FAREWELL AND THANK YOU

Hello families and students of the grade 4/5 gifted program. It's hard to believe that today is the last day of school and this is my final blog post of the 2013/2014 school year. It has been my absolute pleasure to teach each and every one of your children this year in the gifted program. I have watched them all grow and mature socially, emotionally and academically. This has been very rewarding for me as a teacher. We have cried together, laughed together and learned together as one cohesive group. They have learned the importance of respecting each others opinions and differences as well as voicing their own opinions in a safe and comfortable environment. They have learned the importance of giving back through acts of kindness and they have learned to be grateful each and every day for living freely and safely as a child in Canada.

I want to thank each and every one of you for all your wonderful cards of thanks and gratitude and all the support you have shown me this year. I have truly had an amazing year, one that I will remember forever. I also want to thank all those families who contributed to my end of the year gift. I look forward to buying myself something special with the generous amount of money. 

Class Party - Thank you for sending in the many treats, home baked goodies, fruit and veggie platters for our class party on Tuesday. The students had a lot of fun eating and watching a movie. Thank you to our parent volunteers, Liza and Carey, for helping to set up the party and clean up after the party. We appreciate your efforts.

Class Parent - A special thank you to our class parent, Nina Moritsugu, for all her excellent email communication and organization of events throughout the year. Nina, I appreciate all the work you've done to help our class and facilitate ongoing communication between myself and the parents. 

Wishing all of you a very happy, relaxing and safe summer holiday. Enjoy your children and I look forward to seeing all of you back at Forest Hill in September.

Thank you again for making this year a very special and memorable one.

Mrs. Stacey Mendelson 

Happy Father's Day to all our great dads!

Wishing all of our fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers and important men in our lives a very Happy Father's Day. I hope you all have some special time with your families and enjoy your day.

We've had a busy week! Although there are only two weeks to go before the end of the year (it's so hard to believe!), the students are engaged and busy. We finished our read aloud novel, Iqbal today and it was very emotional. What a wonderful, heart warming story and inspirational story. Please ask your child to share with you the ending of the book as well as the story of Iqbal Masih. Also ask them how they felt at the end of the book and what they think the big message is that the author is trying to convey.

The grade 4's are very actively building plasticine and clay models of the  human ear, hearing aids as well as many animals ears. They are doing research on the computer and preparing a one page report to go along with their project.This project culminates our science unit on Light and Sounds.

The grade 5's are working on an independent project booklet. Some students are working in groups and some have chosen to work alone. They are completing math related mini projects in class.

Play date - On Wednesday June 18th, Forest Hill Junior School will be outside in the afternoon for a play date. The students will be rotating in groups, from station to station playing a variety of cooperative games in teams. There will be a snack station with water however, I strongly encourage each student to wear a hat, sunscreen, light summer clothing, sunglasses and bring a full water bottle for the day as they will be outside for several hours. This should be a fun day for the junior school!

Math test - The grade 5's will have their unit math test on Monday June 16th. This test will cover all of the chapters in the Fractions and Decimals unit. The grade 4's will have their math test on the Fractions and Decimals unit on Monday June 23rd. This will be their last math test of the year! Our last math unit is Probability.

End of the year party - Our end of the year class party will be held on Tuesday June 24th in the afternoon. I'm hoping to spend some time outside with the students playing games and eating snacks (weather permitting). Please look out for an email from our class parent, Nina, regarding volunteers for this party. Thank you!

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend. Enjoy the beautiful weather. Thank you for all your ongoing support. I look forward to a great last 2 weeks with our students in the grade 4/5 gifted program.

Mrs. Mendelson

Rights of a Child Project - great work grade 5's!

Hello families of room 205s. I hope everyone is enjoying the month of June so far. We are busy in our class working on new projects and completing grade 5 presentations on the Rights of a Child Project. The grade 4's received their Light and Sound Project this week. They will be working in small groups in class to complete this engaging hands on final project of the year. The due date for the grade 4 Sounds Project is Friday June 20, 2014. This will give us just enough time for presentations before the end of the year quickly approaches.

The grade 5's did outstanding work creating models and writing descriptive paragraphs for their Government project based on the United Nations Rights of Children. Each student was asked to choose a right that was meaningful to them. They had to create a 3D model to represent this specific right and also write a one page description of what their life would be like if they did not have this right. Their work is showcased below. They all did an excellent job and I'm very proud of their hard work, dedication and effort to such an important topic.The big message for all the students after the presentations were complete was how lucky we all are to live in a free and safe country and have all of our needs met on a daily basis. We discussed, at great length, how important is to be grateful and appreciative for all they have in their lives.

Victor - Children have the right to a name and nationality

Oscar - Children have the right to a standard of living that meets their physical, mental, social, spiritual and moral development

Nicole - Children have the right to play

         

Halley - Children have the right to an education

PJ - Children have the right to an opinion and to have their opinion heard

Zed - Children have the right to speak and receive education in their language

Jennifer - Children have the right to the highest standard of health and medical care

Joyce - Children have the right to be protected from war

Jeremy - Children have the right to a standard of living suitable for their physical, mental, social, spiritual and moral development

"May the Force be With You" Science Workshop

Visit from a Scientist - We had a scientist, Mrs. S, visit our class this week to discuss Force of Energy. The students were involved in several hands on and engaging small group activities throughout the morning. The first activity involved building a structure out of newspaper rolls. Each group was challenged to build the strongest structure in a certain period of time. At the end of activity, Mrs. S tested each structures strength by counting the number of books that the structure could hold. The winning group's structure was able to hold 44 books. Great work! She also discussed topics such as tension and compression and then asked the students to build a Sight Seeing Tower to withstand the tension of a tornado that she created. Our students were engaged and really enjoyed her informative workshop Well done everyone!

Enjoy the pictures of our scientists below building their towers of strength...