Last week we were chatting in 5R about how to celebrate our first few weeks together. One suggestion that got a lot of enthusiasm, was having a sausage campfire lunch!

Having discussed it with Kathryn and Catharina, our class parents, here is our plan…

This Friday, September 4, we will not be having our normal lunch routine. At the beginning of lunch time, 12:30, 5R students will head out into the woods behind the school to a campfire site we found in our first week. We will build a fire, cook our sausage lunch, share some desserts and other foods, and enjoy a couple hours in the woods together.

Here’s what we need from you…

FOOD

You have several options for lunch, please confirm your choice by Wednesday.

1. If your child is scheduled to get lunch from the cafeteria on Friday, the cafeteria has agreed to pack a few sausages and some bread rolls for them instead of the usual menu.
2. If you would like to purchase a campfire sausage lunch set for your child from the cafeteria, it can be made available for the usual price.
3. If you would like to send a couple sausages from home (a good idea if your child has particular dietary requirements), they can be refrigerated from Friday morning at school. Please send only as much as your child will eat.

As mentioned above, please confirm your choice by Wednesday, so that I can inform the cafeteria of numbers.

Additional foods, like marshmallows, other desserts, easy vegetables (like baby tomatoes, vegetable sticks etc.), bread rolls, mustard, ketchup etc., as well as paper plates and utensils, would be welcome in small amounts, to share. Catharina and Kathryn will be forwarding a sign up document for these on Tuesday, please contribute! (Also, check your junk mailbox if you don’t see it in your inbox tomorrow!)

One last food note… Please don’t send anything other than sausages/hot dogs to cook over the fire. We won’t be able to do steak or chicken legs this time! 🙂

WEATHER

At the moment the weather looks good for Friday. This may change however. If on Thursday evening the forecast looks really wet for Friday, we will cancel for this week and reschedule for after the Torgon trip. Please keep a look out for a blog post on Thursday evening if we are cancelling. If we are not cancelling, there will be no update.

Of course, we will be in the woods for a few hours. Please ensure your child has appropriate clothing for this. Their outdoor PE shoes would be good.

HEALTH

As always, please ensure your child has a water bottle with them to take into the woods. We will be eating lunch late, so a good-sized snack is a good idea as well.

KEY POINTS in this post:

• Select food choice and notify Mr Raskin by Wednesday
• Sign up for additional contributions when the form is shared (check junk mail)
• Keep an eye out for a possible rain cancellation post on Thursday evening
• Water bottle and a good-sized snack on Friday

Thanks for your support! It’s going to be a great celebration!

Since the first week of school we’ve been using our iPads for a range of purposes. From the beginning we discussed how they were tools that could serve many purposes. To agree on how we would use them we wanted to have as few rules as were possible, and as many as were necessary.

Soon we’ll be launching into a unit of inquiry exploring digital citizenship, but it was certainly worth having an opening discussion about what this means when deciding how to use these tools. Students shared ideas and developed this list:

We also discussed what to do if we encountered things online that were inappropriate or made us uncomfortable (close the tab, turn off the screen, scroll quickly past, tell an adult).

Finally, we summarized our agreements and have created the following document (using Canva.com, a great, intuitive design tool!)

Words to learn by!

It’s a week late, but here are the compiled video reflections from our first week in fifth grade.

The purposes of this exercise were many:

1. To ensure everyone’s Google Accounts were working and shared Drive folders could be accessed.
2. To ensure everyone could competently use their iPad to make a video and share it.
3. To survey our readiness to read and follow a set of instructions.
4. And of course, to get a snapshot of student impressions of the first week, as well as the thoughtfulness they put into this form of reflection.

These were the instructions:

And here are the reflections!

A huge thank you to Kathryn Johnson (Lucas’ mother) and Catharina Brenninkmeijer (Mathilda’s mother) for volunteering their energies to be class parents this year. They will likely be in touch with you all in due course.

Photo by Cory Doctorow from Flickr, used under Creative Commons licensing.

If you would like to reach them, they can be contacted as follows:

Kathryn: aaron_kathryn@hotmail.com

Catharina: catharinabrenn@hotmail.com

Thanks for your support!

Dear 5R Families,

Thanks so much to the parents who trekked through the rain to join us this evening. There was a lot of information and I do believe we got through most of it 🙂

As I mentioned this evening, I am happy to meet with you formally, by setting a time, or informally, for after school drop-ins. If you would like to book a snapshot meeting, please let me know.

To those parents who brought their child’s notebook home to reply to their letter, please send it back tomorrow. To those who weren’t able to reply, please expect a note to come home tomorrow. Please reply and return it the next day.

Embedded below are the presentations from the 5R class and the full grade level. Please get in touch with me with any questions!

Warm regards,

Jamie Raskin

As part of our first great week of getting to know each other, exploring team work, and trying out different roles in groups, 5R took on the Great Tower Challenge. Their mission? To build the tallest free-standing structure they could. They were given a limited range of materials, then ten minutes planning time.

Just before they began their half hour of building, they were given a “surprise”. I had observed who was taking leadership roles in the planning in each group and surprised them all by switching these leaders to new groups. Why? To give group members the opportunity to take on different roles, and reflect a little on how we involve new people in our collaborative work.

Have a look at the slideshow guide and some photos from the event below.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at the Meet the Teacher night on Monday (and don’t forget our photo days coming up this week too!).

For some people it’s just another day, but for others Photo Day is a big deal. Regardless of which describes you, it’s good to be prepared. This year 5R will be having our photo days as follows:

Individual Photos: Tuesday, August 25

Group Photo: Friday, August 28

Now, what am I going to wear…?

Photo: by freeparking, from flickr.com. Used under Creative Commons licensing.

This is a blank slate. This is a memory waiting to happen. This is a place for thinking, playing, reflecting and learning. This is going to be great.