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Whats happening in

Gill-Ville Jr. Area Comp . February 2012

http://teachers.wrdsb.ca/GILLK

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Mark your Calendars

Character Ed. Assembly Thursday, Feb. 2nd PD Day No School Friday, Feb. 3rd R.M.i. Lunches Wednesday, Feb. 8th & Feb. 24th Skating Days Wednesday, Feb. 8th & Friday, Feb. 24th Report Cards Come Home Monday, Feb. 13th Dance-a-thon School Spirit Day Tuesday, Feb. 14th Family Day No School Monday, Feb. 20th
Term 2 IEP Meetings

Character Education:
For the month of January our focus was on the COMMITMENT key. We talked about sticking with challenging tasks and keeping your word when you make promises. We set goals and check in to see how we are doing. Congratulations to our student-of-the-month winner, Logan! For the month of February we will be learning from our mistakes with the FAILURE LEADS TO SUCCESS key.

Skating:

Make sure to be prepared with skates, helmet, and appropriate clothing on our two skating days this month.

Dance a thon:
Information comes home today about our upcoming Dance-a-thon event that takes place during our next school spirit day on Valentines Day! Help support our school fundraising efforts with this fit and fun initiative!

Report Card and I.E.P. Meetings:

During the week of February 21st to 24th, parents are invited to come in to discuss your childs report card and sign the second term I.E.P. Please complete the attached form and return to school to schedule your meeting time.

Its About Time:

Weve been learning to tell time and explore elapsed time problems. You can help at home by talking about times that events occur such as dinner at 6:15 or homework at 5:45. Also talk about the amount of time until something happens. For example, 20 minutes until bedtime or this TV show is over in 10 minutes.

Week of Feb. 21-24 Little Chefs Cooking Lesson Monday, Feb. 27th

Geocaching and GPS Activities:

Weve been learning more about mapping and measuring our location based on our distance north or south of the Equator and the distance east and west of the Prime Meridian. We have been using online tools to find coordinates of our school and places around the world. It has been especially fun to use GPS devices to mark waypoints, note latitude and longitude, and follow the compass directions. We practiced using the devices (pictured below) around our schoolyard. During our trip to Millen Woods, we hid plastic eggs around their school playground and challenged other groups to find them using our GPS directions. During the month of February we will be exploring the online geocaching community at http://geocaching.com and we hope to get a chance to find two geocaches that we believe are in our local area. More information will be coming home in the coming weeks about this project.

Virtual Teachers:
We are excited to introduce two new digital friends in Gill-Ville. We will soon be introduced to teacher candidates at the University of Regina who are learning how to use technology in education. Ms. Jelinski and Ms. Broderick will both be meeting with us using video conferencing tools and social media sites. Stay tuned for more developments as this partnership evolves. We are excited to learn with new teachers near and far!

We are in the middle of our first rotation of our second session of quadblogging. We really enjoyed getting comments on our blog during the first week. Last week we met Mrs. Evans class in England and enjoyed reading their blogs. We learned that they were working on animations so we already found at least one thing in common! This week we visited the site of Mr. Staceys quadblogging club. At their school, some students come once a week after school to write in this blogging club! We read their first two posts and introduced ourselves. Next week we meet Mrs. Lanes class in England! We are looking forward to learning from each other over the next few months.

Valentines Day:
Since Valentines Day falls on our school spirit day and Dance-athon event, we will be participating in friendship activities during the week of February 13 17. We will have our Valentines exchange during our last period on Tuesday. Listed below are the names of the students and staff in our class to help you in filling out your special Valentine messages.

One Day in Canada A Collaborative ePub Project:

We are very excited to be one of eight members across the nation involved in a new collaborative writing publishing project. We are creating an ePub book that shows a day in the life of Canadians in the wintertime (and a second part will take place in the Spring). This project will give us a snapshot of our national identity on one day in Canada. Each participant class is working on a personal narrative that talks about life in their part of the country on February 1st of this year. Each chapter will have images and possibly even include short video clips. Well be working hard to complete our contribution over the next few weeks. We are aiming for the completed project to be published by the end of the month. Stay tuned for more details about this exciting project as they become available.

Bailey Emilee Jacob Kara Logan Mathew Rachel

Ms. Gill Mrs. Metzger Mrs. Schmiedendorf Mrs. Vautour Mrs. Claus Mrs. Ruppert Mr. Berndt

No School Days:
There are two days in February when there is no school for students. The first is Friday, February 3rd, which is a P.D. Day, and the second is the Family Day Holiday on Monday, February 20th.