An orange dragon!

Who knew that hiding in our shoes were lovely orange dragons?

Those orange footprints turned into a directed drawing opportunity and here's the results!

Found out some of the children have amazingly high arches!

Today the entire school community met in the gymnasium to pray the living rosary.

What a powerful scene, hearing each and every person pray to Our Mother for her intervention.

I was so proud of the students who wanted to individually lead their prayers....

....with strong voices, using the microphone!

Mary, Mary, Quite contrary, How does your garden grow?

Our wheelbarrow gardens and planters of petunias seem to be growing, growing, growing!

What??

What could the reason be that the Grade two students have orange feet?  Find out on Monday!

Please help

There have been a great many days that we have missed of instruction for a variety of reasons, including Track Meet, Victoria Day and Professinal Development days where students are not in class but teachers are.  This does make it difficult to complete projects and keep students focussed.

Lately, the warm weather season has added a number of other activities to the students' already busy schedule.  I would ask yur consideration in letting me know, either through a note in the agenda or by e-mail, when your child is going to be away.  It assists me in preparing assignments for them, choosing time to allow for assignments to be completed (and then assessed for the upcoming reporting period).  As well, I often am asked to have a certain number of students prepared for duties such as leading prayers at assembly.  If I choose your child and then the child is away at a tournament, it puts pressure on the student asked to fill that spot.  Thanks for your help in this!

A reminder that class begins at 8:45 a.m. and all students should be seated in their desks at that time.  Children arriving after that time (and lately it has been daily and as late as 9:10 a.m.) will be reported as absent and will have missed instruction and opportunity to work on lessons.  It is very disruptive and does not build on our character trait of 'trust.'  Could we please work together to change this situation?

"Wheel"y a Great Day!

A whole long time ago, probably at least a year, I came across an idea for helping urban students understand how the vegetables that they ate were grown.  Many students no longer have the opportunity to tend gardens in their own backyards, and so some of them do not know that carrots and potatoes actually grow underground.  The newspaper article suggested that students grow a garden themselves and tend it over the summer months.  The solution to the question of 'how' is quite unique!  The garden would be grown in a wheelbarrow and wheeled from one student's house to another over the summer!

A few weeks ago I distributed a letter explaining the educational opportunity, to a number of local businesses, asking for their support through donations.  Two wonderful local businesses stepped in to help us!

Today, Miss Vaughan, an assistant manager at the Baseline Road Home Depot, spent an hour and a half with our class.  She brought so many goodies!  Each student was given their own little planter box to build.  Here's the before picture...

....a photo showing our safe practices as the students worked on their projects....

....independently....

...in their own, to keep, work apron!

Here's the finished product!  Each student planted zinnias into their personal planter and will be bringing these home later this week.

Home Depot donated lovely wave petunia plants that the students planted in the school's three planters that will be housed in front of the school, along with a wheelbarrow, and some vegetable plants and seeds.

Everyone had an opportunity to get their hands dirty and learn a little bit about taking the plants out of the pots, disturbing their roots before planting, and the need for sunlight and water.  Here are the Grade Two students with the planter that will house the purple petunias.  The other planters house white and pink flowers.  They will be in charge of watering these pots as part of the responsibility pillar in our Character Education program.

The Grade Three students worked together to get the green wheelbarrow ready for planting.  This wheelbarrow has carrots, onions, cucumbers and green pepper in it.

The second business that was so generous to our plan was Salisbury Greenhouse.  They also donated a  red wheelbarrow, a large bale of planter mixing soil, a container of fertilizer and about half a dozen packages of seeds.  The red wheelbarrow has green beans (which we started from seed), tomato, zucchini squash and pumpkins in it.  The wheelbarrows will go out each morning to sit in the sunshine and will be brought into the front entrance area at the end of each school day to ensure they stay safe.

We are so very grateful to both local businesses for their generous support and plan to keep them informed of the progress of our gardens!  Let them know how happy your child was with this project, if you do indeed shop at these stores!

A Measuring We Will Go....

The mathematics curriculum for Grade 2 states that the children will be assessed on the following skills: 

1. Relate the size of a unit of measure to the number

of units (limited to nonstandard units) used to

measure length and mass (weight).

2. Compare and order objects by length, height,

distance around and mass (weight), using

nonstandard units, and make statements of

comparison.

3.  Measure length to the nearest nonstandard unit by:

•  using multiple copies of a unit

•  using a single copy of a unit (iteration process).

4. Demonstrate that changing the orientation of an

object does not alter the measurements of its

attributes.

This means that the students have practised and been assessed on their ability to measure with items that can be found around them such as their thumb widths, their outstretched hand spans, centicubes, etc.  But nothing really works like a metre stick or a ruler!  Since these little smarties do understand HOW to measure, on Thursday they were given the chance to make their own flexible metrestick (or measuring tape) of 100 centimetres and paired up to measure each other!

Putting theory into practise is the best part of this math program.

Students learn by doing, by interacting, by talking, by problem solving, by disagreeing and then by compromising...

If allows them to know there is more than one way to arrive at an answer and that their way, may work, but may also be inefficient, so they should try a different strategy!

It builds their confidence and does not allow for the words that too many parents say (and I cringe when I hear them) "I never was good at math!"

They all are able to understand and 'do' math, as long as they are willing to try!

Who wouldn't want to try when math is so much fun!!

Important Information About Grade 3 Writing PAT

In Grades 3, 6, and 9 students write Provincial Acievement Exams in May and June.  This coming Tuesday, May 15 the students in Grade 3 will complete the Part A:Writing portion of their testing.  There are strict guidelines for the schools to adhere to ensure that all the students are given the same fair conditions to write.

The writing MUST start @ 9:00 a.m.  Please ensure that your child is here at 8:45 when school is meant to begin.

I am asking the students to practise writing a story on their own at home this weekend.  Please have them return it to me on Monday.  Each child had the opportunity to write within the guidelines as practice this week.  These are being sent home for you to look over and please send these back on Monday as well.

The picture prompts for the stories are actual prompts given to students in years past.  On the Alberta Learning website, there are examples of students' writings and how those stories were graded.  If you look below, you will find a link to that website.  You will then be able to see how your child's work would possibly score on the government scoring rubrics.

http://www.education.alberta.ca/admin/testing/achievement/examples_stand.aspx

Maurice Sendak

Because this year we have both Grade 2 and Grade 3 in my classroom, I was not able to do many of my favourite units of study as the Gr. 3 students had done them last year.  How sad that this group will not be reading and loving this book!  It is one of my favourites!  Tonight we talked at suppertime how when the twins were born and spent all those months in NICU, we didn't hang cute blue bunnies from their IV poles.  Each boy had a stuffed WILD THING next to their incubators.  Please enjoy this wonderful movie version and ask God to welcome a great author, Maurice Sendak, into heaven tonight.

Taking a Stand Against Bullying

Sometimes learning from books is the best way to learn, but sometimes it takes a 'real live' person to bring a message home.  We were priviledged to have LivyJeanne, a talented 17 year old from right here in the Sherwood Park area, visit our school and share her message.  This brave girl spoke of her own personal experience with being bullied and shared how her own songwriting and music played an important part in helping her overcome the feelings of  loneliness and self doubt that being bullied brought to her life.

She continues to go to school, but also visits other schools spreading the message that bullies have their own issues and use bullying to hide their own insecurities.  She is promoting The Kids Help Phone, to help kids know that there is always someone to talk to, if they feel they cannot talk to their parents or a teacher about what is happening to them.

The students all really connected with her music and her message.

Here's a quick video to showcase her talent!

So when your child brings home the little card lovingly signed by LivyJeanne, know that this girl was a real inspiration to us all today!

Bathed in the Light of Christ

This young lady received her First Holy Communion this evening.  What an exciting milestone!  May Our Lord continue to keep her in the palm of His hand.

Haiku

The students are entering a contest sponsored by Scholastic Books.  They are writing Haiku.  This is a three line Japanese poem, with 5 beats in the first line, 7 beats in the second and 5 again in the third.  It's challenging!

The Tiger Lily

is coming out of the ground.

It has two colours.

Growing underground

a carrot is delicious.

It's really healthy.

Goodness in my mouth

tastes so delicious, yummy

Applepear so sweet.

A daisy is white,

as a fluffy soft pillow

that you can jump in.

Jumping for Joy!

Why do these sweeties look so happy?!?!?  It might be because they can see the sun and could take off their many layers of clothes for a little while!  It might be because God answered their prayers and it didn't rain today!  The real reason that they are so happy is that they are at the Strathcona Athletic Park and it's TRACK AND FIELD DAY!

Look at this jump!

I tried to get photos of everyone, but it's tough to use a camera and keep track of the children's scores at the same time.   Look at the sky in this photo and know that it got shivery cold as the day progressed.  The kids were troopers and didn't complain!

Here's a few of the girls showing off their spoils!  (Love how the little one who is not allowed to have her photo on the blog figured out a way to be in with the group...but not be seen!)

Here's a couple of the boys ready to go home and tell stories of how they won each and every ribbon!

Three Dimensional Geometric Objects

All of the photographs in this post were taken by the Grade 2 students.   We were looking at real world objects that look like geometric shapes that we are studying in class.  We know that what we learn in math class is important to use in the real world.  We can see geometric shapes all around us.

The basketball, globe and lanterns reminded us of spheres.  Spheres are almost like a ball but they don't bounce. This shape has no vertices or faces or edges.

We looked at the traffic cone and the sharpened end of a pencil.  This 3-D object has one face, one vertex and one edge.  3-D means that you can measure the object three ways:  side to side, top to bottom and front to back.  We are three dimensional!

The gluestick, the water bottle and the pencil sharpener are all cylinders.  Cylinders have two faces, two edges and zero vertices.  They remind us of a can.

The box and the VHS/CD player remind us of rectangular  prism.  It has 6 faces, 8 edges and 12 vertices.

Guess what!  A cube also has 6 faces, 12 vertices and 8 edges!

Here is a rectangular pyramid.  We couldn't find a triangular pyramid in our classroom.  This one has 5 faces, 8 edges, and 5 vertices.  Do you know where to find faces, edges and vertices?  Here's a hint:

Faces are flat and they are usually 2-D shapes like a square or triangle.

Edges are the sides that join the faces together.

Vertices are the pointy corners where all the edges meet.

If you only have one vertice, it is called a vertex.

The Grade Two students were the ones who told the teacher what to keyboard into the blog today! Aren't they smart?