So far this January

January

We have been very busy so far this month. I hope that you have been hearing about "It's not a box!", our "All about Snow" unit and the writing and math we have been doing in class.

It's not a box

The whole school participated in the "Most Magnificent Thing" project. In our class we called it "It's not a box" to help facilitate understanding in French. We started the project by looking at a box and the criteria and making a plan. After the children had made their plan they got to work. The children worked for about 3 full afternoons creating and painting their projects. When they were done the project (or ran out of time), they looked back at their plan and reflected about what went well and what they would change. On the Friday of last week, their classmates from K-7 toured our class to see and hear about their projects. 
On the Ed Inform App are pictures of the very beginnings of the projects, the finished project as well as an evaluation form. I have also listed the expectations that the students were given at the beginning of the project. 
 



All about snow

While working on the boxes, we have finished up a science unit about snow. We watched Youtube videos, read books and shared our observations about snow. Using this information, the children wrote a non-fiction book about snow. They also learned about symmetry and used many materials in class to explore making symmetrical snowflakes. 
On Ed Inform, I have included pictures of the students making symmetrical snowflakes in class and a video of the students reading/ retelling their book about snow. 
 

 

Report Cards

The report cards are coming home next week January 29-February 2. They will include much of what you have seen on Ed Inform, especially the things that were posted before Christmas. If you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to contact me.

Weekly Practice

We are practicing reading using syllable chunks. That means, that when we see a new word we are learning to read it in chunks (ma-man) instead of letter by letter. The weekly practice that comes home is a wonderful way to support this skill that we use when reading and writing. The page of the practice with the words is for this sort of practice.
What you can do instead of just reading the words:
  • Have you child make the words out of play dough, magnetic letters or scrabble tiles
  • write the words and cut them into syllable chunks to practice
  • sort the words by similar syllable chunk (ma with other ma words)
  • find similar endings
  • is the syllable chunk (ma, me, mi, mo mu) in the beginning of the word, middle or end. 
The brain learns best when it is challenged in many ways. I hope you have fun with some of these suggestions. 


Popular posts from this blog

Information about our class

Image
  Our grade 2 class We have a straight grade 2 class. It is a busy class and everyone is eager to learn and start our time together.I enjoyed meeting the students today and noticed many established friendships and some new budding ones as well.  We will spend the first few weeks talking about our school community and establishing routines for our time together.  School supplies Please send in the school supplies as soon as you have them. We do use all 4 journal books right away as they are for different subjects.  I have included pictures of the outside and inside of the journals to help you when purchasing the supplies.  Inside of the journals  The covers of the journals needed Information for parents about our class: Here are copies of the Welcome Letter and Parent Handbook that will becoming home in the first few days of school. Please read both documents as they give you an overview of our class routines for the year.  Link to  Parent Handbook  Link to  Welcome Letter Every year th
Read more

Our First Full Week!

Image
  Literacy We have started our class learning routines and activities this week. The children are practicing reading on our own. They find a spot to sit in class and put a mat down. The children pick 2-3 books that they practice reading several times.  To practice reading the children are: getting their mouth ready to say the letter sound rereading new words to blend the letter sounds together e.g. R-o-s-ie becomes Ro-sie then Rosie checking that the words that they say make sense in the story. If there are more than 2 words on a page that they do not know, then they should change their book for something that is easier and still provides a challenge.  The blue bins, pictured on the bottom shelf, are activities that support oral language, sight word recognition and spelling. Each table gets a bin after snack and works at the activity. Each day they have a different activity.  Out literacy centres Math We have been using Cuisinaire Rods to create number trains. The children started the
Read more

Art Cards, Science and Social Studies

Image
Art Cards We have started out Art Cards! Social Studies and Health One of the Big Ideas, a focus, for grade 2 is the diverse regions of Canada. As a beginning  to this unit we made a map of the school grounds. We then looked at Canada using google maps and zoomed in to our school. We were able to compare our map with what we saw on the screen.  Over the school year we will be looking in more detail at different regions of Canada. Over the next few weeks we will be talking about the food we grow on the Island. This will lead to conversations and comparisons with the prairies, what grows on the prairies, the animals and geography of that region of Canada.  As we are talking about food, we will be reading and retelling the story of La petite poule rousse. (The Little Red Hen). We will also be talking about healthy foods vs snack and treat food.   As we approach Halloween could you please limit candy to 1 item per day if that is your practice to include candy in your child's lunch. As
Read more