Happy Halloween Kiddos!

I hope your Halloween experience is nothing like these kids!  Have fun trick-or-treating tonight.  Fingers crossed the thunderstorm passes quickly!

The Piano Guys

I've heard you've seen the Star Wars duel with the Cello Guy, here's another fun video from Me and My Cello.  Who know cello playing could be so much fun! Leave a comment about which part of the video was your favorite!

Volunteer Service Opportunity

Over the Thanksgiving break, a team of 25 SAS teachers will be going to Siem Reap as part of a Caring for Cambodia (CFC) Teacher Training project. This year our teachers will be sharing teaching methods in the subject of science with the Cambodian teachers. In the past we have shared information about hygiene and have distributed “hygiene kits”. These kits were a huge success and much needed in the community. We would sincerely like to continue this act of kindness.

How can you HELP? Our goal is to create and transport 1500 hygiene kits to Siem Reap. If you would like to participate please have your child bring in the following by Friday, November 15th.

1 bar of soap 1 small washcloth

1 comb 4 toothbrushes
1 large tube of toothpaste

Reading Partners

Check out the books we're reading with our reading partners! Books are much more enjoyable when we have someone to share them with.
 Happy Reading!

Rock Star of the Week, Noemi

Noemi's Rock Star Wordle

Encore, Encore!

What a treat to see this week's Rock Star, Johan, share his amazing talent on the violin. It made us all shout out,  "Encore, Encore!"  Check out the encore!

Kasym and Julia's Weekly Update...

Hi, this is Julia and Kasym and we are here with your Weekly Update! We had a wonderful, wacky, and weird week, so we wanted to tell you all about it! First, we had a interesting, confusing and entertaining day in math. Then, we had a cool, fantastic, and awesome day at the Science Centre. (That was our favorite part of the week!) Last but not least, we had a fun, interesting, and relaxing day in RLA. This week was loads of fun, so read to find out what we did during our amazing week! On Monday, we had math. We were learning how to estimate division problems, but we also learned what all the numbers in a division problem are actually called. The first number in a division problem is called the dividend. The second number is called the divisor and the answer is called the quotient. The trick that Mrs. Clayton (our teacher) gave us is: the way to remember the dividend is the first number and the first number is usually the bigger one and dividend is the longer word. That tells you that the second number is the quotient or the divisor. We have just memorized that, but the first trick has helped me (Kasym) at least. After we had done that, we learned how to estimate the quotients. First you have to see if the divisor can go into the five dividend using an easy multiplication fact. When you have found it, you work it out. Say it was 456/5 you would see that 456 can be rounded down to 450 which is easy to divide by five. goes into 45, 9 times so you write 9 then add on the extra 0 so you get 90. That is your answer. It is as I said a little harder than multiplication when you do hard ones like 454/6 or 765/3 but when you get the hang of it, it is quite easy. On Tuesday, we went to the Science Center and it was amazing. We learned heaps of new stuff like: did you know that rock-candy has a much higher boiling point than water? To make the lollipops you have to get seven tablespoons of sugar and put it in the sauce pan. You also have to get two tablespoons of water, then three tablespoons of corn syrup. You could add 1 drop of flavoring, and/or 1 drop of coloring to the saucepan. Most people did this, but it was optional.  You stir it up and then you put the saucepan on a warm plate with the temperature at medium. You leave it on medium until it boils, then you turn the temperature to low and leave it for ten minutes. You have to be stirring the whole time though. When it is finished, you have to pour it into moulds really quickly or it hardens in the pot. Some of our helpers had to pour it for us because we were too scared. Even when we had got it in the moulds, we had to wait fifteen to twenty minutes before we could eat it. We stuck toothpicks in it, but since you have to wait fifteen to twenty minutes, our arms got kind of tired. Then it was free time, so we could go anywhere we wanted to go! One of my favorite bits was this wheel that we played on. You were supposed to run on the wheel, but it was much more fun if you just tried to stand (which none of us could). It looked like a massive doggy pile when all of us fell over.  We also watched a really cool electrical show and OUR TEACHER was part of it. She got in this metal cage and the electricity got attracted to the metal so it was electrified! Thankfully our teacher didn’t get hurt, but she did hear loud noises even though she had ear-muffs on. On Wednesday we had RLA. The class did two things in one. First of all, we got new reading partners. Both partners are the same reading level, you’ll see why Hopefully everyone likes their reading partners too! Second, we (the two reading partners) got to pick out a book, and read that book for the week! I think everybody loves the book that they chose.  I (Julia) love the book that I chose at least! We got to see who our reading partners were first.  I thought it was fun peering down the list and looking up and down to see my name, then see who was my reading partner. We talked with our reading partners about what our favorite genre is, who our favorite author is, etc. Then we got to go to the fifth-grade group room and pick out our books! Mrs. Clayton told us that the genre had to be Realistic Fiction. For some people it took them a second to find the book they wanted, but for other people, they just couldn’t find the right book. There are soooo many books to choose from, that you don’t just want to pick one, but many! The fifth grade group room had every book a person would need! I would want to see someone read all of those books. I think that it would take them at least 5 years! It was also hard when we had to choose a book at our reading level, because some of us (I know for sure me) wanted to get a book from a level way harder than my reading level! Finally, when everything was settled, and everyone had a book, we got to read that book anywhere in the group room we wanted! Mrs. Clayton went around taking pictures, and I guarantee that she will put those pictures onto the class blog. I hope that everybody is into their books already! Both Kasym and I are already into our books! Now our superb week has come to an end! Waaaa! Our week, you can see, has been so splendid that we just had to write sooooooo much. We hope that all of you loved this week’s Weekly Update. We enjoyed math, reading, and especially going to the Science Centre, so that’s why we choose to write all about these things! Again this is the end of the Weekly Update, and I don’t want to make it that long, so we hope you had a fun time reading this and next week you will hear about what we did through Oct. 28-31! Once again we hope you enjoyed. Please comment and give us any ideas on what we could do better next time.

IXL to the Rescue!

Here's a bit of review of concepts in Topic 4 and a preview of what's to come in Topic 5 (after Fall Break).  Only a few more lessons and we'll have our Topic 4 test towards the end of next week.

Review: H.1 - H.9, H.13, H.14

Preview: H.10 - H.12

To, Two, and Too

The English language can sure be confusing!  Hopefully this video can help shed some light on the homophones to, two and too!

Getting Ready for Halloween

If you think these pumpkins are awesome, you'll have to check out the rest of these creatively carved gourds.  Trick or Treat!!!

Visiting Author, Harry Bliss

Just a reminder that Harry Bliss, our PTA sponsored Illustrator in Residence, is working with us in our art class THIS Thursday.  Yippee! Parents are invited to attend any of the sessions that are being offered. You may link to his schedule here. Don't forget that his books (which can be signed and inscribed) are available for purchase in the library. Here's the book order link.

Headed to the Science Center!

What an adventure today was!  I don't know if our favorite part was playing around in the Kinetic Garden or making cotton candy or boiling our solutions to make lollipops or just hanging out with friends.  Thanks to Mrs. Havens, Mr. Thomas, Mrs. Chua and Mr. Surrency for all their help with our kids.  Have a look at our pictures to see the fun we had on our trip to the Singapore Science Center!

Science Rocks!

Classic vs. Best Seller?

Who remembers the difference between a Classic and a Best Seller book?  Leave a comment below to help those that are still struggling with that idea.  

Rock Star of the Week, Johan!

Johan's Rock Star Wordle

Meeting Salva Dut!

We are SO very lucky to have the opportunity to meet Salva Dut this Friday!  If you were one of the many that snatched up Linda Sue Park's book, A Long Walk To Water, you'll be especially excited to see this man in person.  His journey is incredible, his compassion is inspiring and his work is something we can all aspire to achieve.  If you're interested in learning more about him, have a look at this website, Water for South Sudan.  Get ready to be inspired!

Playing Around With Rock Candy

Saturation, solutions, supersaturated solutions...is it all a bit confusing?  Check out this video on how to make rock candy which may help these concepts sink in! 

Amber and Vainavi's Weekly Update....

Hello, this is Amber and Vainavi. Today we will be telling you about our fantastic week! We will tell you what we did that made each day so special. Last but not least, why we enjoyed what we did so much. With the help of our wonderful teacher Mrs. Clayton, we did many fun and educational things like swimming, Mad Scientists and our unit three math test! On Monday, we had our first swimming lesson with Ms. Wenstrom and Ms. Bell. Hopefully, no one felt embarrassed doing the solo swim in a certain stroke. I bet that everyone hated it when we had to go to the cold, freezing shower before we went into the pool. We mainly liked it when we got to practice our strokes before we did the solo swim. So then we were all warmed up to start our assessment.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we had Mad Scientists! We tried to figure out how many grams it would take to saturate Epsom Salt. We had to shake like crazy to make the salt dissolve before we added more salt. We learned how many grams it would take for the salt to saturate. It was hard to saturate the salt, because we had to first finish shaking the bottle, until the salt dissolved. Then we added more salt until it was saturated. According to us it was like a dance party from shaking so much! It took so long to saturate the Epsom Salt compared to the Kosher Salt. So, that is why we had to finish our experiment on Thursday.

On Thursday, we had our unit three math test. Our math subject was about multiplying larger numbers. To us, the part that wasn’t so easy was multiplying three digit by three digit numbers. We hoped that we aced the test as well as everyone else. We were both stressed out at first, but it was easier than we thought.

Sadly, that was the end of our wonderful and busy week. We had so much fun in these 4 days, that we never even realized how fast it went! Hopefully everybody enjoyed their week as much as we did!

Mr. Brown's September Precept

WHEN GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN
BEING RIGHT AND BEING KIND.
If you had your own precept, what would it be?

A Wall of Words...

Do you think we should create one of these in our classroom?  What do you think?  Let me know if you're interested in helping set this up.

Searching for a Good Book?

Are you dying to find a book that you can't peel yourself away from?  Have a peek at Book Adventure to discover a few fantastic reads!

Let's Get Ready to Divide!

Let's get ready to divide.  We're just dividing by 1-digit divisors in the next topic.  Have a look at these division games to help you with the next Topic in Puzzles.
Division Jeopardy
H.3 IXL (Division by 1 digit numbers)
H.6 IXL (Estimating quotients)
Snowball Fight (Division Facts)

Ryan and Nate's Weekly Update...

Hello, this is Nate and Ryan, and we’re from Mrs.Clayton’s class. The both of us will be doing this week’s Weekly Update. There were three subjects that we did that we wanted to  write about this week. Read about what happened during these subjects, in our sensational week.

First off, on Tuesday in writing, we all glued our final copies of our small seed stories into our covers. We all went around reading each others stories, and commented on them with sticky notes. Luckily, Mrs.Clayton was being really compassionate and generous enough to give each of us four pieces of candy. Did you see how much our writing has improved since our first draft?

Later that day, we had a special guest assembly with Courtney Campbell. Courtney is known around the globe for her hilarious show, “Mustard Pancakes”. She told us stories about a girl named Burp, and her funny childhood, and sang a song that we all had to dance too. If you want to see more, click here to go to her website. She was so much fun. We were very lucky to have her come.

Last but not least, on Thursday and Friday, we learned two different ways to ways to help solve two-digit by two-digit number math problems. We learned the partial products method and the traditional method. Both of us are still getting the hang of the traditional method, but we’re so glad that we could learn it.

We hope you have enjoyed reading our Weekly Update. It was so much fun putting this together for you. Now enjoy your week!   

2-digit Multiplication

This multiplication video starts off with a one-digit times a 5 digit.  It's a great review to get you into 2-digit multiplication.  If you're looking to just rethink your way through 2-digit multiplication, you can start the video at about 3:15 and take it from there.  Happy reviewing!

In Honor of Harrison...

Don't get these 14 little pandas confused with stuffed animals.  These little babes are for real.  Want to learn more about these little cutie pies?  Read this article from National Geographic.

Typing Test This Week!

Just a head's up that we'll be having typing test in the near future.  How much improvement do you think you'll show?  Have you been practicing putting your fingers in the right position?  I hope you've been like Snoopy over there and have been typing like mad! 

What a Story!!

Courtney Campbell had us laughing and singing and moving around like no other performer.  What a fun way to spend our afternoon!
Did you know she's a musician too?
Here's a cartoon of her story, Burp.  I think it was my favorite story of all...or was it Mustard Pancakes.  No wait, The Boy Who Loved Sticky Plasters was definitely my favorite.  Oh but then there was....ugh, I just can't decide.  Which one was your favorite?