Monday Agenda Items

*****
Agenda

1. Section A Calcul mental (Coupe les zéros identiques) - Wednesday

2. School photo order deadline is Wednesday, October 2.

3. Your Chevalier Clothing Store is now OPEN! Yay!
Samples available until Friday, Oct 4 and online store open until Sunday, Oct 6.

Have a great week! :)

Friday Agenda Items

*****
Agenda

1. It is Banned Books Week! What will you get caught reading?

2. Your Chevalier Clothing Store is now OPEN! Yay!

3. Drama Club starts next week!

ADN (Arts Dramatiques à Ness) for Grade 6s will be on Mondays at 8:00am!

See Mme McKenzie with any questions.

4. School photo proofs order deadline is Wednesday, October 2.

Have a great weekend! :)

Tomatosphere!

Today was an exciting day in Room 208. We planted space tomatoes!

After reading about and discussing the Tomatosphere project and watching THIS VIDEO featuring astronaut Thomas Pasquet, we were ready to get started!

How might someone plant a space tomato?

Here's our planting method:

As part of a 'blind test,' we planted two types of seeds - one from a control group and another from a group of seeds that have been in space on the I.S.S. We each planted 2 seeds - one from each seed group. The groups this year are "L" and "M" but we don't yet know which letter belongs to what seed group (hence the blind test). After planting our seeds, we placed our peat pots in mini-greenhouses (seedling trays with humidity covers), away from direct sunlight and cold-air drafts in order to provide ideal growing conditions.

All of our peat pots are ready to go!

Getting our peat pots ready for planting.

Getting our seeds and showing them lots of love so that they'll grow, grow, grow!

All of our peat pots are tucked away into our greenhouses! Take a close look at the L and M seeds.
Do you notice any differences between the two?

We will make daily observations every day for the next 30 days. Our daily observations will include writing the date, the day of the experiment, the time of the observation, the temperature of the class and how many seeds from each group have germinated. It is expected that the seeds will start germinating between days 5 and 7, meaning we should start seeing tiny stems and leaves as early as Tuesday or Wednesday!

As the experiment continues, we will discuss the need for collecting this type of data as it pertains to humans colonizing Mars. We will also be discussing the Scientific Method and learning how to: write detailed hypotheses, analyze and graph our collected data and represent our findings in well-written conclusions.

At the conclusion of the experiment, we will be submitting our results to Tomatosphere, and at that point we will discover the identities of the seed groups.

Participation in this month-long experiment will not only help Canadian scientists address the question of how we supply space exploration missions with life support requirements, it may also inspire us to pursue studies in Science and Technology as our space scientists and Mars explorers of the future. 

Tomatoes, anyone?

Super Math and Super Reading!

Happy Thursday!

This morning we discovered that practicing multiples in Math is SUPER!

We also took some time for reading with a partner, which is also SUPER!

What a SUPER morning!

*****
Agenda

1. Our school's Terry Fox Run is TOMORROW (Friday)!

All students are asked to bring in a toonie for Terry. Every toonie brought in will earn one ballot that can entered in the draw to win this year's Terry Fox t-shirt!

Our school's fundraising goal this year is $800!

2. It is Banned Books Week! What will you get caught reading?

3. Your Chevalier Clothing Store is now OPEN! Yay!

4. Drama Club is starting next week!

ADN (Arts Dramatiques à Ness) for Grade 6s will be on Mondays at 8:00am!

See Mme McKenzie with any questions.

5. School photo proofs were sent home with your child today. 

Please note the order deadline is Wednesday, October 2.

Wednesday Agenda Items

*****
Agenda

1. Our school's Terry Fox Run is Friday morning (September 27).

All students are asked to bring in a toonie for Terry. Every toonie brought in will earn one ballot that can entered in the draw to win this year's Terry Fox t-shirt!

Our school's fundraising goal this year is $800!

2. It is Banned Books Week! What will you get caught reading?

3. Your Chevalier Clothing Store is now OPEN! Yay!
Please watch for an email coming from the school office with all the details.

4. Drama Club is starting next week!

ADN (Arts Dramatiques à Ness) for Grade 6s will be on Mondays at 8:00am!

See Mme McKenzie with any questions.

5. This note was sent home with students on Monday.

6. School photo proofs were sent home with your child today. 

Please note the order deadline is Wednesday, October 2.

Tuesday!

Hello learning friends!
Happy Tuesday!

There are a few exciting announcements today, so I'll share one quick reading picture with you and then jump right in to all that's happening and coming up here at school!

Today for "LaLaLa" we started Lecture Avec Partenaire.

Announcements

1. Our school's Terry Fox Run is Friday morning (September 27).

All students are asked to bring in a toonie for Terry. Every toonie brought in will earn one ballot that can entered in the draw to win this year's Terry Fox t-shirt!

Our school's fundraising goal this year is $800!

2. It is Banned Books Week! What will you get caught reading?

3. Your Chevalier Clothing Store is now OPEN! Yay!
Please watch for an email coming from the school office with all the details.

4. This note was sent home with students yesterday.

5. School photo proofs have arrived this afternoon and will be sent home with your child tomorrow (Wednesday). Please note the order deadline is Wednesday, October 2.

And then we made it through week 2!

We blinked once or twice and then it was Friday!

We've had a great week of learning and we can't wait to see what next week will bring!

Here's a quick peek at our morning:

In Math, we had our first "Thinking Classroom" class of the year.
What is "Thinking Classroom" you may ask?
Working in randomized groups of 2 or 3, we collaborate together - standing at the white board - to solve different types of Math questions. Each group only has one marker, so we take turns writing and explaining our thinking to our team. Sometimes the questions will have a "right" answer, and other times, we are working to explain as many different possible answers as we can. We also need to make sure that everyone in our group understands the answer and can explain it in their own words before Mme Careen moves us on to the next step or gives us a different question to try.

We continued our morning with a formative mental math assessment and it made our brains work SO hard! We had 20 minutes to complete as many questions as possible (out of 50) on our sheet. Mme Careen will use this assessment to begin planning what mental-math strategies we'll be working on this year.

After learning a bit more about our upcoming Tomatosphère project in Science (more on that coming next week!), we took some time in Français for LaLaLa. Today we had the chance to choose our own book from our classroom library. There are so many different genres of books to pick from!

And, then it was lunch. Phew! The morning flew by and we're already looking ahead to week 3!
Wishing everyone a wonderful, relaxing weekend! :)

*****

Agenda Items:

1. Please check your inbox for a "Welcome!" email from Mme Careen!

An email was sent out this afternoon to say Hello! and also to make sure all emails addresses are working! If you receive an email, great! If you do not receive an email (or realize you'd rather have school correspondence go to another email address), please contact me at acareen@sjsd.net so we can get everything figured out. Thanks!

2. Next week is Banned Books Week! What will you get caught reading?

3. Our school's Terry Fox Run will be held next Friday morning (September 27).

Please watch out for an information letter being emailed from the school.

All students are asked to bring in a toonie for Terry. Our school's fundraising goal this year is $800!

Thursday Agenda Items

*****

Agenda Items:

1. September Scholastic orders - tomorrow (Friday).

(Orders can be brought in to school (cheques only please) or can be made online at http://scholastic.ca - follow the online prompting to locate Ness Middle School and Mme Careen!)

2. It's not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

3. Our school's Terry Fox Run will be held next Friday (September 27).

Please watch out for an information letter being emailed from the school office later today.

All students are asked to bring in a toonie for Terry. Our school's fundraising goal this year is $800!

Have a nice evening!

Enjoy the sunshine! :)

Wednesday

Why, hello there!
We've made it mid-week and had a great morning of learning together!

In Math, we watched a short BrainPop video about multiplication and played a fun Multiples game with a partner!

Then, in Science, we once again worked in partners to complete a matching activity about the 8 main steps in the Scientific Method.

In Français, after our daily "LA" time and our short grammar lesson, we spent a good amount of time discussing and reviewing our four school beliefs: Respect, Intégrité, Responsabilité, Excellence. Last week, we were asked to reflect on what the four school beliefs might look like in our classroom and today Mme had collated all of our ideas so that we could review and discuss them as a class. Our next step will be to review the typed-up draft of our classroom belief statements (that Mme will work on tonight) before signing and posting our final copy on the wall in our learning space (and here on our blog, too!)

*****

Agenda Items:

1. It's also not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

2. September Scholastic orders - Friday, September 20.

(Orders can be brought in to school (cheques only please) or can be made online at http://scholastic.ca - follow the online prompting to locate Ness Middle School and Mme Careen!)

Tuesday!

Hello!

Just popping in with a quick reading picture, taken during "LALALA" today in Français.
Our goal today was to read independently for 6 minutes - and we did a great job!

Looking forward to seeing you all this evening at our Community BBQ (4:30-6:30)!

*****

Agenda Items:

1. It's not too late to join Cross Country! New athletes are welcome to join us starting tomorrow at lunch (12:15). We are especially on the hunt for more Grade 6 girls, so come on by and bring a friend! :)

2. It's also not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

3. September Scholastic orders - Friday, September 20.

(Orders can be brought in to school (cheques only please) or can be made online at http://scholastic.ca - follow the online prompting to locate Ness Middle School and Mme Careen!)

Week 2, Here We Come!

Happy Monday!

We dove right into learning this morning, starting with "les multiples" in Math.
As a class, we were able to breeze through skip counting by 2, but then got a bit hung up skip counting by 7s. It's definitely something we'll work on over the coming days.

Next, in Français, we started with "LALALA." What is that?! LALALA is a daily literacy activity that has students reading individually, with a partner and in a group with a teacher (Mme Careen). This will be done for 10 minutes at the beginning of every Français class. We started today with "Lecture Autonome" (reading individually) and will introduce the next "La" - Lecture Avec Partenaire (reading with a partner) - early next week.

We ended the morning with a *magical* Science demonstration that had us stumped! Please ask me how Mme Careen was able to make 200+ packing peanuts disappear right in front of out eyes! Wow!

*****

Agenda Items:

1. It's not too late to join Cross Country! New athletes are welcome to join us starting tomorrow at lunch (12:15). We are especially on the hunt for more Grade 6 girls, so come on by and bring a friend! :)

2. It's also not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

3. Our Meet the Teacher BBQ is tomorrow! Please join us outside the main doors of the school starting at 4:30. (No need to register or have a ticket - just come when you can!)

4. September Scholastic orders - Friday, September 20.

(Orders can be brought in to school (cheques only please) or can be made online at http://scholastic.ca - follow the online prompting to locate Ness Middle School and Mme Careen!)

Looking forward to a great week! :)

One Week for the Books!

Happy Friday, learning friends!

What a great first week it has been! We have settled in to our lockers and our classroom space and have started growing into our roles as les chevaliers et les chevalières de Ness!

Today we tackled one of Mme Careen's favourite activities - Les gratte-ciels (Skyscrapers)! After being divided into randomized groups of  three, we worked together to solve as many 'puzzles' as we could. The time flew by!

We then took some time to read the book, As-tu remplis un seau aujourd'hui?, and talk about our four school beliefs (Respect, Integrity, Responsibility and Excellence). Our goal is to create a classroom contract that includes everyone's ideas of what our four beliefs will look like each day when we arrive at school.
(More info about this to follow early next week).

We ended our morning with a short "Amazing Race Room 208" activity to 'celebrate' Friday the 13th. Working with a partner, we solved 6 tasks each involving the number 13! Fun! (Frightening?)
We worked well as a class and closed off our morning with success! :)

BEFORE...

DURING...

AFTER...

Great work today (and this week) everyone!
Have a wonderful, well-deserved weekend! :)

*****

Agenda Items:

1. Say Cheese! Picture day is Monday, September 16.

2. Please return HPV forms and triad forms ASAP! 

3. It's not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

4. September Scholastic orders - Friday, September 20.

The Fifth Day of School!

Happy Thursday, friends of learning!
We had a jam-packed morning today!

We started our day with another school-themed story, which - again -  is another one of Mme Careen's favourites! (You may have noticed by now that Mme LOVES a good picture book, and also loves sharing them with others!)
Today's story was If You Ever Want to Bring an Alligator to School, Don't! by Elise Parsley.

After our morning story, we had a chance to finish our T/F quizzes from yesterday. After our questions were ready, we split up into groups of three to test our classmates. We learned SO many new interesting facts about each other during this activity; who has pets, who likes tofu, who lived in Mexico for a year, who loves basketball! Wow!

Next up on our list was a new Math game, "Spiral Math," that helped us brush up on our multiplication skills! Please ask me how I did (and if there are any multiplication facts I should be practicing over the next few days...)

We ended our morning with a team design challenge: "Défi Guimauve!"
Working in randomized groups of three, we each got: 20 pieces of dry spaghetti, 1 metre of tape, 1 marshmallow and 16 minutes on the clock to build the tallest free-standing structure we could. Once time was up, the final height of the structure was measured from the base of the structure (from the floor or table) to the top of the marshmallow.

There were many different approaches among the groups, all with varying degrees of success.
Félicitations to the winning group who built a structure 31 cm high, and Bravo to all groups for their excellent collaboration and team work!

*****

Agenda Items:

1. Please visit our school website to make sure you're up to date with all the sports try-outs that are coming up!

2. Please return HPV forms by TOMORROW.

3. Please bring back triad forms ASAP!

4. It's not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

5. September Scholastic orders - Friday, September 20.

The Fourth Day of School!

Happy Wednesday!

We had a great morning together this morning!

We started our day reading the book, Only One You by Linda Kranz.

This book was a great introduction to the Smarties activity we did with a partner at our table.
Each colour of Smartie represented a different type of fact we shared with one another.
Ex: Red - Something that happened to us yesterday.
Pink - Something we wished we could be eating right now!

After our sharing activity, we took on a Tangrams challenge. Working in randomized groups of three, we attempted to solve three different tangram puzzles using 1 set of 7 tangram pieces. Bravo to one group who was able to solve all three puzzles in record time! And, Bravo! to all the groups who worked the entire period without giving up!

We ended the morning with our first quiz! Yikes!
We were skeptical about having a quiz so soon in the year, but then we heard the questions. Mme Careen is SO silly. The true/false questions were all about her! We did our best, and one of us even scored 9/10! Wow!

After finishing Mme's quiz, we were tasked with writing our own T/F quiz with questions about us. We will quiz our classmates with our questions tomorrow which will give us a chance to practice speaking in French while learning even more about our new classroom friends as we settle into the school year.

*****

Agenda Items:

1. Please visit our school website to make sure you're up to date with all the sports try-outs that are coming up!

2. Please return HPV forms by FRIDAY.

3. Please bring back triad forms ASAP!

4. It's not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

5. September Scholastic orders - Friday, September 20.

Tuesday!

Hello, friends of learning!
We had a great and busy morning together!

We started our day with another story; another one of Mme Careen's favs!

We're All Friends Here by Nancy Wilcox Richards

After listening to the story, we had a chance to discuss what we noticed and perhaps why Mme chose to read us this book. Please ask me to tell you what the story was about!

Next, we did a "Trouve Quelqu'un Qui..." activity and had a chance to finish our "Who has a question?" activity from yesterday.

The final *major* activity of the morning was the organization of all our supplies! Getting our binders ready with looseleaf and dividers and stocking up our pencil cases with pens and pencils is no small feat! We were able to get our things labeled and set so that tomorrow morning, when it is time to start our day, we'll know exactly what to bring with us to class. Three days in, and we're already crushing middle school! :)

Great work today, everyone!

*****

Agenda Items:

1. There are so many sports teams starting up this week. Please visit our school website to make sure you're in the right place at the right time! (If you're reading this on a computer, a link to our school website can be found under the "Helpful Websites" heading on the right.)

2. HPV vaccination information and forms were sent home today. Please complete and return the forms by FRIDAY.

3. Please bring back triad forms ASAP!

4. Visit and follow our classroom blog. 

5. It's not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

6. Two students who have September birthdays in our class are  __________ and _____________.

Happy Monday!

Hello! Happy Monday!

We had a great morning together this morning!

We started off our day with Mme Careen reading us another silly story, 

We Don't Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins.

Afterwards, we did another introduction/discussion activity using a script written on the board. Today, after introducing ourselves and shaking hands with a classmate, we shared two things we did over the weekend.

After locker break and our first Phys Ed. class, we did a "Qui a une question?" activity as a group.

We each got a card with a different school question on it and, after having a couple minutes to pre-read and practice saying the question, we read it aloud to the class so that Mme could answer it for us. Questions included topics such as, "What can I do before school starts?" and "What do I do if I need to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water during class?"

We didn't have time to get through all of our questions today, so we will continue our activity in class tomorrow morning. Also on our to-do list for tomorrow morning is the organization of our binders and supplies for Mathé, Français and Science. We will also be practicing our new brain-break move that Mme taught us in class today. Please ask me to show you! It's pretty funky...! :)

*****

Agenda Items:

1. HPV vaccination information and forms were sent home today. Please complete and return the forms as soon as possible. (Even if you plan on having your child vaccinated at his/her family doctor, please fill in the form and indicate as such. Thanks!)

2. Please bring back triad forms ASAP!

3. Visit and follow our classroom blog. (If you're reading this, you're already here. Welcome!)

4. It's not too late to share a reading picture! Please snap a pic and email it to acareen@sjsd.net so we can celebrate our lives as readers together as a class!

5. Two classes I had today for the first time are __________ and _____________.

Have a great week! :)