Friday, April 29th

Please check your child's backpack for the May/June Calendar as well as Fun Lunch forms for May/June.

Due to the strong interest in the Grade 1 Dance Club, 5 students will be randomly chosen from each class to participate. Those students will be notified on Monday.

We continued our buildings today and they are in the final stages! Next week we look forward to putting them together and creating our community.

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to all the students in my class for demonstrating good teamwork and helpfulness by working together to clean up our classrooms at the end of the day today. I appreciate your hard work and the respect you showed in caring for our space. You all make me very proud!

I am looking forward to an exciting week of growing germs and building bird houses next week!
Have a great weekend everyone!

Thursday, April 28th

We are currently under construction! This morning our classrooms became a building zone with our students' creative minds at work. Yesterday we sorted all of the recycled materials into groups of boxes, paper rolls, egg cartons, etc. Most of our day today was spent building houses, hospitals, hotels, towers, farms, and even a McDonald's. We will continue this exciting work tomorrow. Next week our plan is to put our buildings together and create our very own community.

REMINDERS:

We still need volunteers for our Germ Day, Wednesday May 4th and Building Bird houses on Friday, May 7th. Both activities are in the morning. Please e-mail me if you're interested in helping out!

UPCOMING EVENTS:

May 4th - Germ Day (AM)
May 6th - Building Bird Houses (AM)
May 11th - Spell-a-Thon
May 19th - Field Trip - Inglewood Bird Sanctuary (Mrs. Kroeker & Mr. Simmons' classes)
                  Math Night
May 31st - Grand Opening of the Playground

Wednesday, April 27th

WE NEED YOUR HELP!  

We have had TWO amazing opportunities made available to Grade 1 next week but we need volunteers to make them happen:

May 4 - Science (Germ) Day - A team of scientists wants to come in help us work through several science stations, including one that involves swabbing and growing GERMS!  Each class needs 4 volunteers for this.

May 6 - Birdhouses - Andrew Stiles is coming to build birdhouses with ALL the Grade 1, as a warm up for our coming trip to the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary.  We are hoping to have Grade 4 help us build but hope there are a few parents available to support us!

I know these dates are soon but we need to work on their schedules; we tried for different dates but they just weren't available!

Please contact us ASAP if you can join us for these two in-school field trips!

Thanks in advance for your support!!!!

Monday, April 25th

Spring Fling DVD orders are due Tuesday, April 26 - $10 cash only

Today was a big day of continuing work we had begun last week. We finished our Earth Day posters,  worked on our final plans for our buildings and wrote about our long weekend in our journals. 

Many of our Flat Stanley letters went out in the mail last week, and the last few will be going out tomorrow. If you still have not sent in your addressed, stamped envelope please send it tomorrow.

Ideas for Activities at home:

* measure various objects at home using non-standard units. (ie. measure the stove with spoons, the table with plates, the living room with shoes, etc.) 

* have your child write 3 or 4 consecutive sentences about a variety of topics. In class we are working with students on writing multiple sentences that follow one another and make sense. We are also focusing on writing with attention to capitalization and punctuation.

Tuesday, April 19th

We have finished our community maps! If you have the chance, please stop in and check out the amazing job that the students did on their community maps. They are on display outside of our classroom. We are now in the process of creating plans for our buildings that we will be including in our community. Next week we will begin building with all of our beautiful stuff!

In math today, Mr. Roberts' Grade 2 class came in to teach us about what they have been learning in measurement. They were our math teachers for the morning and we had a great time measuring with a variety of non-standard units.

Most of the students have also finished their Flat Stanley letters and many of them were mailed off today! We can't wait to get them back from our family and friends. Tomorrow we will do a Flat Stanley walk, where we will share the photos of all the things we have done with our Flat Stanleys so far.

Reminders:

No Spelling this week

Celebrating Earth Day tomorrow in class

No School Thursday or Friday

Look for notices home tomorrow about our Spell-A-Thon and The Spring Fling DVD

Monday April 18th

Thank you to everyone who brought their Flat Stanley's back. We worked on writing our letters and are excited to send Flat Stanley off on some new adventures. We began sharing what we did with Flat Stanley over the past week and will continue to share our photos and writing with the class over the next couple of days. If you have not brought Flat Stanley back to school yet, please make sure you do tomorrow as we will be mailing our letters very soon!

No spelling list today

No School Thursday or Friday

STAFF APPRECIATION LUNCH

Tuesday May 3rd, 2011

Hi Moms, Dads and Friends:

With June quickly approaching, we would like to thank the staff at Panorama Hills School for everything they have done for our children this year.

We are hosting a Staff Appreciation Lunch for the teachers and support staff on Tuesday, May 3, 2011.  To make this event a success, we are asking for the support and participation of parents.

We are looking for volunteers to provide food and/or their time for set up as well as tidy up afterwards.   If you are able to contribute in either way we would greatly appreciate it.

If you are providing a food donation, please bring it to the office by 10:30am on

May 3rd in a container labeled with your name (this will make it easier to identify when you pick it up).  To ensure these delicious dishes do not go to waste, we suggest you send 4 - 5 servings only.   A little note of why you appreciate a staff member would be fantastic to share as well. 

If you are able to volunteer for the event itself, please email Jen Rathbone at dougandjen@shaw.ca by April 23^rd, indicating what time you are available:

We’d love your help at:

• 10:30 – noon (preparation)
• 12:30pm to 2pm (clean up)

If you are not a home cooking kind of person, yet would like to express your appreciation, here’s a few other ideas have been shared by the staff - 

• They would love plants for the classrooms and offices.  All plants will be cared for over the summer so they can join us again in September.   

• As you know, our library is in need of more books – especially picture books.   A gift template will be placed on the inside cover of each donated book.  If you would like assistance in choosing a title, please visit the library assistant, Mrs. Keall. 

As always, thank you for your support!

Panorama Hills School Parent Council

Friday, April 15th

We had such a fun week! Yesterday we had a whole school snow building contest in the morning! The snow was perfect for making snowmen, forts and even bowling alleys!

Today the winning hockey teams from intramurals played the teachers at lunch. We had two great games!

Have a great weekend & don't forget to take Flat Stanley out on some adventures!

Tuesday, April 12th

Where has your Flat Stanley been so far this week? We have talked about trips to the swimming pool and visits to Grandma's house...We are looking forward to seeing and hearing about all the adventures Flat Stanley has been on this week. Don't forget to bring your photos, writing and an addressed, stamped envelope to school next Monday, April 18th with Flat Stanley!


Please check your child's backpack today for our last fundraiser for the school year. We will be selling magazine subscriptions to help raise money for our school. All students received a very cool bendable pencil today too!


In Social Studies we have been talking about Urban and Rural communities. As a part of our Science unit on Building Things we are designing our own maps for a community to build. We have learned about the compass on a map as well as legends. Ask your child about the map they are creating and what are some important things we need to have in our community.


Friday is our Phys Ed teacher, Mr. V's last day. We will be welcoming Mr. Spriggs back to school next Monday.  To show our appreciation for everything that Mr. V has done for us over the past few months, we made him thank you cards in class today. We thought of many ways that he has helped us out, from taking us to our swimming lessons to helping out with hockey intramurals. 

Monday, April 11th

Our Day:

Today we sent home a package of handouts in regards to a building project that is part of our student's homework during our Building Things unit.  Please read all the information carefully and feel free to ask any questions you may have!

Also, you'll find a piece of lined paper for the Flat Stanley project and our Spelling list. As your child takes Flat Stanley on adventures this week, please take photos of Flat Stanley in the places that he visits. Please send photos, writing, addressed stamped envelope and Flat Stanley back to school Monday, April 18th.
Homework:

Spelling!!  Find the link below: Spelling - April 11, 2011

Thursday, April 7th

We finished our Flat Stanleys! After reading the first Flat Stanley book by Jeff Brown, our classes made their own version of Flat Stanley. Some children chose to create a traditional version while others chose to make somebody else. We even have a few Flat Mrs. Kroekers and Mr. Simmons'! Your child will be bringing home their Flat Stanley tomorrow with a letter explaining the project.


Today we also started talking about our "I CAN" statements. An "I CAN" statement is a learning target that helps students understand the skills and knowledge that they will gain from a lesson or activity.  Teachers share with students the destination of the lesson – what to learn, how deeply to learn it, and how students can demonstrate their learning. An "I CAN" statement is a positive way of demonstrating success. As a result, students begin to take ownership for their learning and become more responsible, independent learners. (See our April Newsletter for more information).

“All children deserve rich educational experiences that will enable them to become active citizens in a democratic society.”

-Nel Noddings

Tuesday, April 5th

Today we continued our explorations of Measurement and Building and many new discoveries were made - especially during our tower building competition!  These units will be taking up a TON of our time over the next few weeks, as we are combining Math, Science and Social Studies together.  We will also be sending home some building homework (don't worry, it's a lot of fun) very soon.

We finished reading the chapter book, Flat Stanely today and will be beginning to create our own version very soon - look for this information to be coming home by the end of the week!

It was Day 2 of our new Guided Reading groups and we are starting to get into the flow of our new schedule.  All of our students seem really dedicated to using this time to improve their reading abilities!

Homework:

Home Reading
Spelling Words (same as before the break) your, which, their, said, will, each, about, how

Monday, April 4th

Welcome back to school! We had a great first day back. It was nice to see lots of smiling faces in class today and it sounds like everyone had a great Spring Break. We had the chance to share some of the things we did over the last week and then the students chose one or two things to write about in their journals. I am so pleased to see what great writers they are becoming!

We also started guided reading in our levelled colour groups today. Students will be involved in a variety of activities centred around further developing their reading skills for 30 min every day. All students will have the opportunity to participate in a small, teacher guided reading group every week. Other activities will include partner reading, non-fiction, poetry and reader's theatre.

In math we began work on our next two units, measurement and shape and space. We talked about the most effective way to measure and how to use different units. The classes began experimenting with measurement by choosing a unit and measuring the length of a desk. Next we will work on recording our findings. At home you can support this learning by measuring things around your house with a variety of units (ie. how many shoes to measure a room? how many plates long is the table? etc.)

In Science we have started to think about our Building Things unit. We talked about our proposed project, building a community and watched a video about the process of building a house. From here we will learn about the parts of a building (ie. foundation, windows, roof, doors, chimney, etc.) After we sort through our building materials we will begin to draw up plans for our proposed 'community'. If you have any additional materials at home, please send them in this week.

Have a great night!