What we have been doing

Welcome back.


Welcome to the new school year. We have now spent 6 full days together as a class. I wanted to share some of my learning goals that we have been working on over the last week.

We have been talking about being a good friend. We read a book called Stick and Stone, which is about a stick and stone who become friends. We also worked in small groups to make a playground that both stick and stone would find accessible on which both would be able to play together. We also read a book called "All are Welcome here" and in the coming week we are going to talk about ways in which we can help the kindies and new students feel welcome at our school as well as how we check that they are feeling welcome.
A playground for Stick and Stone

"A climbing wall on the ground so Stone can play"


Being a learner and learning opportunities

We have been focusing on the role of the children as learners in the classroom. I have been highlighting the responsibility of the children to participate, try and engage with all the learning opportunities in the class. You can ask your child about my magic wand that just won't work!

Writing down the names of classmates who share interests.
This sounds like a harsh reality for grade 1/ 2 however, we have been exploring the role of a learner in a variety of age appropriate ways. In order to share thinking, we drew pictures of things we like to do. The students then circulated in the class and looked for their classmates with whom they share interests.


In order to learn about getting new ideas, following a plan and sharing what we learn, we went on a search for a missing teddy bear from our class. Once we realized that the bear was missing, we made a plan of places to check. As we checked each place and did not find the bear, we revised our plan and looked again. We will use these skills and refer to them all year whether we are reading, writing, doing math or inventing something new.
Our plan to find the bear.

Math

In math we are counting collections. We are counting by 1 in French and the children have the option to count by 2,5 or 10 as well as sort the objects into like groups and count. We are work on the idea that numerals represent a set amount of "how many". We will be looking at the "friendly numbers" of 5 and 10 later this week and next. 

While counting sounds like something your child can do, the variety of amounts in the collections and the challenge to count by varying amounts keeps everyone engaged.

Class Information:

  1. I have subscription forms for the English Magazine Chickadee. If you are interested in subscribing for your family, please write a note in the agenda.
  2. I hope to see you at Meet the Teacher on Wednesday, please plan to spend some time in our room (10- 15 min) to write on a rock for your child to keep in a special place in class, as a connection to you. 

What you can do at home:

  1.  Let your child have unstructured time to play. At this point in the year, they are very tired and need play time to process all that has happened in the day.
  2. Have crayons and art supplies on hand and encourage time to draw and colour. This helps to process their day and it supports writing. In the primary grade (through grade 3) we often start with a drawing to facilitate writing and generating ideas for writing. 
  3. Count in French. There are links to videos that have the French counting words under the tab "Songs we are singing" at the top of the page. 

September newsletters:

Here are some paper newsletters that have already come home.

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