May 1st already!

It is never a dull day at Squamish Elementary.
This morning we had a 40 minute assembly and were treated to a selection of songs from "Hair" the upcoming musical theatre program at HSSS. It opens in three weeks.
It was great to see a healthy number of former students all grown up and back at the school to entertain our current students.

The representatives from the Royal Canadian Legion arrived just at the end of the assembly and handed out the annual awards for this year's entries to the local and regional competitions for Remembrance Day. Congratulations to all the winners from grade 2 on up to grade seven. There were at least a dozen winners in categories of poster, poem and essay. In our class Maria Jelica de la Rosa won for her poster and Lucy Lee won both the local and the regional levels of competition with her black and white poster. Their prizes included cash and certificates. What an honor to have the whole school present for this year's presentations which are normally done in classes.
It is one of the most important competitions that we encourage the students to participate in every year and one that is very generous with its recognition for local school entries.
I just did not catch all the names and categories - maybe we can publish them on the website or an upcoming newsletter.

Then it was time for band class with Ms. Sorban - the musical theatre was a great warm up for making music

Math groups were conducted today for the grade sevens allowing small groups for deeper concentration on the skills of adding and subtracting mixed number fractions - taught everyone the method of switching fractions to improper fractions although to use this method students needs to be confident in their multiplication skills.
Students are responding well to the math ninja questions which are being posted and tracked by Mrs. Bruce
The challenge set is for students to answer at least 25 correctly by the end of the school year

Read to self

Buddies session - we have not had a session with Mrs. Hoyrup's grade threes since we did our craft at Christmas so everyone was happy to get together on the back field for DPA (daily physical activity)

The grade six and seven students organized three stations for their buddies
The first was the big parachute (an activity we usually do together on sports day)
The next station was hula hoops
The third was California Kickball and most of the big and little boys chose that station

I think was a successful venture

Back in class, with a half hour to the end of the day, I had promised the grade sixes a games time as thy missed out last Friday so various groups were formed to play: scrabble, pictionary, chess, cards, googleplex, a couple chose to read (they were visibly tired) and another two decided to complete posters.

Like I said, a different kind of Thursday.

Have a good what's left of the evening.
Mrs. J.