Beyond The Desk

By now, you should have received a permission form regarding Service Day tomorrow. With the extra long weekend, it was a bit of a rush getting it out today to be handed back tomorrow, but I thought I was more likely to get it back with the short turnaround then with a long turnaround time.

Anyway, students will need to bring some type of glove to school tomorrow. The best thing to bring would be a gardening or work glove but winter gloves would work as well. Students can wear play clothes tomorrow and should be dressed for the weather as we will be going out rain or shine. Right now, it looks like a chance of rain with the possibility of sun in the afternoon. We will be going out at 1:00 and returning at about 2:30. We would love parent volunteers to join us if you have some time and would enjoy a nice walk through the community.

If you did not receive a permission form or your child’s permission form disappeared between the school and your home, just download the one below and send it with your child tomorrow.

Service Day Permission Form

Well, not really but it is a short week. And I wanted to pass on a slew of news and exciting events here in Grade 4!

First of all, a couple of reminders:

• No Spelling or Memory Verse: As it is a short week, there will be no spelling list or memory verse for this week.
• Beach Day: Students are going to the beach tomorrow (in our imagination anyway). Students can come to school in appropriate beach apparel. No bikinis or spaghetti straps. If students do not want to dress up that is fine; they can just wear their uniforms tomorrow. It is also most likely going to rain tomorrow. So students should also bring something warm to wear on top just in case.
• Jeans Day: On Weds, Highroad is once again doing a fundraiser for BC Children’s Hospital. Students can donate $5 to wear jeans. Students can pay their $5 at the office to receive their button. If students are not wanting to donate, they can wear their uniforms as usual.
• Fencing: Students will need to bring pants for tomorrow to wear for fencing. They can bring their pants in their bags and change into them for gym. More about fencing below.

About a week ago, the Intermediates received a class set of Chromebooks to use. We are very excited about the Chromebooks! If you do not know what a Chromebook is, here is a little video describing them:

Basically, Chromebooks are a very affordable computer that allows us to have the power of a laptop with the power of the internet. Students will be using the Chromebooks as often as possible for their school work. The students have already been using them and have really enjoyed the ease of use and how fast they are. Just today, we had students talking about traits of good writing. I posed a question to the students on what they thought made a piece of writing good. Students used the website, Mentimeter, to submit their thoughts. Using the site, we could display all the student’s ideas immediately in one place as students submitted their answers. It was a lot of fun and students were incredibly engaged. We also used them today to do some work on computer programming skills. Here are some pictures of students at work (click on the picture to see a larger view):

Today we also started fencing. No, we didn’t build fences around the school! Instead students got to meet an actual competitive fencer and learn some moves with modified safety swords. Students learned some preliminary moves and lunges, then had some fun practicing their lunges with practice swords. We also played some games with foam swords, playing a modified “Capture the Flag” style game. We had lots of fun. We have two more sessions for Fencing, with another session tomorrow and one on Thursday where students will get to use actual fencing equipment and foils. They are completely safe to use. The swords do not have sharp edges and with the equipment, students should be completely safe and have lots of fun. Here are some pictures of our first day!

 

Genius Hour is tomorrow.

I have also added some new dates to the calendar for events that are upcoming. I have also listed them below and will give more details as we get closer.

• Beach Day – Apr. 15
• BC Hospital Jeans Day – Apr. 16
• Highroad Knights Day – Apr. 22
• Service Day – Apr. 23

Here is the spelling list for this week:

Spelling Q4

Here is the link to the Spelling City page. Don’t forget to bring in your completed quiz to get your bonus point!

I saw this amazing video while I was at a conference just before Spring Break. This is a community in Paraguay that is extremely poor. The community actually makes most of it’s living by going through all the garbage at the garbage dump, which they live right beside, and taking everything that might be useful to sell for parts and metal. Children don’t have a lot of nice things as they are very poor and the schools they go to are also very poor and can not afford nice equipment. However, the students have learned to make toys and other things out of the scraps found in the garbage dump. In fact, they have found enough things to build their own musical instruments and created their own orchestra. Take a look at this cool video!

Welcome Back!

I know it’s not easy to get back into the swing of things after the delightful two weeks off. My family and I had a great break traveling and it was certainly hard to turn that alarm clock back on to prepare for the usual early morning wake-up. However, here we are and we have a fast couple of months before the end of the school year to get things done.

To start off, here is the spelling for the week.

Spelling Q3

Here is the link to Spelling City. Don’t forget to bring in your completed quiz for a bonus mark!

The memory verse for this week is:

The everlasting God is your place of safety. His arms will hold you up forever.

Deuteronomy 33:27

Fieldtrip Update:

Just a couple of reminders for Friday’s fieldtrip.  The students will be wearing their school uniforms.  They are to bring their own picnic lunch, and may bring $2 towards buying a vanilla ice cream cone at McDonalds.  We’re meeting in the school lobby at 8:15 and boarding the bus at 8:20.