Love Was In The Air!

Of course, last week was all about LOVE as we celebrated Valentine's Day on Friday! We talked a lot about kindness, friendship, and ... REGRET! Our students really enjoyed reading the book Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson. We also worked on adding detail and depth to our writing pieces as we wrote "love letters" to random people in the class. Once again, all of the students impressed me with their ability to open their hearts and write with intention! The results are quite touching and can be seen on our bulletin board outside of our classroom, but here are a few fantastic examples:

 

In Art we created some gorgeous collages, inspired by an idea from Ms. Henson, who kindly helped us with this project! Look at these amazing Chinese city lines...

 

Please note, that there is a math quiz scheduled for Thursday, February 20, which will assess the students' understanding of the relationship between fractions and decimals (tenth and hundredth only)!

Also, just a reminder that this coming Friday, February 21 is a ProD Day and schools will be closed!

 

I would like to close with a great poem written by Fraser during Literacy Week:

 

RAIN

 

Drip Drop

On the window

Drip Drop

On the roof

When the rain stops

And the kids come out to play

They hop and skip and jump in the puddles all day

And when they get cold

Because the rain has come again

Drizzling and Drazzling

Quenching the thirst of the grass and plants

Softening the ground for the ants

RAIN.

 

 ~ by Fraser



 

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Last week was so filled with activities, that I am a little late with my blog update and am just now trying to catch up. One of the highlights of last week was definitely our fun outing with our little buddies from Ms. Walker's class to Chinatown. We had the privilege to visit the Victoria Chinese Public School and participate in three workshops, which introduced this rich culture to our boys and girls. Our students took part in a writing class, they performed a lion dance and we watched an interesting movie, which taught us about the history of the school over the past 100 years. I was very proud of our students, who all behaved very well and were excellent ambassadors of Ruth King Elementary.
When we returned to school, we had a special luncheon and our boys and girls had a taste of Chow Mein, a traditional Chinese noodle dish.

Everyone had a great time and we would like to thank especially Jen, Amanda's mom; as well as Laura, Nic's mom, for accompanying us on this field trip. It is always wonderful to have parents come along and share these experiences with us!
After all this fun, we have gone BACK TO WORK at Ruth King and are starting a new unit on Aboriginal Peoples and INUIT in Social Studies as well as a unit on Decimals and their relationship to Fractions in Math. Please watch out for homeowork in Math, approximately 3 - 4 times per week! It's always great to have parents co-sign the agendas; this helps us to stay on the same page (literally!).
Keep up the great work at home! I can tell that TOGETHER we are making some good progress:)

 

Everything is a Story!

As part of our Literacy Week at Ruth King Elementary, we were lucky to attend two great presentations. The first one was by Troy Wilson, a local author of Perfect Man. Mr. Wilson explained to us how important it is to have perseverance as a writer, as most experience many rejections before they get to publish their first book. Our boys and girls also demonstrated a lot of interest in learning about the process of writing and illustrating and how these two are connected!

On Thursday then, we were blown away by Anne Glover, a storyteller extraordinaire. She captivated her audience with her beautiful stories, her authentic voice and... her string tricks! All of the students were so inspired at the end of the presentation and they all wanted strings and tell their own stories! After all... everyone is a storyteller! Strings can be ordered here.
Check out this little video that captures some of the magic:

What a great week it was!
We did also create some wonderful watercolour art and shared our favourite books with the class.

Next week should be equally fun as we are getting ready to visit the Chinese School in Chinatown in Downtown Victoria on Wednesday! All of the permission forms have been come back (Thank you!) and everyone is excited about a fun day of learning about a different culture and of course, spending time with our little buddies from Ms. Walker's class!