On Friday we had the Scientist in the School program visit our classroom. The children participated in a variety of experiments which helped to consolidate their learning about Simple Machines. Thank you to those parents who volunteered to help lead these experiments. The students thoroughly enjoyed their morning! 

     Thank you to everyone who has brought in a donation for the We Scare Hunger food drive. The children are learning about helping others less fortunate and they are so proud to put their donations into the box outside our classroom.  Just a reminder, please don't send in any products which contain nuts.  The Food Drive continues until Monday, October 31.

     The children attended "The Power of One" presentation on Tuesday morning.  Through watching role-playing situations the children learned that everyone has the power to stop bullying.  Each child will be signing "the Power of One" poster board to show that they would not bully others, and will report bullying.  The poster boards will be displayed in the school after all the students sign them.  

     Our school has been experiencing some difficulty with the IXL program this week. We have people looking into this issue and we are hoping that it will be up and running again early next week. I will keep you posted on this issue.

      Picture Retake Day is Thursday, October 27.  Please let me know if you wish a retake, so I can add your name to the list.  A reminder that photo orders submitted to school are due on Monday, October 24.  Payments are also accepted on-line.  See the proof form for additional details.

     

     The grade 8's will be creating a Haunted House for the students to visit. It is recommended the students bring a $2.00 donation when entering the Haunted House as the grade 8's are raising money for their grade trip. Our class is scheduled to visit the Haunted House on Friday, October 28th. Your child does not have to visit the Haunted House if they are not comfortable doing so. They will have the option to stay outside in the hallway with me.

     Halloween is quickly approaching. This week we will be having a Halloween craft morning. The children are looking forward to making some crafts that they can use to decorate their home. The children may wear their costumes to school on Monday, October 31.  There will be a school parade for the parents at 9:00 am.  The parade will be outside weather permitting.  Our classroom party will be in the afternoon.  Just a reminder that face paint is easier to manage than a mask and please no weapons.  

     Finally, a reminder that Pizza Lunch is on Friday, October 28th. Please remind your child how to behave for the parent supervisors in our classroom. The students need to use inside voices, remain seated, use their manners and to clean up after themselves. I will be speaking to the students about these expectations but an extra reminder from home will be helpful too.

    

What to Expect in October

It's hard to believe that we are in the second week of October. I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving weekend! The children were very eager to share their Thanksgiving Trees
with their family. A special thank you to those parents who volunteered to cut out the foam leaves for
this craft. It was much appreciated by all of us!

Language Arts:
We have now gotten into the routine of weekly spelling lists. Each week, the students complete a variety of activities in class based on the spelling words of the week. These may include sorting words by spelling rule, crosswords, fill in the blank, proofreading and short creative writing assignments. I will send home the spelling test book every couple of weeks so you can keep track of the words your child needs to work on.

Reading:
In reading we are focussing on the reading strategies of making connections and predictions to assist with comprehension. Students are encouraged to make text to self, text to text and/or text to world connections as they are reading. The class will begin weekly Guided Reading groups next week.

The students have been working on reading some short stories in class and answering a variety of comprehension and grammar questions in complete sentences, using words from the questions to begin the answer and including greater detail. We are also working on beginning sentences with a capital letters and finishing sentences with appropriate punctuation.

Writing:
Over the next couple of weeks we will be working on a variety of short writing assignments based on Thanksgiving and Halloween. The students will learning to write recounts of various experiences, such as the Terry Fox walk and Thanksgiving. They will also be learning to write fictional narratives with a "Spooky" focus around Halloween, amongst other short Halloween writing activities.

Math:

We have completed our first Math Unit on Sorting and Data Management (graphing). Last week I sent home a list of units to practice on IXL based on what we have learned to date. This is an excellent review for all children.

 

This week we will begin our next unit as part of the Number Sense and Numeration strand and includes representing, comparing, and ordering whole numbers (place value), skip counting forwards and backwards, and basic addition and subtraction facts. We will also look at patterns in addition and subtraction and how to determine the missing number in equations ( 8+__ = 12). I will send home a list of IXL activities next week that correspond to what we are learning in class.

 

Science:

We will be starting our Simple Machines unit this week. We will be having the Scientist in the School come in for a morning of hands-on activities related to this unit on October 21st. We will need 4-5 volunteers for this amazing morning of learning!

 

Social Studies:

We are well underway with our first unit looking at Traditions and Celebrations. This month

we are focussing on Thanksgiving and Halloween.

 

Mystery Reader:

The children love discovering who our weekly Mystery Reader is. Please sign up for this. I am happy to accommodate your schedule to ensure each child is surprised by their parent, sibling or grandparent at least one time during the school year.

 

That's all for now! I will let you know when this blog has been updated again through your child's

agenda.

This week you all received your son/daughter's login information for IXL and RAZ. Hopefully everyone has had a chance to explore these wonderful learning tools. I recommend your child use the programs 2-3 times per week for 15 minutes each time.

We also started our spelling program this week. Once the words have gone home, your child will be accountable for spelling these words correctly in their daily writing. I will also be adding 3-5 "NoExcuse" words to the list each week. These words are from a list of words of high frequency words that your child is expected to know by the end of grade two. Quite often children do very well on the weekly spelling test however the words may still be spelled incorrectly in their daily writing. Your child will be encouraged to use our Word Wall, Word Wiz Dictionaries and Word Cards to ensure these words are spelled correctly in their daily work.

In Social Studies we began discussing Traditions and Celebrations. This will be an on-going theme throughout the year.

In Math, we have been learning how to make a graphs. Your child worked with a partner and came up with a question with four possible answers. Then they surveyed the class and created a graph using the information from their survey. The groups worked very well together and the graphs are on display above the hooks outside our classroom.

In Language we are working on answering comprehension questions using complete sentences both orally and in the written form.

We are looking forward to our Terry Fox Walk this week. Just a reminder, everyone is welcome to join our walk.

A Very Busy Second Week!

Thank you to everyone who attended our Curriculum Night last Thursday evening. I hope you enjoyed looking around our classroom and seeing all of the wonderful work the children have been doing over the last couple of weeks. The students are very proud of their accomplishments so far in grade two. If you had another commitment and were not able to attend last Thursday, please feel free to drop by the classroom with your child and have a look around.

On Tuesday we read The Kindness Quilt by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace and discussed ways that we can show kindness both at school and at home through words and actions. The students shared their ideas of how they could show kindness to friends, siblings, parents, classmates, etc. We then created our own Kindness Quilt with paper. The students are very proud of the quilt we made which is displayed on one of the bulletin boards in our classroom.

Last week each child chose a classmate to interview and then they presented what they learned about their friend to the class. They also had to draw a portrait of their friend. The students all enjoyed learning new things about each other. They did a wonderful job on this three part assignment.

This week I will be sending home IXL and RAZ login information. Please feel free to begin using these great learning tools as soon as you receive the login information.

We will begin our Spelling Program this week. The students will write these words in their planner tomorrow and we will have a spelling test on Friday.

Our first unit in Math is Sorting and Data Management. We will be reading and interpreting a variety of graphs and charts. Students will also be conducting surveys, collecting and organizing data, and presenting their data in Venn Diagrams, tally charts, pictographs and bar graphs.

First Week

The first week of Grade Two was a great success! Hopefully all of you have taken some time to review the detailed letters that were sent home this week. I hope that I was able to address most of the questions you may have about how our classroom works. I have been encouraging the children to bring their parent/caregivers by our classroom to show them around. This can be done before or after school. You will also have an opportunity to visit our classroom at Curriculum Night which is this Thursday September 15, 2016.

This month the Character Trait is Respect! We have read several books with theme's relating to respect and we also created a classroom chart with our ideas about what Respect looks/sounds like.
This week we read one our favourite books, Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. Each student was holding a paper heart. Each time Chrysanthemum was teased because of her name, we crumpled up the heart. Every time someone did something nice to her we tried to smooth it out. By the end of the story, the heart was very wrinkled and could not be smoothed. The students got the connection that our own heart feels wrinkled and crumpled sometimes when we don't like what someone says. Words do hurt. We should away stop and think before we speak. It's hard to fix a wrinkled heart!

This week we also made a list of Classroom Agreements which will help to ensure our classroom is a safe, secure and happy place to learn. Each student signed the Chart of Agreements to show they have agreed to follow our Classroom Agreements.

If your chiId is interested in participating in Cross Country, the first practice will be on Tuesday, September 13th.  Cross Country will be every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Exercise is a great way for your child to start their day!

Thank you for filling in all of those forms that were sent home last week. There are still a few outstanding. If you have time this weekend, I would greatly appreciate it if you could take a look at them if you have not done so already. Please remember to send in $8.00 for your child's agenda

Scholastic book orders are due on September 26, 2016.

Welcome to Grade Two!

Welcome to Grade Two!

Please check back at the end of this week!

May Update!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. The weather has continued to be inconsistent over the last couple of weeks. Please make sure your child is dressed appropriately for the weather. Layers can always be removed. Hopefully the warm weather will settle in very soon.

This week we have the Primary Track and Field Day on Wednesday and our class trip to the zoo on Thursday. Please make sure your child brings a hat, sunscreen, water bottle and proper footwear.

Language:

We have been focusing on answering written comprehension questions using complete sentences with details from the story. The students continue to need reminders to proof read their work for proper spelling and punctuation.
Last month the children thoroughly enjoyed the read aloud, Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing written by Judy Blume and due to popular demand we are now reading the next book in this series called Super Fudge. Many of the students have even gone to the library and borrowed their own book to follow along as I read.

Math:

Last week we completed our unit on Fractions. This week we will be starting our unit on Money. We will be adding and subtracting money amounts to $1.00, using a variety of tools (e.g., concrete materials, drawings) and strategies (e.g., counting on, estimating )

Social Studies:
 

The students have been working very hard on their country research projects. They should all be completed by the end of the week. Each group will be presenting their projects to the class over the next couple of weeks. Thank you for helping your child print pictures that will help to enhance the visual part of their project. The students have been so enthusiastic about their research projects. They have thoroughly enjoyed searching for the answers to many questions they had before beginning their research..

Science:

This month we will begin learning about Growth and Changes in Animals.  This week we will begin our unit of study with a field trip to the Toronto zoo. We are also hoping receive butterfly larva in May. Each child will have their own to observe and record the changes over time. We will free the butterflies in June. The children will be thrilled to watch their butterflies being released into the natural environment.

Drama:

In Drama the children did a wonderful job performing their second Readers Theatre Play to one of the Kindergarten classes. Last week we broke up into three new groups and we are now working on our third and final Readers Theatre Plays. The children are thrilled to be doing another play. Everyone's confidence while performing has greatly improved and they are now using loud, clear voices with lots of expression. Some students are even trying to memorize their parts for their performance. They have also enjoyed bringing in and creating simple props for their plays.

Spelling:

We are now working on reviewing and consolidating the commonly used sight words. Very often the children know them for the weekly spelling test but some words are often spelled incorrectly in their daily writing. I strongly encourage the students to refer to the Word Wall, Word Wiz (Dictionary), and Word Cards. All student are responsible for spelling the words in/on these resources correctly.

Cursive Writing:

This month we are learning cursive writing. The students are very excited about learning all of the letters and eventually learning how to write their first and last name. Some students who have difficulty with printing are finding cursive writing easier and the neatness of their work is beginning to improve.