Last Week's Spelling Stories: Featuring Prefixes

Students are writing well- lots of strong voices, humour, and originality. Here is a sampling of some wonderful stories by Nadia, Lauren and Andrew:

Superman!
When my parents go out they tell me to supervise my little brother. You can guess how overwhelming he can be. Sometimes I think he’s a little underdeveloped because he always wants me to play undercover with him. I mean, he’s already in grade 4 and probably the most underweight kid in his class. He loves to dress up as superman. I think superman’s overrated. Everyone overextends their support to him, even though he’s not real, just someone’s vision of what a superhero should be like; a fantasy. My brother has so many fantasies. Being the next superman is at the top of his list.
One time after watching the newest release, he came up to me and said, “I’m going to climb the roof.”
“Knock yourself out,” I replied, not really paying him any mind. He never follows through with anything he says.
As he fell he yelled out, “Man overboard!”, like he was on a boat cruising the Caribbean Sea.
Next thing I knew, we were rushing him off to the local children’s hospital. I guess I’ve always underestimated how hard you can hit your head falling off the roof of a two story building.
 -Nadia





Abby the Undercover Tabby
Far, far away, in a mysterious undercover secret lair, there was a ninja. The head of the Army of Cats looked at a cat with a purple mask, and nodded. This cat’s name was Abby the Undercover Tabby. Abby was an intelligent cat that was slightly underweight, with her ribs sticking out a bit. She had grey fur, and often wore a purple mask that double as a whip to keep away villians. Abby was often underestimated because she was small, but Abby was an unstoppable force. She had the best kicks and punches, and when she was assigned to rescue 200 cats from animal kidnappers, Abby was totally ready. The lithe cat scampered down Cambie, dodging children wanting to pet her soft fur. She ran for about 3 minutes until she stopped at 19th Avenue. She turned the corner, and found herself standing in front of Ro the Crow’s house. Ro the Crow was an overrated villian, always giving speeches about how great she was. Abby knew it was time to strike the evil villian who had kidnapped 200 cats for soft crow coats. She kicked the door open with a mighty kick so hard that she overwhelmed the large crow shaking in front of her.

“I’ve been expecting you. The crows are very proud of my efforts,” cackled Ro. He sneered at Abby.
“Oh come on. It’s not like you’re superman or something because you kidnapped some cats! Now hand them over, or prepare for death,” roared Abby, stomping on the ground for good luck. She was a little superstitious.

With that, Ro let out a thundering screech, and she released a claw on Abby, but Abby saw it coming. With a counterattack, Abby reached forward and lunged at Ro. It would’ve been the perfect move, but Abby had pushed too hard, causing her to overextend.

Luckily, she got back up in time to throw a powerful swipe, and Ro the crow was blasted out of the window. Abby had gone a little overboard, but she thought that Ro was done. However, as she looked out the window in triumph, but realized that she hadn’t supervised the cats that had been stolen.
She ran as she watched Ro fly away with a servant, the poor cats stuffed in sacks.
“I’M COMING FOR YOU RO!” screamed Abby, and with that she took off, snarling as she raced for the crows in the sky. She knew she could catch up.
-Lauren

Jeff Goes Rogue

Jeff is the fastest runner in my school. Often his speed is underestimated because he is underdeveloped and underweight for his age. His nickname is superman because he appears superficially weak and keeps his powerful speed undercover. Jeff’s mom supervises his substantial diet of whole foods. He thinks this diet is overrated, overwhelming and not very tasty.  
Right before the last big race was to start, Jeff went rogue! He bought seven candy bars and ate them all in seven minutes. Jeff ran faster than ever before and finished first! However, after the race Jeff could barely walk and his mom had to piggyback him home.                                                                                                                                      
 -Andrew
                                                                                                                                  -

Math Songs- A New Way to Review Algebra!

Students are very excited to be working in groups to perform this math song. This math/fine arts assignment is due Friday, November 3rd.

Here is a link to the lyrics of our song and the music:
http://msmcclure.com/?page_id=12610

And here is the video of a very brave math teacher singing it, for inspiration purposes:


Spelling Stories

Every week for spelling, students are challenged to write a spelling story of about one paragraph where they put the words into context.

This week's featured story is by Ellie.


The Only Boat for Miles
          In the rickety old canoe, Joanne was trying not to get seasick.  She was with her mom, a natural smart-aleck, and her brother, a scaredy-cat.  They were in the middle of the lake after a big wave swished them away.  Her mom kept making metaphorical opinions like, “This water is a prison, and this canoe is our cell.”  That didn’t help Joanne, she kept having to shake herself out of hallucinations.   Her brother’s head kept clashing against the side of the boat while he was lying down.  But Joanne wasn’t worried about any of this, bad luck ran in the genetics in her family.  She knew what to do, sort of.


-Ellie


Gordon Korman and The Writers Festival

Just reminder that tomorrow is a big literary day for us. We have won a visit by children’s author Gordon Korman! After his presentation, we will head down to Granville Island to attend the Vancouver Writers Festival.

Please bring a Compass Card and money or a lunch. 

Students will be permitted to travel in groups in the public market to purchase and enjoy lunch together. Our author event is taking place at this Revue Stage at
1601 Johnston St. -right next to the Arts Club and public market.

We will return to school by 3:15.

What's new in Division 2 and Welcome to Ms. Orbach!

Today we welcomed, Ms. Orbach,  a teacher from UBC who will be working with us on Thursdays through the month of November and again in the new year. Please check on this blog to learn more about her in our teacher section.

It's been a great first month in Division 2! Thanks for making the time to attend the goal-setting conferences with us and your children.

Here is what we've been up to; there is always a lot going on in our classroom and we love to see the students embrace the new challenges.

Vancouver Writers Festival and Gordon Korman: We are very fortunate to have been chosen as the school that Gordon Korman will visit next Wednesday. He is a YA author of over 44 books and we have been reading some of them during silent reading to prepare. IN the aftternoon,we will be heading to the VWF to attend an author event "Seeking Refuge". This will compliment our Social Studies and Lnaguage Arts curriculum.

Art: Ms Holms brought in an art kit from the Burnaby Art Gallery and we worked on different portraits based on a series of different portraits by local artists. We will continue this next week.

Social Studies: The Model UN mini-simulation has begun and we have been working on researching country positions on child marriage and how it affeects women's and girls rights. Eventually, we will join forces with Mr. Turner's students for a UN special assembly on world issues.

Math: Our first math test is complete and we are working on allowing students to continue to learn math at their own pace. We feel this will allow us to pull small groups together for teaching sessions while those who are able continue to work, mark and check in. Students will learn all about this new approach tomorrow (Friday). Problem of the Week continues to be an extension activity that challenges all our students.

In French,  we are focusing on oral language, particularly emotions and expressions and high-frequency vocabulary,  through songs and games. The kids have been great at participating!

In Language Arts, Article of the Week and Word Work continues- we are seeing great improvements in effort levels for both of these tasks. In writing workshop, we are building our pre-writing strategies (free-writes, mapping, webs, lists) and the tools needed to write engaging memoirs.

In Science, Ms. Holms has reviewed the scientific method with gummy bears and is also working on lab report writing skills.

Core Competencies: Tomorrow, students will submit their "resilient garden" ( see assignments tab)- this is a visual representation of who they are as learners right now. We will look back at this at the end of the year to help us reflect on how far we've come, particularly in response to the new Core Competencies in the BC Curriculum.

Thanks for reading,
Ms. House and Ms. Holms


Math Test: This Thursday, October 12th

Students are encouraged to review recently learned math concepts for Thursday's test.

Tips on studying:
-Begin by reviewing the concepts where you made errors.
-Review the lessons in the grey boxes that teach the concept.
-Continue studying by redoing or creating questions that you initially got wrong.
-Use flashcards to review basic multiplication concepts.
-Teach your math concepts to a parent or sibling- you will really know the concept then!

Grade 6s:
Pattern rules and sequencing: pp 1-4
Place Value pp. 33-34
Multiplication, Regrouping pp.63-67, 68-73

Grade 7s:
Place value and order of operations pp.1-6
Long Multiplication pp.18-21
Constant rates, variables and solving equations pp. 30-33, 34-36, 38




Happy Thanksgiving

The children have been working hard and stretching their minds over the last month. We are grateful for their can-do attitudes, their willingness to try new ways of learning, and their support of each other. This long weekend is a well deserved break! 

Enjoy your time with family and friends.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones.

Ms. House and Ms. Holms


Take a Knee

In the news, there are lots of things that tie in to our current focus on human rights in Social Studies.

Here is our initial class work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- so many good ideas!




Today we watched poet and Newbery-winning author Kwame Alexander's video "Take a Knee"- another way to take a stand.

Students were thoughtful and insightful in their reactions to this political protest.

Here is a link to his video: http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=18597971 if you are interested- many of them wanted to watch it again.

PS. Spelling for Week 3, this week is now under the assignments tab.




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