Today's gym class was the last chance for us to practice our dance performance for tomorrow. Family is welcome to attend - it begins at 10:30, in the gym. At the end of our dance session today, there was a dance circle, and it was awesome! One student even did the helicopter, which was definitely the highlight. In Daily 5, we got word work books. These are books where we record and define words that we are interested in, or that are related to what we are learning. In science we continued to look at the oxygen cycle - some students are really close to finishing their visual journal page on the oxygen cycle. On our model of Calgary, we started to add chicken wire. This will be used to sculpt the landscape and indicate elevation on the project board.

Our dance performance is Friday at 10:30 - parents and guardians are welcome to attend. Tomorrow is our last day to learn the dance with Ms. Nicole. Our project board has been completely colored with chalk to represent different elevations in and around Calgary. We spent some time in science making a rubric for a Visual Journal page about the oxygen cycle. For Daily 5, we switched things up and started to have some choice with 5 different literacy activities. We spent the first part of our morning talking about the different things you can do during daily 5: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Word Work, and Work on Writing.

This Saturday is Star Wars Day: The Library Strikes Back at several Calgary Public Library locations around the city. You can check out this website for more information: ​calgarylibrary.ca/news/star-wars-day-the-library-strikes-back/

In gym today Soundkreations started their residency. We were dancing to dancehall music from the Carribean, and our instructors name is Ms. Nicole. In the afternoon, Ms. Jacobi did the second part of the survey with us that we did a couple of weeks ago. We revisited some basic algebra in math to talk about scaling factors, and then we added on to our model of Calgary. We should be able to start contouring the model this week. Some of us started a Visual Journal page about the oxygen cycle. We worked on our essays in Daily 5 - our last day to work on them is tomorrow.

Mr. Fong was away today, so half of his class joined us for the entire day. Today we had Spartan Training in PE - there was an extra block added to the vault, and an extra ladder added to the climber station. In the project room, we started to lay out the different elevations of Calgary using chalk. Some of us are really chalky now. Some of us worked on our essays during finish-up time, while others worked on tree research, or a challenging math problem. Mr. Fong's students had a package of work to go through - they wrote stories, and poems, and worked on some math. The kindergarten and grade 1 students shared their learning in an assembly today, and we had our first lockdown practice. Mr. Stanley had to call 911 during the practice, because that's just part of the job. The emergency services were expecting the phone call - teachers are supposed to call during practice lockdowns.

This is the challenging math question some of us tried to solve. It's about finding the scaling factor to scale Calgary down to the size of our model. Calgary is approximately 23.5 km wide, and our project board is 373.5 cm wide. You can use algebra to solve this problem IF YOU DARE.

Today during science we continued researching trees and thought about how we could construct them on the project board. We learned for sure the difference between coniferous and deciduous trees. We made our own topographical maps of Calgary, and tomorrow we're ready to start drawing different elevations onto the project board. We also brainstormed how we could represent different things in the city, and Mr. Baustad joined us for that conversation. In gym, we played some dodgeball and someone got their hat sniped off by a hard throw. For Daily 5, we worked on our essays and lots of us are almost done.

For math, we revisited maps of Calgary and made grids on them. In gym, we got to play parachute. We continued to work on our essays. In science, we started researching different trees in Calgary. Tomorrow is a Repsol day - please remember to bring everything you need for swimming.

Today in gym, we did Indy 500. Mr. Stanley and Mr. Vanderlinden pummeled us with dodgeballs during gym. We had an assembly where the grade 3's performed a song on the djembe's. In the morning, the Honourable Kent Hehr talked to us about all three levels of Government. We felt nervous to have him in our classroom, but was exciting to get to meet a real-life MP and ask him questions. He was an excellent speaker and we really enjoyed listening to him. In fact, he spoke for so long that we needed to re-arrange our schedule for the day! Tonight and tomorrow are Parent/Teacher Conferences - which means that there is no school tomorrow. Enjoy your long weekend!

Today in gym we had our last day working with racquet sports. In Daily 5, we worked more on our essays. During Social Studies, we talked and researched Kent Hehr, and came up with questions to ask him. For math, we continued to map out Nose Hill Park and started to include elevationTomorrow we have a visit from the Honourable Kent Hehr. He will talk to us about government, and resiliency. Also tomorrow and Friday we have Parent/Teacher Conferences. 

Today we played the birdie game again PE. Technically a birdie is called a shuttle. We started drawing plans for constructing a model of Nose Hill Park. We chose this park because it is one of the largest hills in Calgary, and we need to put terrain and landscape on our model. We are finishing up a visual journal page about the three different levels of government. We have a guest speaker coming on Thursday who is a representative from one of the levels of government. We continued writing essays on "Run" - every student has a thesis statement now, and knows what a thesis statement. According to Fin, Mr. Stanley continues to be the most awesome teacher in the world.

Today we played a badminton rally in PE. We finished painting our model of Calgary with primer. We are ready to start building on it now. We also started writing essays about "Run." Have a marvelous evening.