Happy Tuesday!

Today we had a special guest in PE. Jarrod was here to teach us about Australian Football. Did you know this game is played on an oval shaped field about 180 meters long? If you run 15 steps your team looses posession of the ball and you also loose possession if you throw the ball. To move the ball you can kick it or do a hand pass (kind of like serving in Volleyball).

In Music we continued working with the ukuleles. Thank you to Ms. Lysak for your patience tuning them all every day!

In Social Studies we learned about Unity and talked about the Voyageurs today. We are working hard to get our ABC’s of Alberta Before it was Alberta books done before conferences. Only W, X, Y, and Z left to go!

Reminder: Tomorrow is BEACH DAY!

Happy Monday!

To kick off our last Monday before Spring Break we worked on division and learned about a new strategy we could use called the Grid Method. Over the next few days students will be introduced to several different strategies for division so that they can find the one that works best for them.

We took some time this morning to do some writing while reflecting on our time with Mr. Stockton. It was interesting to hear what student felt was the most memorable part of this experience was.

We continued to work on our ABC's of Alberta Before it was Alberta project, today we did T is for Travois. 


Our Rube Goldberg Machines are well underway! Lots of interesting ideas and problem solving to include at least 3 simple machines.

Reminders:

- Conferences Thursday evening and Friday morning
- Book Fair during conferences
- Early dismissal Thursday, No school Friday
- All student forms for Aggie days are returned! Thank you! If you have not yet sent in the $5 fee please do so ASAP
-  Read-A-Thon is ongoing. Who wants to be Principal for the day??

Whew!

What a spectacular week to be a student at New Brighton School!

We had such a wonderful time sharing our Storytelling work with our families on Wednesday and Thursday nights. If you weren't able to come in for it, please take the time on the weekend to have your child tell you their story.

We have been working on division in Math and started learning the steps of long division. This work will continue next week.

Our Rube Goldberg Machine Project is underway. Lots of creative ideas and testing materials and designs today! We are looking forward to sharing these with you next week at conferences.

Reminders:
- Conferences next Thursday evening and Friday morning
- Spring break starts with Early dismissal Thursday
- Beach Day is Wednesday (remember to dress appropriately for school learning including PE)
- Popcorn Snack Wednesday

Attention:

Our classes are planning to walk to New Brighton Pond on Thursday afternoon. If you have any questions or concerns about this please contact Mrs. Cose. 

*Please remember to dress appropriately for the outdoors!

Reminder:

 The Conference Booking system opens to parents on Thursday, March 14th at 4:00pm.

Today we started our day working on some handwriting. We are all pretty good at forming letters, but could use extra practice with upper case and words that link above the line (b, o, v, w). In math we talked about the different symbols used in division and where to start when dividing bigger numbers. We had outside PE since the gym is being used in preparation for our Storytelling Celebrations later this week.

Reminders:

- Please return all Aggie Days forms and the $5 payment ASAP
- Green day on Friday
- Storytelling evenings Wednesday and Thursday

First Monday after time change and what a day it was!

We had several students home sick and many who were coughing and sneezing most of the day. Please remember to get these kiddos in bed early because this is a busy time with our Storytelling evening and getting ready for conferences next week.

Despite being a bit under the weather, we worked hard today.
- We came up with several creative answers to the prompt: The answer is 48. What could the question be?
- Literacy time was used to do some reading, work on vocabulary and finishing up some science work
- In math we worked with some division activities and talked about multiples and visualizing using base ten blocks.
- For Social Studies we learned about Quillwork and how first nations people dyed and used porcupine quills to decorate their clothing and belongings. We learned that working with porcupine quills is considered a sacred activity, but that using the techniques with other materials is acceptable. We attempted to use a quillwork technique to make wrist bands - it was really tricky!

Reminders:
- Storytelling evenings Wednesday and Thursday
- Wear green day is Friday
- Aggie Days forms and $5.00 fee is due
- Read-A-Thon forms are coming home. This is in support of our school playground initiative :) 

Happy Friday!

Today we had a chance to get together with our Grade 1 buddies ☺

We also had a chance to work on a good copy of our Legends and play "Titans" in PE.

Important Dates:

• Wednesday, March 13 - Oral Story Telling Evening 6 pm (Group 1)
• Thursday, March 14 - Oral Story Telling Evening 6 pm (Group 2)
• Friday, March 15 - Wear Green Day
• Wednesday, March 20 - Popcorn Snack Day/Beach Day
• Thursday, March 21 - Scholastic Book Fair
• Thursday, March 21 - Early Dismissal for Parent-teacher Interviews (3 - 7pm)
• Friday, March 22 - Conferences All Day - No School

Notes from the Teacher:

• Our next field trip will be Aggie Days on Thursday, April 4th- right after spring break. I will need 4 to 5 parent volunteers for this trip. It will be a full day field trip. If you are able to volunteer, could you send me an email or return the form attached to the off-site forms that were sent home yesterday.  I would like to have all my volunteers in place before spring break. Please return the field trip forms ASAP. The cost is $5.00. Please send payment in with forms as payment cannot be paid online (amount is too small). 
• Your child was sent home with 2 tickets for the Oral Story Telling. You must present the tickets on the night of your child (ren)'s performance. 
• Our annual fundraising campaign for the playground starts Monday. A form will come home Monday about the Read-a-thon. 

Please check your child's backpack!

Sent home today:

- Tickets for our Storytelling Evening

- Field trip forms for Aggie Days

We started our day with a word scramble using the letters in the words: Simple Machine. NH was able to find 101 different words using only those letters. Wow!

We have started working on Division in math. We have discussed the vocabulary specific to this operation including Dividend, Divisor, and Quotient. Today we worked with manipulatives and dice while practicing organizing large quantities into equal groups. Continuing to work on basic multiplication facts at home and relating those to the related division facts would be beneficial.

In Social Studies today we talked about the importance of Oral Traditions to the people who lived here long ago. We read some traditional Blackfoot stories and then chose one to illustrate in our Visual Journals.

Did you know we have started working with Ukuleles? Today in Music we learned about frets and how to use them when playing.

FYI
March 15 - Wear green day
March 20 - Beach Day
Fun Lunch tomorrow
Storytelling evenings next week

Today we continued to focus on being Storytellers! 

For our eye opener we worked with sequencing words by brainstorming and then practicing how to use them when telling our stories. This is to help our audience follow our stories and make it easier for them to create a movie in their minds.

We got together with our Multiage groups after a quick assembly with Mr.Stockton. He reviewed our responsibility as the audience to really be a "Story Coach" who helps the story teller overcome the Whoosh!, add action, volume and eye contact to their retelling to make it engaging. It is amazing to hear the feedback students give each other and wonderful to see how much students who were strangers a week ago are now trusted collaborators.

In Social Studies we learned about Story Robes and Winter Counts. We worked on creating stories of our own lives using symbols. Thank you families who helped us get this all done and returned :)

This afternoon our class met with Mr.Stockton and worked with the storytelling rubric to identify areas of strength and areas we wanted feedback on. We gave each other specific feedback and tips. Then he told us more of his story.