Today went by so fast! I hope to see some of you at the Open House tonight between 5-7pm. In PE, students got to play bench dodgeball! This is super fun! Students play normal dodgeball but if they get hit by the ball they need to go to the other team's bench as if they are a prisoner. There are a few ways to get back in. The first one is to catch the ball another person threw or there was special ball in the first round that would get the whole bench back to their own side. The second round was that if a ball hit a mat that it would free all those on the bench and the last round was that students had to try to get it in the basketball hoop to free the bench! The students had a blast.  Today our gratitude journal prompt was about underappreciated workers and why should we be thankful for them.  Students worked on their storyboards and their plans for their Flaws to Traits Stories. We will begin to look at how to properly write a beginning for a story....

 Good afternoon! Today was a great day! Tomorrow, Sept 22, Northern Lights School is hosting our Open House from 5-7. Please check your emails for more information about this.  This morning the students had PE and were practicing their running for the Terry Fox run that they were going to do later.  While we waited for our turn to go do the Terry Fox run, we practiced our rhythm cup activity. We got to sit in a circle and practice passing it to the next person, like the game asks. We will move on to a different topic sometime next week.  In Math, we continued to work on our worksheets and practiced area and perimeter. Those students who were done, practiced area and perimeter by playing a math game where they were either the virus or the vaccine to change or create a zombie. The students had a blast.  We continued our read aloud of Pax and finished Chapter 14 and started Chapter 15. After lunch students continued to use strategies to read to self! After reading,...

 Good evening! In PE, we practiced for the Terry Fox run on Wednesday Sept 21. Students were in groups of 3 and were running 1-2 laps to practice and see how many laps they could do. We talked about motivation and perseverance that the students need to keep going to get their goal of number of laps.  We continued to work on our gratitude journals. Today we wrote about what makes us smile!  We continued to work on our Flaws to Traits narratives and planning them out! You will be able to see our progress if you come to the school's open house on Thursday Sept. 22.  In Math, we are wrapping up our area and perimeter unit soon and we are going to be moving on to our numeracy unit with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. So make sure to brush up on your facts and your regrouping.  We read Chapter 13 and part of 14 of Pax.  Students continue to learn good practices when reading to self and how to pick good books when going to the Learning Commons....

 Good Evening! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. It was beautiful out! In PE, today the students played dodgeball and were practicing their participation! They had a blast! In Music we continued with the Cup rhythm practice! We will be trying a whole group activity with them later in the week. This is fun to see and watch! In our writing today, we continued working on and building our ideas about the stories that we are going to write based on Indigenous stories. We discussed as a class the retelling of the story the Rainbow Crow.   The students did a great job at remembering the story! In the afternoon session of writing, we continued to plan our own narratives in a similar way. Students were asked to plan in a way that suited them. Some chose lists, others chose webs, others chose timelines. Once students had planned out their stories including the problems the creatures had to overcome to receive their traits, the students then were to storyboard. This is a differen...

 Good afternoon! Students today had an engaging time! We worked on our gratitude journals and they got to discuss who their friends were and why they were such good friends.  In Writing, we read the First Fire , this was about the animals trying to get fire and all the traits that they received. We then discussed ideas and brainstormed other ideas that we could use in connection with our Wetland knowledge for stories that we will create. On Monday, we will continue to build and plan these stories and ideas.  In Music today, we warmed up by playing the four corners rhythm game. We then sat and listened and learned how to create a rhythm using a cup. We will continue to practice next week during our music classes.  Today, we worked on the computers to begin researching animals for our writing projects and our upcoming science project.  In PE, we started with Gaga Ball and played as a class. If the students got eliminated they got to choose which activity they coul...

 Good Evening! Students had PE first thing this morning! They got to play in a circuit where they could choose which activity they could do.  In Music, we are continuing to learn about rhythm and we played rhythm four corners! Was a great game! Students loved to guess the rhythm and move around the classroom! We then played a game where we clapped along to Mario in order for him to beat his villian.  In Math, we continued to work on understanding that there are the same areas but different perimeters and same perimeters with different areas. Students are working well and understanding the concept of area and perimeter. With our writing project, we continued to explore stories that we are going to use as inspiration. Today, we read the Rainbow Crow,  a Metis story that dicusses how the crow lost its colour, its voice, and its beauty. We are continuing to read and look at books where the animals have a flaw and then gain a trait.  We read Chapter 12 of Pax! Ask yo...

 Good Evening! We had a lovely day at school today!  The Terry Fox run is next Wednesday September 21. Please bring you toonies for Terry. Our gratitude prompt today was discussing how we would like to make the world better and the steps that we would take to do this. In Writing, we are starting our new unit on writing stories! We read a story today called the Raven and the Loon. It is an Indigenous story that discusses flaws animals have and how these flaws lead to new traits that the animals gain. Ask your child about the story and what they learned. We will be reading other stories that relate and then begin to plan and storyboard for our own stories.  In Math, we continued with working on area and perimeter! We learned today that rectangles can have the same area without having the same perimeter as well as rectangles can have the same perimeter without having the same area. We will continue to explore this topic until Friday! We read Chapter 9-11 today of Pax! It is ...

 Good Afternoon, Hope you had a great day! Toonies for Terry starts this week and will run until next Wednesday, when we will run our school Terry Fox run! So please bring your Toonies for Terry.  This morning the students were in PE and it looked like they were playing with scoops and passing to another student. I was not in PE today so be sure to ask your child what they did! In Music, we learned about the different notes to music and the difference between rhythm and beat. We practiced both and then played a rhythm and beat game with the rhythm sticks. We had to tap a rhythm with the sticks and try to all do it together without adding to the beat.  We had our first fire drill today. The class did well, but there are still areas to work on being silent, serious, and safe while exiting and entering the building during this time.  We continued with our What if Everybody Did That? project. We will be moving on to a differnt topic tomorrow on how to build narrative sto...

 Good Afternoon, I hope you had a lovely weekend! Mine was super busy! Today, in PE we played Gaga Ball. The students were divided into teams and were placed in an arena with a ball and were to try and hit other students below the knee by slapping the ball at each other. We made it more difficult by adding two balls. This is to teach students about teamwork and fair play. In our Gratitude Journals today, the students wrote about dreams. Ones that they wish to achieve and ones that they have already completed. This is building our writing stamina and our idea processes.  In Writing, we are continuing to finish our What if Everybody Did That class pages to create a book. Students are working on good copies with pictures and their sentences.  In Math, we are continuing on with our area and perimeter unit. Today we discussed the relationship between centimetres, metres, and kilometres, while also discussing area of centimetres squared, metres squared and kilometres square and...

 Good Afternoon Parents and Guardians, I want to start off by saying we had a lovely week. It has been great getting to know your children!  Today, our gratitude prompt was for students to choose a childhood memory that they cherish and write about it and describe how it made them feel. I look forward to reading these memories and making connections with students. We started a new mini project in Writing today based on the book What if Everybody Did That? We read the book and enjoyed the pictures and silliness of the book. After that we discussed the meaning behind the book, and we came up with ideas that revolved around being responsible; monkey see, monkey do; how the bad thing that you do can create chaos if everyone did it. The class then brainstormed bad ideas that you could do that would create chaos if everyone did it. The students then picked an example idea for us to do as a class. The last piece of this writing assignment was for students to create their own 2-3 sent...

 Good Afternoon! What a day that we had! We had an amazing day!  This morning we played a fun game in PE called Down the Chimmney! We had to throw dodgeballs into the mats that were placed out and velcoroed together in a cylinder! Each 'chimmney' was worth points and at the end we tallied up the points of each team! It was so much fun!  After that we continued on with our Gratitude Journals where we had to write about the most beautiful place that we had ever visited! I read and discussed some of those places with the students and it was great to hear all the places that they had visited! We continued on with our Writing Prompt today and I get to read about the students' summer break or what they are nervous or excited about for Grade 5! I am excited to learn about who they are as people! In Math, we continued to discuss perimeter and area. We created Perimeter and Area People today on Grid Paper and calculated the perimeter and area of our characters! There is still some...

  Good afternoon Lovely Grade 5 Parents and Guardians, I hope you had a lovely day! We sure did at school! Tomorrow is Spirit Day at school so please wear Purple (if you can) for Grade 5! We are also going on a walking Field Trip tomorrow to the Coventry/Country Hills Storm Pond. Please make sure that your child is dressed for the weather as it may rain in the afternoon. We are going from about 1:45-3:15.  This morning the students had their first music class. We learned about different vocabulary for music terms and about different instruments. We then played Rhythm Master! The students had a blast! We continued to work on our writing piece about either their summer vacations or what they are excited and nervous about in Grade 5. We are almost complete so it will be nice to hear what students did over the summer or what they are looking forward to this year. We moving forward we will be looking at how to create rich paragraphs by expanding and adding details.  In Math, ...