Our fabulous grade 4-6 on stage tonight at the Christmas concert. A beautiful job by everyone!

Sharing and colouring our Christmas stories with our buddies in Ms. Bowes class!

Wildlife safety course. We're learning with some great props from Biosphere Institute. 

Want a sneak peak of how fabulous our kids sound?  Follow the link to a short video so hear for yourself.

Christmas concert practice. 

Have you got your tickets for Wednesday or Thursday night?  It's going to be beautiful!

WOW! What fabulous tech skills our Smart Cookies have!
Instead of a final exam for our weather unit students were responsible for creating a weather forecast from data provided.  They were tasked with making their forecast interesting and informative.  They created them using a free editing tool called WeVideo.  Interested?  Follow the link to the folder of great weather forecast video files!

Paired up and practicing for our math quiz. Look at all of these great strategies!

No math weekly or spelling assignment this week or next as we get closer to Christmas break.  

However, there is still homework. Students will have a math quiz Wednesday and they have been given a practice quiz today to use to help them study.  Also, novel reviews will be due next Wednesday so by this weekend everyone should have their chosen novel finished. 

• Please remember to find, and send back to the school, the concert note that went home earlier this week.
• Book orders also went home which are due back Wednesday morning so that I can assure they get here before Christmas break.  

Have a great weekend everyone!

Banff Elementary School - CUBS

Caring Understanding Belonging Safety

Big number multiplication strategies for visual learning make numbers more concrete!
One strategy is using base ten arrays like this. Can you "see" the answer?  39 X 21=

This week's homework assignment is number 5.  Writing first all of the words and then neatly writing them again in shape boxes.  This assignment focuses on visual and spacial learning skills and is due, as always, Friday morning.

Did you know that every time you place a book order through our classroom you are helping to build up the resources available to all of the students in our class?

Thanks to those of you that have ordered books so far this year we have two sets of paint brushes and some math manipulatives that will be arriving soon.

Thanks for encouraging your child to read and helping to earn points towards rewards for our classroom!

Wilderness games created by Smart Cookies!

Just like Lewis and Clarke we are exploring and measuring our natural environment!

Welcome back to everyone after a long, snowy weekend!

A couple of notes for this week. 

-Our next Nature Explorers field trip is this Wednesday from 10:00-3:00. We'll be back at school for lunch in between. If you'd like to join us please send me a note or email. 

- This week's homework assignment is math weekly #5, due Friday. 

-In math we are beginning to work with bigger multiplication numbers. We'll be practicing multiple strategies to get answers. Please take a moment to ask your child to explain a new strategy to you. Need more help understanding?Check out our math strategy booklet in the math page of this blog. The muy importante has pictures and works to describe some of these strategies. 

Today we researched together our earth's climate and how humans can effect it. Take a look at all of the great information that we discovered and collaborated on.  Click on the image to see the rest of the slide show in Google Drive.

What a great way to start the afternoon!  Cardboard arcade games created by the wonderful grade fours to play with our kindergarten buddies!

Here's a great math rhyme to help remember the steps for rounding numbers:

Underline the number

then look right next door,

If it's five or higher then you add one more,

If it's four or lower then you just ignore.

Ex:round 1 496.2 to the nearest hundred  = 1500 (because when you look to the right of the underlined number you see a 9 so you add one more to the underlined digit)

Parents, we would like to invite you to our school assembly at 8:30 in the gym, Friday, November 6th .  Our B.E.S. librarian, Mandi Kujawa will be launching her children’s book, ‘Jacqueline the Singing Crow’.  A reminder that her book will be for sale after the assembly in the main office.  

Each Book costs $15.  $5 will be donated back into our B.E.S. library.  We hope to see you there.  

This week we will be finishing up our written stories "I Want To Be".  Most students started typing their good copies today in class.  Since these are in Google docs, please ask them to share their progress with you tonight!

This week is a spelling week - the assignment is the fourth one (write all the words in alphabetical order, once with your right hand and once with your left hand).  Using your non-dominant hand is tough and requires more concentration.  It also helps to build pathways in a different area of the brain.

Finally - November book orders are coming home today.  There is both a holiday order as well as a middle school order for those that can read books at a more challenging level.  These are due by November 9th please so that I can get the order in before the end of our short next week.

Thank you!

Building silly monsters with our kindergarten buddies.  Lots of laughs and silly creatures!

This morning we were creating creatures out of play dough for a descriptive writing assignment. Want to take a look at what we each made?  Follow the link and be sure to ask your child about the descriptive paragraph that they wrote.

All of division two!

Macarena in the outdoors. Our grade fives have talent!