Wow, things are busy right now and I need to update you on several things.

Halloween Parade is this Friday at 8.30 am.

Parents: You are invited to watch our Elementary School Halloween Parade on Friday, Oct. 30th from 8:30 to 9:15.  We will walk through the ES playground area along the sidewalk and then go to the outdoor running track behind the HS building. We end our parade in the courtyard outside the ES cafeteria. Join us and bring your camera!8:30 – Friday, Oct. 30th, 2009

8:30 – meet your grade level outside on the ES playground. They will be holding signs with grade level markers.
8:35 – We walk on the sidewalk, out to the HS track, make one loop around, then head back to the courtyard area outside the ES cafeteria. 8:45 – Once there, we stay on the covered sidewalks & surround the courtyard (like on spirit walk). Wait for all classes to arrive.
8:55 – Then each grade level will have a “fashion show” and model their costumes in the middle – with Halloween music playing.
9:15 – Dismissal by grade level starting with the little ones.

RAINY DAY ROUTE:
8:30 * We’ll START UNDER THE HATCHERY – walk down the main HS hallway and back to the area UNDER the Hatchery for our fashion show.

Parent- Teacher Conferences

Here is the information that has also been e mailed to you. So far I have had confirmation from 5 parents, thank you.

Parent – Teacher Conferences will be held on Thursday November 5th and Friday November 6th.
While your attendance at the conference is not compulsory, it is a great opportunity to discuss your child’s progress with their teacher.
As teachers will be meeting with parents throughout the afternoon, school will be dismissed at  11:30 AM . There will be no lunch served on these days.
Please see the schedule that was e mailed to you as a pdf on Tuesday. We try to fit conferences around many factors including allowing sibling conferences to be as close together as possible.  If you have a conflict and would like to switch times with another parent, please contact that parent directly and then notify me of the change.
If you also wish to meet with one of the specialist teachers, please e-mail them directly the same way you do for me e.g. firstname.lastname@saschina.org .
If you require a translator, please let me know as soon as possible with an e mail.
I look forward to seeing you at the conference.

Cultural Studies

Parents, it would be great if you could discuss the following questions with your children in the final week of our Cultural Studies Unit. There are some very big issues below and you are the best person to help your child as you know their background so thoroughly. They are to post the answers to these questions in completed paragraphs on the front page of their Cultural Studies page on their blog. Here is an example from Ms Yick.

Big Ideas Questions

1) What pieces of my culture have I retained? Why do I think these pieces are the ones I have held onto as a family?

2) What changes to my culture have I made to adapt to my new culture/surroundings?

3) What features of my combined cultures will see me into the future?

4) How does my culture shape who I am as a person?

Here is another great site found by a student in Ms Yick’s classroom. It may be very useful for you to look at.

Math Unit on Division

Next week we start our UNIT 4 in Math which is on Division. This is a great site recommended to me by Mr Hossack. I suggest the students add it onto their blogroll and refer to it if they are having difficulty. Traditionally Division can be a little difficult for some students so we will be taking this unit slowly.

Below is an example from the site that can be found here

We are starting to learn to divide.  There are many ways to divide things up and as a student I learned the most difficult way. The way I learned is likely the way most of your parents learned.   The Everyday math program teaches another way that is the most forgiving way.   It is called the Partial-Quotient Method.  I have put some links on this site so that your may teach your parents about dividing.  In the end it does not matter which way you do the dividing as long as you have a method that works, that you understand and can use effectively in class.  Here is an example taken from this useful math site: http://classic.sidwell.edu/academics/lower_school/LS_Math_Adventures/weeklymathnews.htm#Division_Methods_from_March_9,_2006

Division Methods

Our favorite way to introduce multi-digit division is by alerting kids to the fact that they merely need to know how to multiply (and subtract and add) in order to divide. We teach our students how to use the partial- quotients method, which is a most forgiving method for division. At each step, the student finds a partial answer and at the end, these partial answers are added to find the quotient.

Study the example below delineating how partial quotients can be used to find the answer to 94 ÷ 6.

6        94

Think: How many 6s are in 94?

(At least 10)

The first partial quotient is 10

(10 x 6 = 60)

Subtract 60 from 94

Think:  How many 6s in 34?

At least 5 [6s] or 30

The second partial quotient is 5

(5 x 6 =30)

Subtract. Add partial quotients

Total: 15  with a remainder of 4

The partial quotients method works just as well if the divisor is a 2-digitnumber. It often helps students to write down some easy facts for the divisor first. For example: In solving a problem such as 400 ÷ 22; some facts for 22 would be

22 x 2 = 44

22 x 5  = 110

22 x 10 = 220

22              400

10                 ( 10  [22s] in

5                                    ( 5 [22s] in 180)

2                                    (2 [22s] in 70)

1                                    (1 [22] in 26)

Total        18 remainder 4

The reason this method is easy to use is that the student can choose the numbers he or she feels most comfortable working with. There are different ways to find the partial quotients and yet all these ways lead to the right answer. Study the example below to see the different ways three students approached the problem 371 ÷ 4.

Here is a note from Mrs McVean

Dear Parents,

As you may have noticed, elementary school students did not come home with report cards last Friday.  The reason is that we have moved to a Trimester reporting calendar in the elementary schools to ensure that we do not “rush to judgement” in assessing our students and to provide you with an accurate portrait of your child’s new learning at their grade level.  In addition, the Trimester calendar allows for us to “report” on student progress five times throughout the year, with parent teacher conferences serving as elementary progress reports.  Parent Teacher conferences will provide an opportunity to focus our conversations on your child’s progress and for your questions to be addresses.

Please know how much we are looking forward to our first Parent Teacher conferences of the 2009/2010 school year.

I am sure your son or daughter will be happy to have this week’s IOWA test over with and I hope they, and you, have an enjoyable Halloween Weekend.

Trick or Treat?