Merry Christmas!

Hello,

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas with their families!

I also hope you enjoy these videos, made by some of the students, as a special Christmas gift for their parents!

Christmas Video - IJI

Christmas Video - ECE

Christmas Video - PCA

Christmas Video - Big Group

Merry Christmas!

Mr. Skinner

Hope it was a relaxing day

Hello,

I hope everyone who stayed home today had a relaxing day. Maybe you slept in, maybe you lounged in your pyjamas, but I definitely hope you practised the songs for the Christmas concert!

The stage is set up. I checked it out and practised with the students from our class who came to school today. We should be able to pull of a good performance, with three rows of students on the stage, with a bit of practise time in class in the morning.

Christmas Concert set up for Thursday

Please remember to wear red, white or green clothing. You will also need the lantern you made in Religion class, but I think everyone still has those at school.

Have a good night. See you in the morning.

Mr. Skinner

Good News, Bad News.

Hello,

In case you haven't heard yet, I just wanted to let everyone know that the bus service is cancelled for today, due to the inclement weather. The school is open today.

From our past discussions about Snow (or Ice) days, I'm sure some of you are celebrating right now.

The only bad news is that we won't get to practice choreography for the Christmas Concert this morning, or hold our full dress rehearsal in the afternoon.

So, we will have to practice during first block tomorrow, and finalize our staging arrangements.

If you are staying home today, please make sure to practise the two songs, to ensure that you have them memorized for tomorrow's performance.

If I don't see you at school today, have a great day.

For all the parents who will be on the road, I hope you all have a safe drive.

Mr. Skinner

Congrats!

Hello,

I am so proud of our class! Everyone did a great job presenting the Kiva persuasive poster boards. The Grade 4-6 students were very impressed and many told me that it was extremely difficult to choose just one person to vote for.

I will be making the loans tomorrow. Congratulations to Katie and Eden for receiving the most votes. Allison and Chris were right behind them in third and fourth place.

Today, our focus was Kiva, tomorrow, our focus shifts to the Christmas Concert. We will have our dress rehearsal in the afternoon. Please practise the songs tonight and bring your red, white and green clothing in for tomorrow.

Kiva Presentations

Presenting and Voting

Have a great night.

Mr. Skinner

Getting Ready for Tomorrow

Hello,

This morning, we continued to work on our Kiva Persuasive poster boards. The Grade 4 to Grade 6 students will be joining us in the Learning Commons, during second block. They will read our letters, look at our displays, ask questions and vote for the person they feel is most deserving of the loan. If you would like to join us, you are welcome to stop by the Learning Commons from 10 to 11 tomorrow. You will get to vote as well, if you stop by to visit.

Some students will be bringing home their poster boards tonight, if they still have some work to do, in order to make sure they are ready to present. Others, will be printing colour photos at home and posting them on the boards, when they arrive at school tomorrow.

We also continued to practise for the Christmas concert today. The students are doing a great job! They are encouraged to continue their efforts to memorize our two songs, so that we don't need any papers when we are on stage this Thursday. We also decided that we will all be wearing red, white and green for the performance. Santa hats and elf hats would be great accessories for the outfits as well.

I'm really looking forward to our Kiva presentation day!

Have a great night.

Mr. Skinner

A Busy Day

Hello,

I had a lot of fun coaching lacrosse yesterday and going to a technology workshop on Wednesday, but I definitely missed being in the classroom!

Thank goodness the students were hard at work while I was away. They sang our two songs for the Christmas Concert this morning and they did a fantastic job! Now, it's really important for everyone to do on Google Drive this weekend. We need to keep practising, so that we don't need to rely on our lyric sheets during the concert next Thursday.

Today, the students also put the finishing touches on their Food Train posters and commercials, which used a variety of advertising techniques that we discussed in class. We hope that everyone enjoys the videos, which were posted on the blog earlier today.

Next, the students began to work on their poster boards for their Kiva persuasive letter presentations on Tuesday morning. Most students have finished their editing process and are now designing their poster boards. We will continue to work on this task on Monday morning, but if students would like to have colour photos on their poster boards, they need to print pictures this weekend at home, and bring them in on Monday.

Finally, I had some good discussions with some groups today about the differences between a broken line graph and a scatterplot graph. We will be making some minor changes to the graphs we have been working on and finishing this task on Monday.

Have a great weekend and practise, practise, practise those songs for the concert!

Thanks,

Mr. Skinner

Food Train Commercials

Hello,

As promised to the students, here are the links to the wonderful commercials they produced about the Food Train.

http://youtu.be/0vEr54xnJog

http://youtu.be/Hq5HrhQzLP8

http://youtu.be/SuCwvnd8JA4

http://youtu.be/skKU7iuz7lo

http://youtu.be/xaz1TaV7Fvw

http://youtu.be/zPSDLbZWmp8

We hope you enjoy the videos!

Mr. Skinner

Practice the songs please

Hello,

Silent Night and our Shake it Off re-mix have been shared on Google Drive with all of the students. Their homework tonight is to practice both songs.

In Math, we corrected our work on broken line graphs and we have started to explore Scatterplots, which look at how two pieces of data could be related. Today, the students formed groups and decided on a question they would like to explore. Over the next few days, they will look for data, find relationships between data and plot the information on a Scatterplot graph.

In Language, we are making posters and commercials as part of an advertising campaign to publicize the food train and our Kiva persuasive letter presentations. Each group of four is making two posters and a commercial, using a variety of advertising techniques.

Finally, I have been reviewing the Kiva persuasive letters with the students, giving them suggestions for improvement, before they put their work on poster boards for next Tuesday's presentations. We will be working on the poster boards in class this week.

Have a great evening. I hope you enjoy the singing.

Mr. Skinner

Please Share Kiva Persuasives and Song Lyrics

Hello,

This is a reminder to all students to share their rough drafts of the Kiva Persuasive Letters and the re-written song lyrics.

We will be moving forward tomorrow and we need to have all of the rough drafts completed.

We will also be working on broken line graphs tomorrow as well. Students are welcome to work ahead tonight, as I am expecting the worksheets to be completed by Monday.

Have a good night. I'm off to cheer on Alfie!

Mr. Skinner

All Aboard the Food Train

Hello,

This morning, Ive, Katie and Christopher helped design and decorate our box for the Christmas Food Train. It is a beautiful sight! Now, we just have to fill it. A note is coming home today with suggested donations that will help members of our community that are in need. Thanks for your support. We hope to see many canned items arriving in the next few days.

We also worked on the white boards, calculating mean, median and mode for various sets of numbers. I started off with some easy numbers, but when I let the students pick their own numbers, they really challenged themselves. It was a great activity.

In Language, we continued to work on the netbooks, finishing up the rough drafts of our Kiva persuasive letters and our "Shake it Off" Christmas remix lyrics.

The students are expected to have last night's Math worksheets completed, so they can be corrected on Thursday.

They are also expected to have their persuasive letter and lyrics completed by the end of second block tomorrow. If they have a lot of work left on these two tasks, they should work on them tonight. Thanks.

Have a good night.

Mr. Skinner

Stem and Leaf Plots

Hello,

This morning we explored Stem and Leaf Plots in Math. We found out what each student's favourite number is and plotted it on a Stem and Leaf Plot. Then the students worked on a Stem and Leaf Plot activity sheet, which is to be completed for homework.

In Language, we worked in the Learning Commons on our persuasive Kiva letters and we continued to re-write the lyrics to "Shake it Off" with a Christmas theme. Our goal is to have both activities completed by the end of the week.

Finally, during last block, we made the new ambassador schedules. The students worked very well together to create the new schedules for December and January.

Have a great evening.

Mr. Skinner

Advent Liturgy

Hello,

This morning we had our Advent Liturgy with Father Pierre. Mrs. Rogan's class and Mrs. Little's class did a wonderful job and it was a great celebration.

Before the liturgy, the students completed their Senators scoring predictions and calculated mode, median and mean for their scoring figures. We also worked on a Double Bar graph review worksheet. The sheet is to be completed for homework.

After the liturgy, the students started to work on re-writing the lyrics to pop songs with a Christmas theme for our concert performance. We will continue to work on re-writing "Shake it Off" tomorrow, but the students are welcome to work on them tonight as well. Our goal will be to have the songs completed and selected by Thursday, so we can begin practising.

Have a great night.

Mr. Skinner