Wow! 2009-2010!
An Olympic Year at Bankhead!
The Olympics are over! Many athletes exceeded their goals...let's see how our students perform in the last 3 months!
So...review your own goals once in awhile during Term 3!
CONTACT:
School 250-763-2603
Gardom Lake: What a great time we had! Thanks to all the parents who participated and helped to make it a success. It was a miracle that we had no rain for the 3 days we were there. We could see the rainclouds all around us and heard it was raining in Kelowna and elsewhere, but not on Gardom Lake!
Cool websites: Here's another site that children who enjoy comics can use to create and publish their own. Also, I haven't heard of anyone trying it, but still hope a parent/student will ...Lemur Bay... a safe site for kids, just started up right here in the Okanagan. Castanet reported the public announcement the last week of school. They use avatars, a fascinating advantage to make it fun for kids, and seem to charge very little subscription.
Students are now using this link for Watchknow. It's kind of a kid-friendly, safe Youtube site that is very valuable if students are looking for resources to include with assignments they are doing online. Please bookmark it. It will be useful for middle school, too.
Not to be on the bandwagon for the recent movie release, but this is an entertaining site for students to build their own avatars. Called, Build Your Wild Self, it can provide some fun and a downloadable avatar.
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Upcoming Work or Events
We have a very busy classroom right now. Some students have been coming in before school or working on projects at lunchtime. This will continue over the next week or so and then all should return to normal until they push to finish Wax Works projects in June. Thanks for you support!
Parents...are you tired of being slow with your math facts? Your child might be too!..:)
Here's a place for you to download some quick mathsheets you can use to reach your goals. Go for it! Use the online links, too.
Math - Try this new math site called Sumdog for practicing all forms of Grade 6 math! It's fantastic. We'll be finishing up fractions, ratios, percent and decimals around mid-May.
How is the extra practice of math facts coming along at home? Keep it up!
Science - We really need to understand that there are different ways to produce electricity. What resources do you know about? Do you understand the pros and cons? Students will investigate this next. Please feel welcome to involve yourself in this...but let them do the work! I can't give parents marks! If you still enjoy the practical part, try this link out! Be sure to relate what you see us studying to the real world around you at home, too! Group projects are due Friday, May 14. They present them in class Monday, May 17.
Social Studies - Our focus is on relating Canada to other countries, all the while comparing and contrasting features. We have started a discussion of the causes of poverty in the world. It's a deep subject!
Reading - Ask to see what your child has done for a culminating Literature Circle project. We present them the week of May 10-14.
Writing - We've recently started a persuasive writing assignment that is producing some very exciting arguments. Students chose an issue important to them and are building persuasive arguments to bring others on side with them. I'm hoping we will be able to publish some in an assembly of some sort. We'll see.
Science research, Wax Works projects...We will be developing skills to write multiparagraph (3-5) articles during the next 2 terms. Some of it is tied to other subject areas, such as Social Studies. Check the "Tools" section on Thinkquest for tools we use in writing. Dress-ups and Sentence Openers are required in every paragraph. How to use them is explained on the posters you can open online. Encourage lots of writing! Did you know that the best writers are the best readers?! Encourage lots of reading, too.
PE - Track and Field has started. We practice last block Monday, Wednesday and Friday until we go to the Apple Bowl on Monday, May 25, the day before we leave for Gardom Lake.
Music/Art - Music is taught by Mr. Vesterinen.
French - We'll continue studying the verbs "etre" and "avoir", adding more vocabulary and themes.
Health and Career Planning - We have begun a unit on alcohol and drug abuse. Please use what we do in class, as well as the field trip to the courthouse on May 19, to have some great family discussions.
Amazing kids who make the world a better place...
We have a classmate who needs to take some time off school right now. I was so proud of my students who brought Valentines treats and cards and never left the absent classmate out! They recognized it would bring cheer and a good feeling! Good for each one of them. It's the kind of global citizenship we love to see in daily life at school.
Check this out:If you enjoy building fun contraptions to see if they work, try this site; Math games and this is a site to do safe internet searches [you might want to make it your home page!]
Here's a fun link to play some CIA games. Can you "Crack the Code"?
Check this new UN site out. They provide the oldest maps, photos, and documents known from a range of countries!
Weekly Wisdom Statements disussed so far:
1.You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be. - David Viscott
2. Well done is better than well said. - Book: Teachers Inspirations
3. People with goals succeed because they know where they are going. - Earl Nightingale
4. If everyone is moving forward together, success takes care of itself. - Henry Ford
5. Sometimes your only transportation is a leap of faith. - Margaret Shepherd
6. Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death. - author unknown.
7. One kind word can warm three winter months. - Japanese proverb
8. It is difficult to give away kindness. It keeps coming back to you. - Author Unknown
9. Anyone's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement if they make up their mind to do their level best each day. - Booker T. Washington
10. Truthfulness is the main element of character. - Brian Tracy
11. Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you are right. - Henry Ford
12. Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you! - Dr. Seus
13. For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, "It might have been." - John Greenleaf Whittier
14. Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. - Robert F. Kennedy
15. Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great. - Ralpho Waldo Emerson
16. A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. - Benjamin Franklin
17. If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid 100 days of sorrow. - Chinese proverb.
18. Don't be limited by your challenges; challenge your limits! - First Nations Grandmother.
19. Knowledge comes, but wisdom stays. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
20. There are no endings, only new beginnings. - Agenda, May 3-7
21. We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests and you must win. - Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
22. Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. - Erica Jong
23. Great lives are the culmination of great thoughts followed by great actions. - Peter Sinclair
Caution - be alarmed!: Some things we've learned:
Research is showing an alarming number of parents allow their children to have internet or a television in their bedrooms instead of a public part of the house.
In a discussion with 2 classes, we learned that about 90 percent of our children have been on chat sites. Of these, about 75 percent have had a stranger say hello online. Of these, about 65 percent of our children made the mistake of answering. This was an informal poll while going through internet safety with our students last year. Now...not all strangers are bad people, but we encourage children to:
1. not join any chat service without parental permission
2. never go on the chat service without a parent present
3. always have the computer in an open area of the home...not a bedroom
4. always tell a parent right away if someone tries to say hello, asks for personal information or tries to meet with them.
I am always concerned about social networks that are open to children. I noticed an interesting article you might want to read in my eNews for educators. It's a caution that if you do allow your child to use social networks, [which I discourage!], you most likely assume they are privately maintained between friends. The problem is, they are also most likely using the little add-ons and are then no longer private and protected! We offer Thinkquest as a safe alternative. Children can use it at
home, too. At the most "public" level, only contact with other Thinkquest students in the world is possible...never the www at large...and every communication is monitored.
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