Teacher Voicemail:
What’s happening in
Gill-Ville…
519-570-8123 X 7084
February 2011 Jr. Area Comp .
Carnaval de
Character
Mark your Calendars…
Education:
PD Day – No School
Wednesday, Feb. 2nd There’s a correction to the
information in last
Character Ed. month’s newsletter.
During the month of
Assembly January we’ve been
Thursday, Feb. 3rd focusing on “SPEAKING
WITH GOOD PURPOSE”.
Outdoor Ed. Trip Speaking with good
purpose means that we
Monday, Feb. 7th
say kind things with our
words and body language.
Gateway Gourmet This includes respecting
Lunches ourselves and others.
Wednesday, Feb. 9th Congratulations go out to
Austin, our January
& Feb. 23rd Student-of-the-Month
winner! As mentioned last
Report Cards Come month, during the month
Home of February, we will focus
on “INTEGRITY”.
Friday, Feb. 11th
Report
Term 2 IEP meetings
Card
Week of Feb. 14-18th
and
Family Day – No I.E.P.
School Meetings:
Monday, Feb. 21st
During the week of
PJ School Spirit Day February 14th to 18th
parents are invited to
Friday, Feb. 25th come in to discuss the
report card and sign your
Gateway Gourmet child’s second term I.E.P.
Cooking Lesson Please complete the
attached form and return
Monday, Feb. 28th to school to schedule your
time to meet.
Teacher Website:
http://teachers.wrdsb.ca/GILLK
Quebec et
Ryerson:
Our class spent part of
January learning about
the Carnaval de Quebec.
We participated in some
related activities such as
snow sculptures, skating,
ice canoe races, and
making taffy pops.
We shared our learning
about the Carnaval during
our Canada Connections
online video conference.
We also created a
wallwisher and
voicethread about the
world’s largest winter
carnival and posted them
on our class wiki. You can
also see them here!
http://canadaconnections
.wikispaces.com/Quebec+
-+January
There will also be a
“Carnaval de Ryerson”
day on February 16th.
Students are encouraged
to bring all of their warm
winter clothing as many
of the activities will be
outside that day.
Creative Writing:
One of our recent projects
includes creating a “wild self”
using the following website:
http://www.buildyourwildself.com
You can play with this site at
home, it’s lots of fun! Once
students created a version of
their wild self, they wrote a blog
post about it. You can read the
blog post and comment on their
work by going to our class blog.
Students are also working on
creating their ultimate superhero
using Marvel’s Create Your Own
Superhero site found here:
http://marvel.com/games/play/
31/create_your_own_superhero
Students will be writing their
stories on the blog site as well.
We encourage you to enjoy these
stories and provide your
feedback!
Canada
Connections
Project
Update:
Our last online session took place
on Friday, January 21st. There
were some technical difficulties
with screen sharing
presentations however the live
presentations went very well.
You can see our sharing on our
class pbworks wiki page. Our
next meeting takes place on
Friday, February 18th when we
will meet to share learning about
Manitoba and Saskatchewan!
Teddy Bears Around
the World Project:
Gill the Goldfish, our class mascot
is beginning to blog about life at
Ryerson. Starting the first week
of February, Gill the Goldfish will
also travel to Florida with our
friend Jacob who is going on a
cruise! We can’t wait to hear
about Gill’s adventures when
Jacob and Gill return to school.
Gill the
Goldfish
(our class mascot)
We’d like Gill to explore our local
community and have a chance to
write about the experiences.
Starting February 18th, families
can “sign out” Gill for a week or
weekend when doing special
outings. The expectation is that
families will take digital
photographs of Gill participating
in events and activities around
town and share them with us.
For example, take a picture of Gill
going to a local park, hockey
game, or concert. If you are
planning a fun activity or would
like to participate in Gill’s local
adventures, please let us know so
we can create a schedule. We
look forward to many exciting
opportunities to learn more about
life in the Waterloo Region! You
can follow Gill’s blogging
adventures here!
http://www.langwitches.org/blog
/travel/teddybearsaroundtheworld
Technology Updates:
Livescribe Pen: We are beginning
to use our Livescribe pen for
different activities. One of recent
uses involved recording the
students reading their homework
stories. Each week a “running
record” is taken when your child
returns their stories. The
difference of using the Livescribe
pen is that we now have an audio
recording to go with my paper
record. I have uploaded the
pencast (audio and visual file of
the reading record) onto our
pbworks wiki page and the
students each have a blog post
with their record. We have
commented on our reading,
providing good things,
suggestions for improvement,
and asked questions. Parents are
encouraged to check out the blog
entitled “January Reading
Homework” that your child has
posted and leave your own
comments and questions! We
will also be using the pen to
listen to instructions for
independent work and
to record retells of
stories and procedures.
Stay tuned for these
exciting developments!
iPads/iPods: We are just getting
into using a new app called
Puppet Pals where students can
create their own puppet plays
using built in scenes and
characters. Students use their
own voice to record the dialogue
in the play. We’ll be uploading
our plays to our class wiki as well
as blogging about them!
Flickr Photos:
We’ve recently added new photo
sets to our class Flickr page. You
can see new shots of our skating
days, snow sculpture building,
making taffy pops, and our
January Gateway Gourmet
cooking lesson.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gill-
ville/sets/
Twitter Updates:
You don’t have to be a twitter
user to follow our daily tweets!
Just visit our twitter page and
you can see what we’re sharing
each day. It’s a great way to get
the answer to that question
“what did you do at school
today?” If you want to respond
to our tweets or send us one, you
have to have your own twitter
account. Recently we’ve been
contacted by other classes who
are learning from our posts,
teachers who are proud of our
work that we’re sharing, and
even technology support from the
company responsible for Adobe
Connect after posting our
meeting issues! We’ve really
been making great connections
through twitter!
http://twitter.com/Gill_Villeans
Money Math:
We’ve been working
on identifying the
various Canadian coins and bills,
as well as adding and subtracting
money amounts up to $10.00.
You can help out at home by
practicing adding up change and
adding up purchases during
outings to the store. Another
useful skill is estimating the total
cost of purchases.
Gym
Clothes:
It’s important to have a change
of gym clothes to wear on days 1
and 5. You can check the class
calendar on our website at:
http://teachers.wrdsb.ca/GILLK
and click on the Class Calendar
link on the left side of the page.
No School Days:
There are two days in February
when there is no school for
students. The first is Wednesday,
February 2nd, which is a P.D. Day,
and the second is the Family Day
Holiday on Monday, February
21st.
Valentine’s Day:
On Monday, February 14th we will
celebrate Valentines Day by
participating in friendship and art
activities, a card exchange, and a
small afternoon party. You are
welcome to send treats for the
party, however it is not
necessary. There’s a list of staff
and student names for those
wanting to bring Valentines
greetings from home.
Austin Ms. Gill
Braydan Mrs. Metzger
Jacob Mrs. Schmiedendorf
Kara Mrs. Vautour
Logan Ms. Verley
Mackenzie Ms. Bean
Mathew Mr. Berndt
Rachel
Zachary
Coming Soon! Live
Video Broadcasts:
Stay tuned to hear more about
Ryerson’s live video broadcasts.
Students will be “on air” live at
specified times and dates using
live streaming video. Classes at
Ryerson, families, and friends can
tune to watch on our school
website by visiting this link:
http://rye.wrdsb.on.ca/RaptorReports2