October 26

Quest students enjoying the Fall weather.

Student-led Conferences
These conferences are led by students.  They will look different from last year's conferences.  Students will be at the center of the conversation, guiding parents/guardians through an exhibition of their learning.  Students will focus this conference around highlights, successes, and goals.  We find that student-led conferences are a tremendous opportunity for students to be leaders in their education.  If you would like to meet for a traditional parent-teacher conference please email Curtis or Melissa and we can schedule a meeting outside of these conference dates.

Sign up here.

Percentages
Next week, we will begin to learn about percentages.  This type of math is all around us, so feel free to make connections with your students while you are out and about.

Refugee Project
We will be wrapping up the Global Read Aloud book, Refugee by Alan Gratz, this week with a point of view project.  Students will be gathering evidence from the book and creating a visual that shows the point of view of one of the characters in the story.

Quest Talent Show
The Quest students will have an impromptu talent show on Halloween.  We look forward to seeing the different acts :)

Mary's Solo Teaching
Mary Vachon will be solo teaching for the two and a half weeks before vacation.  As we teach in a team model, this means that there will be three team teachers on Quest!  Mary will lead teach more of the lessons for this period.  She will be starting on November 5th.

October 12

Callum learning about the history of the Little River State Park land.

Otus
When viewing Otus from the 'family' perspective, unfortunately, you can only see graded assessments (assignments).  You cannot see what is due.  However, there are two ways around this.  The first way is having your student log in to their Otus account at home.  The second way is to download the Otus app.  Here you can see what assignments are due and scores on completed assignments.

Postcard Exchange
During the month of October, we are connecting with schools around the world who are reading Refugee by Alan Gratz.  We are asking for students to bring in a postcard that they will send to another class around the world.  Thanks for your help with this.

Upcoming Math Topics
Students will be applying their understanding of ratios to explore rates and percentages.  More information about the math in this unit can be found here.

Learning Targets for October
Students are working on Point of View in fiction and non-fiction reading.  Next week, students will have a choice to either write a story from a different point of view, or to analyze their Newsela article and write paragraphs based on the two different points of view represented in the article.