Northern Lights School - Class 5A Blog

 Today we practiced our spelling and printing by writing wonderful holiday cards for seniors! 5A wrote lovely messages, outlined in sharpie, and festive pictures coloured and detailed to bring joy and kindness. We also compared our estimates of each population in Canada to the real data taken from 2020. Students were surprised to see how close and far their guesses were. We continue to research food chains of wetland animals and students are beginning to record their research in a flipgrid. 

Today was Vacation Dress-Up Day! Ms. Nugent dressed in hiking/camping gear to promote Canada vacations, and other classmates wore Hawaiian themed shirts, beach hats, and summer-like clothing. This definitely brought spirit to the classroom of 5A. We continued with our research on Food Chains in science and students will be presenting their animal research through a flipgrid. The Word Work program "Words Their Way" is in full swing now; all of the groups now have their words to work on every morning, and every 6 days they will get to Level Up! Building their vocabularies and enhancing their spelling are just the tip of the iceberg for what the students will gain with this program. Don't forget, tomorrow is Wear Red and Green Day! 

 Today we had an exciting holiday art event! We are decorating our classroom doors for Spirit Week and all the classes are in a contest for best door. 5A coloured ornaments and candy canes to be places on the tree that takes up the whole door, and some made 2D colourful presents to put underneath the tree. Votes are on Tuesday, December 14. We also discussed the six regions of Canada and colour coded a map with a legend. This will help with our math task tomorrow! 

 Today we created a new Math Prodigy Teacher Account so the students could occasionally at school, and more often at home, practice their math skills through engaging games. This allows them to play with their classmates, engage in competitive tasks, build proficiency in technology, and build their number sense. The teacher account allows me to view their progress and assess them through homework tasks which can be utilized over winter break. We also did a role-playing exercise to get a better understanding of the Zones of Regulation. Students were excited to perform the different roles and understood what all of the zones look and feel like. Our next step will be how to move back to the green zone when we move through other events and feelings through the day. 

While exploring the intricate system of the Wetlands, we dove into a heated topic about protecting the land and creatures who depend on it. After watching a visually enthralling read aloud of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, 5A were tasked with writing a letter to either the Once-ler or the Lorax with their point of view on the situation. They were meant to emphasize the greed of the Once-ler and how the need for trees will affect multiple parts of life in the area. Everyone could comprehend the harm that the greed was causing and the need for oxygen needed for things to live. We also made a pledge to spread kindness and shed light this holiday season and wrote our pledge on Christmas tree cut outs.  

 The students had a great time today learning how to draw a map of Canada. We explored some of the provinces' geographical features through a story called "Carson Crosses Canada" by Linda Bailey and Kass Reich. The story has detailed artwork of each of the different types of landscapes found in various tourist hot spots from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean while an adorable dog takes a road trip through Canada. We also practiced more estimation rounding using the base ten blocks for visuals which helped many better grasp the concept of whole numbers. In Phys Ed, 5A won just about every round of Bench Ball and we ended the day with triumph! 

  Math is always made easier with visuals, and today, 5A got to explore rounding up whole numbers in the thousands with benchmarked number lines. This task made a lot of students have "lightbulb" moments and they were very surprised to find that rounding up or down usually is a case-by-case occurrence. Shopping on a budget seemed to be the most frequent example students wanted to play with, and with the holidays coming up, I'm pretty sure I know what's on their minds... Speaking of holidays, we made some fantastic snowflake art in the afternoon to prepare for the coming snow in the next week. 

  Today in Grade 5, tensions were high as the challenges brought out the importance of teamwork! In math, table groups were paired together and given a set of math manipulatives to attempt to build the tallest, toughest, and most triangular towers. Teams had to communicate, share, contribute, and rotate between multiple avenues to do these team building exercises. The tallest tower came in at 38 inches, and the triangle tower got extra points for spelling the word "triangle" with the blocks. In Phys Ed, relay teams raced to get the most laps between groups, and the highest lap count was 72! An amazing Monday for these little Nuggets, great effort team! 

 Today was a big day of classroom furniture rearranging, discussing expectations, and figuring out where everyone is in their writing. We wrote a letter to the teacher this morning so that every student would have the opportunity to share what they want me to know about them. I intend to read and respond to them all by Monday. We also had a visit to the learning commons and everyone was thrilled to have a new set of books to dive into. Seating plans were made to best enhance every student's learning, and we all agreed to name the class Ms. Nugent's Nuggets. Hoping everyone has a wonderful long weekend! 

 What an amazing day getting to meet this lovely group of happy kiddos! I am very excited to work with all these amazing personalities for the rest of the school year. While the day was spent mostly building relationships and getting to know one another, we did manage to do an art critique of the world famous Vincent Van Gogh. Students got to express their thoughts and feelings about the colours and line work in "Starry Night." We also learned a new game in Math, called The Power of Nine, practicing adding 1-digit numbers to 9. It was a great first day and I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings!