Sept 1-10



Welcome to my classroom blog!  I post to this site at the end of each week, usually Saturday morning. Please check in regularly to see what things we have been up to and to be reminded about important upcoming events.


We have had an amazing start to our school year.  We have spent the first days getting to know each other, learning about our school, and becoming used to the routines and protocols that we need to follow to be a safe, successful, and supportive learning community.  Here are some of the things we have worked on in the last week:


As a jumping off point for Math, we have been looking at patterns, both numerical and visual.  Students have been able to show what they know about patterns in creating a name tag for their coat hooks, a cover for their journal book, and to share examples of patterns orally in our morning routine at the start of each day.  This will be a focus over the next few weeks and we will revisit it frequently to help the students develop their awareness of patterns in counting, numbers, nature, stories, and in the world around them.  


We have also begun learning some Math games to work on oral counting skills and to develop our ability to write and recognize numbers in a variety of forms.  This includes numerals, groups of objects, and dice dots.  Students are learning to recognize at a glance what numbers are represented by a pair of dice as a way to develop their understanding of part-part whole relationships in numbers from one to twelve.


On Friday we also began to explore the mathmatical game called mancala. Here is a link to some simple instructions on the game. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+play+mancala&oq=how+to+play+man&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512l9.3752j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=on#kpvalbx=_rPs8Ye-dCvrD0PEPm76C2A038 I made a simple version using an egg carton and glass rocks. You can use gems, buttons, pennies, etc. what ever you have at home if you want to try it out with your child.



At the beginning of the year, I like to give the students a lot of time to explore language orally and to develop their ability to communicate clearly with their peers.  With many of us being in our bubbles during the past year and a half, I felt that developing the skills and language for cultivating friendships and healthy relationships in our classroom and our school community would be an important place to start our work.  We read the story “The Invisible Boy” and had a class discussion about how to interact with our peers and help each other to be heard and understood.  We don’t want anyone in the classroom to feel invisible.  We then helped our friends create a life sized picture of ourselves which we painted to show our colourful and unique spirits. I've started to put up the paintings in our hallway and after we finish our speech bubbles I will take some photos of their finished art for you to see next week.



To Kick off our Science work, we created “Bug Pooters” which are a safe and fun way to collect bugs in order to observe them.  We found some amazing bugs around our schoolyard. The students used their observation skills to study their bugs before returning them to their natural environment.  We are keeping our pooters at school to use again, but if you would like to make one to use at home, you can find the instructions here. 




I am excited for our parents to have an opportunity to support student learning through volunteering this school year.  I hope to arrange a trip to Twelve Mile Coulee before the end of the month and would ask parents to let me know as soon as possible if they have their volunteer clearance.  If you have not completed a clearance check or you think that it might no longer be valid, please contact the office as soon as possible to begin the process.  Please be aware that it will likely take several weeks or possible months in order to have your clearance processed.  If you are worried about covid issues, outdoor activities are a great and safe way to be involved in our learning.  


If you wish to volunteer in the classroom, this will begin later in October.  Please be aware that I will have limited in-class volunteers and I will set up an on-line sign up.  Please sign up for only one volunteer spot per month in order to allow others to have a chance to find a spot that works for them.  If I am in need of more volunteers for a particular activity or event, I will send out a separate email in order to inform everyone.  If you wish to volunteer in the classroom, please know that you will be required to complete the self-screening tool prior to arriving to volunteer.  You will also need to wear a mask while in the school and will need to follow all of our protocols around sanitizing and hand hygiene.


Upcoming Events

Wednesday Sept. 15 - Library Exchange Every Week

Thursday Sept. 23 - Virtual Open House - More information to follow

Friday Sept. 24 - No School for students - Virtual Open House



Popular posts from this blog

Feb 14-16

Image
What an exciting short week we have had.  Between Valentine’s Day and Carnaval, we have been so busy.  Here are the highlights: Students were so excited to exchange cards and gifts with their friends on Monday.  We also worked on making paper hearts and using them to create animals and pictures.  I was amazed at everyone’s creativity. I hope you enjoyed the picture that they brought home. We also had our kick off to Carnaval on Monday.  Students created an effigy of Bonhomme and this has now been attached to their jackets to show that they are participating in our event. One the the exciting things we have done in connection with Carnaval is to play the musical spoons.  Students watched a couple of videos to learn some techniques for these interesting instruments.  If you have never seen them played, you can watch this video below to see how it sounds. http://quietube7.com/v.php/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1OOqWN6YCw Of course, we all enjoyed crea...
Read more

May 16-19

Image
Our week has been full of learning through exploration and observation.  Here are some of the highlights of our week: Our work on the Maratimes continued this week.  We watched a number of videos about the area and students had an opportunity to look at the landscapes, animals, and symbols that represent this part of our country.   We began a new read aloud story this week by Lois Lowry called “Gooney Bird Greene”.  This novel is about a grade two student with a talent for storytelling.  Students have been listening to a chapter each day and have been developing their understanding of character, plot, and dialogue.  We have also been listening to the author’s use of rich vocabulary.   In Science, students have completed the exploration of magnets through the independent stations provided.  Students had to work as a group to read instructions, do the activity, and record their observations and what they learned.  Applying scientific ...
Read more

Jan 17 - Jan 21

Image
This week we have really settled into our routine and have extended our learning in new and interesting ways.  Here are some of the things we have worked on: In Language Arts, we have been continuing our writing of own versions of “The Mitten” using arctic animals.  Students have been working on using interesting words to describe how each animal moves and what happens when they one by one try to snuggle up in this new warm place. We continued to learn about styles of Hip Hop dance this week with the help of Mr. J. from Sound Kreations.  Students have been so engaged and enthusiastic in this exciting work.  We have one more week with Mr. J. and we will then perform a dance piece that we are putting together.  Due to covid, we are unable to have an audience for this, so each class will be recorded and a school-wide performance video will be created so that we can see everybody’s dance moves. Our Math this week is an extension of our beginning addition we began la...
Read more