Terry ran through rain and snow!

Reminder:  The weather does not look fabulous on Thursday for the Terry Fox Run.  Terry persevered through all kinds of conditions and challenges during his marathon of hope and so will we.  As we race into fall (hum...winter) weather, please ensure you are sending your child dressed for the weather.   Students will be outside in cold and wet weather,  before school and during recess on a daily basis,  so ensure that have hats, mitts and warm and waterproof jackets. 

I can use historical thinking vocabulary.  

Today we talked about simple timelines about our lives.  We used the terms past, present and future to describe when events in our personal stories take place.  We talked about sentence starters or phrases that help us describe when an event has happened

PAST                                           PRESENT                             FUTURE
-Long ago                                    -Now                                    -Later
-Before                                         -Today                                  -One day
-When I was....                            -Currently                             -After tomorrow
-Last year                                    -Right now                            -Next
                                                     -Presently                             -Some time

We talked with partners about strong memories from the past, or of past events that impacted our lives, then we brainstormed some of our hopes, dreams and goals.  This showed us how the future is exciting!
Regular stories have a beginning, middle and end like a line segment.   We discussed that our timelines look like a ray, with a starting point, a middle (the present) but with an arrow showing that the future is continuing.  We had a good discussion about how we set goals in our present to achieve our dreams in our future.  We can shape our future with our choices today. 

This term we will be helping your child create some learning goals which will be posted on IRIS.  You can help your child prepare for this, by discussing what areas they hope to grow in. 

I can decompose numbers.

Today we used "Bonds Models" again, to practice breaking up numbers.  Some children discovered they can use patterns to show the different ways.  Using a pattern helps us know we found all the ways.  Together we used unifix cubes to show a "Staircase Model" to show the combinations that make the number 6. 

Many children also discovered the commutative property of numbers when adding. 

Children realized that 1+4=5 is the same as 4+1=5, noticing that you can add the addends in any order and still arrive at the same sum. This is an important principle, that helps kids be flexible when working with numbers when doing mental math.