Beans in the Jeans

This week was a bit tiring and not always as productive as we like it to be, as we found that many of our students had "beans in their jeans" and had a hard time to settle down. This made it more difficult to focus on school work listen to instruction. We decided to pick up our daily runs again and head outside before lunch for a few laps around the field. This seems to really help our boys and girls to release some excess energy.
We did work hard in Math though and went through a lot of extra practice to become more proficient with fractions. The quiz was postponed to Monday, January 27, and it will cover a small section of multiplication basic facts and an assessment of the students' understanding of fractions.
In Science our students designed some amazing weather instruments, and we learned about wind, wind speed and barometric pressure. Here is a great pic (courtesy of Vienna's mom) showing two students working on their weather vane model:

All of us had fun testing our weather instruments outside on Friday. There was not a lot of wind, but we did manage to get some data. Here are four of our students with their barometer models:

 

Did you know that next week is LITERACY WEEK at Ruth King Elementary? We are so excited, I asked all students to bring their favorite book (can be a picture book, a chapter book, a fiction or non-fiction book) to school on Monday. Each day of the week five different students will introduce their favourite book to the class! But there is more... Here are some highlights from Literacy Week:

On MONDAY we will engage in a 10 minute school wide reading session after the Monday Morning Assembly. On TUESDAY we will be participating in a workshop with author Troy Wilson. On WEDNESDAY we are looking forward to learning about the writing process from Dana White, publisher from the Paper Mache publication. On  THURSDAY we have scheduled another exciting workshop with storyteller Anne Glover and it will be "Dress Up As Your Favourite Book Character Day"! This should be fun! Finally, on FRIDAY is "Poem in Your Pocket Day"!. Can't wait for all the excitement! If you want to support Literacy Week at home, you might want to try this READO-Bingo activity!

Have fun and don't forget to ready with  your child and to your child every day!

Last but not least, we are adding one more exciting guest speaker presentation to our full program next week, as we are inviting CTV into our classroom on Wednesday. Please remember to tune into CTV News with Hudson Mack at 6:00 pm (Shaw or Optic TV on Channel 12) on Wednesday, January 29 and watch for the Division 4 Ruth King Weather School with Astrid Braunschmidt to be featured on air! You will also be able to see the visit at http://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/weather/weather-school. Here is to learning outside the box!!!