Spring Fever!

Welcome back from the March Break! I hope everyone had great times with friends and family, I know I did!

It's a very hot first day of spring today!

A reminder that as the weather gets warmer, we can wear layers of clothing that we can take off to help keep cool, while remembering the dress code for the school as well - no spaghetti straps and no short-shorts! Now is a perfect time to be using our water bottles in class as well - but for drinking only - there will be no one giving themselves a "shower" because of the heat. After lunch recess, everyone comes in and has silent reading time to cool down. Also, even though everyone might not have snow boots anymore, you are still expected to have outdoor and indoor shoes . . .and wear them in the appropriate locations.

We have started looking at Medieval Times in Social Studies.
Our Learning Goal is:
 "I will be able to describe what life was like during Medival Times in Europe (500 - 1500 C.E.)"
Some of the Success Criteria are:
- I can describe characteristics of castles
- I can describe daily life of medieval people and compare it to life now
- I can describe and understand the Feudal System
- I can make questions to guide my learning and research
- I can create a model of a castle and label it
- I can create a coat of arms
- I use and understand the appropriate vocabulary
- I can use a graphic organizer to summarize information.
There are some very fun activities that I hope the class can participate in while learning about this time in history. The Middle Ages covers about 1000 years, so there is a lot of information to get through, and obviously we can't learn everything there is to know about this time. I encourage you to look with someone at home at some of the clips or documentaries found on the internet. There is a series from the History Channel about the Dark Ages on YouTube, but it does have some violent parts shown (it is the Dark Ages after all) so I recommend that you have an adult watch any of these with you.
There are still many other sites you can visit if you are interested, or want to learn more about Medieval Times. Check out the ones below:

For some good reading and information:
http://www.learner.org/interactives/middleages/

Pictures of Famous Castles:
http://www.everycastle.com/

The Knighting Ceremony (good information and links, but lots of advertisements)
http://www.ehow.com/info_10003927_information-knighting-ceremony-medieval-knight.html

My Favourites!
 (make your own coat of arms!)
http://www.childrensmuseum.org/castles/games.php

explore a castle
http://www.childrensmuseum.org/castles/games.php

Jousing tournament:
http://www.tudorbritain.org/joust/index.asp

One of our Critical Pathways in Reading has been about learning how and when to use (or not use) apostrophes. In the beginning, 38% of the class understood why apostrophes were used in writing, based on the results of the "mini CASI" which was given. After working with apostrophes and listening to the "Apostrophe Song", I'm happy to report that 100% of the class understand the two purposes of when we use an apostrophe in writing based on our last reading response. We will now move on to looking at quotation marks and continue with the pathway of using inferences.

We are almost done reading the City of Ember and hope to be able to watch the movie on Friday and discuss all the similarities and differences between it and the book.

Thanks to everyone who dontated to our movie themed fund raising basket- it looks great! Raffle Tickets for baskets are $1!