This week in Room 2....

Hello everybody!

Thanks for another awesome week in Grade Five, and a big thank you to everyone who made it out to Parent-Teacher Conferences! It was so nice getting to know all our new families this year!
We had a busy week this week and have covered a lot of ground!

Math: We continue to work on place value and will now be focusing more on rounding and estimation as we move into next week. As I mentioned at conferences, in the near future we will be ramping up in Math with more complex problems, and I highly encourage everyone to practice your multiplication tables until you know them by heart! This way you will be a total rockstar as we move forward this year!

Social Studies: We have bene filling our "suitcases" for our trip through the Atlantic Region, and have learned some great new historical facts. This week we looked at the provincial flags, and have begun to design our very own flag to represent the entire region. We took care to include a visual element that best represents each province included in the Atlantic Region based on what we have learned so far, and we also learned what each of the real provincial flags represents and why.

We learned all about the Bluenose, which we can find on our Canadian dime, and that it was built in Lunenburg, N.S. Here are some links to help review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaqjiqR22f0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGv0we4Z9G0

We also learned about Sable Island, which is off the coast of Halifax, and is inhabited by wild horses! On the theme of horse, we checked out some clips about the Newfoundland pony, which is a pretty neat little animal that is unique to the area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7xaJExGG3g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFSF8WnQU1U

Science: We had a great time celebrating during our classroom Weather Party! This week we learned about the science behind thunder and lightning, as well as how tornadoes come to be! Here are some links to help you review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCJPQ9dCUfs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH4YT9secVw

Language Arts:  As we move forward in Language Arts this coming week, we will exploring poetry and descriptive writing skills. Below are some tips about how to read a poem, which we will be doing this coming week!

HOW TO READ A POEM TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS!!!!

1.     Read it once, the whole way through. This is just to get a feel for it. What emotions does it bring out for you? Does it make you feel happy, sad, mad excited etc?

2.     Read through it again. Underline any words you’re not sure what they mean.

3.     Look up those words or ask a friend/adult.

4.     Make a little list of common themes. Does the poem talk a lot about things that feel scary? Does it use a lot of imagery that is dark or creepy? Does it talk a lot about love or missing someone? See if you can find the clues!

5.     Next, look for similes, metaphors, and personification (these three in particular). What are they trying to compare? What is this sneaky poet trying to tell you?

6.     Think of poems as a treasure hunt. The pirates leave clues, but they never tell you point blank where to find the treasure. You have to work a little bit for it! Poetry is the same way.

7.     If, at the end of all of this, you still no idea, google the poet themselves. Maybe their life experiences will help give you a hint about what they think is important, or some kind of major event that affected them.

Also, here is a link that will introduce you to some of the poetic devices we will be learning and applying to our own written work!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn4P3tvKNAg

FUN: We were also lucky enough to have TWO amazing guest speakers in school this week. We watched "Safire" the hoola hoopist performer show us her stuff in an amazing presentation made in collaboration with the organizers of Beakerhead, a STEAM festival happening in Calgary this weekend! I don't know about you, but I am particularly excited tog o see the giant Dung Beetle sculpture that an artist made using old vinyl form car seats! Here is a link to the event, as well as a Ted Talk about this hardworking little critter that we watched in class!
https://beakerhead.com/events/detail?slug=dung-beetle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSTNyHkde08

We also had a guest author and graphic novel illustrator join us this week! Faith Erin Hicks was a wealth of knowledge and information, and gave us a really inspiring presentation with tips and tricks on how to start writing your very own comics or graphic novels! Faith was the winner of the Rockymountain Readers competition last year, and has done some amazing work! You can follow her on Twitter to find out more about her up and coming releases here:
https://twitter.com/FaithErinHicks?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Ms. Walker