A little bit late!

Somehow or other, I sort of forgot that I had not put these photos onto the blog.

Father Jim came into our class on Maunday Thursday.  He worked with the students to make the connection between Jesus' words and actions at the Last Supper, and the gift of His Body and Blood that the children will receive through Communion.  He was very impressed with their understanding.

He also thought that the students were doing a lovely job of recreating Leonardo Da Vinci's painting. The students were trying to remember the names of all of the 12 Apostles.

It was a lot of work....

...but I hope that you were able to display this labour of love at your Easter table.

The students also worked hard on telling the story of Passion Week.  The stories will continue as they hear more about Jesus' work with the disciples, helping be ready for his final ascension into Heaven.

We have finished our stories about Kaya, an Indigenous girl from the New Perce nation in the USA.  It is an important new curriculum requirement that students in Alberta have an understanding and appreciation for our First Nation peoples, and I believe that the students in my class see that those who came before us, lived a life that reflected values based on respect for the laws of nature. 

Indigenous understanding

Our school community was lucky enough to meet and interact with the author Christy Jordan-Fenton.

She brought with her, the grandmother of her children and this lovely soft spoken lady, shared her experiences of her childhood when she left her community at the age of eight and spent two years at school.  

The three books that were written about 'grandmother' will now be housed in

our school library, where our children will be able to read them and remember the 

resilience and strength of a girl who wanted to learn to read.

Thank you to Mrs. Borowski for organizing this author visit, which touched all of our hearts.

Who Doesn't Love to Learn?

Here's one of the ways that the students have been practising their new skill of subtracting two digit numbers.

Each student had a bag of dominoes, and to create their subtraction equation,

they took out two dominoes, recognized which two digit numeral was larger and wrote their equations onto their own whiteboard.

The students were encouraged to talk outloud as they went through the steps.  The step that most students are still having some difficulty is recognizing that you cannot do 0-2.  Some of the students will say 0-2=2 instead of 0-2 means I need to regroup.

Curious George is the main character in the books that will lead our language learning.  We are focusing on answering questions in complete sentences, finding answers within the text, and recognizing the elements of a story.

The students are also continuing their work on becoming better authors, so the focus this month is on finding interesting ways to start and end a story.

The students got a chance to practise drawing this cute monkey through directed drawing lessons.

They transferred their work onto a smaller piece of watercolour paper, outlined their drawing with a sharpie pen,

and then used watercolours to complete the picture.

The watercolour paper is taped in place until it dries.  This prevents the paper from curling.

You can see all the great monkey portraits on the bulletin board picture above.

Look what one little smartie was able to do.  I think we were talking about how we were going to have to make groups of students because I only had 7 copies of the book we were going to read.  This cutie said "I know what to do.  There are 21 students here and we have 7 books.  We need to put the kids in groups of 3."  I then showed the other students how to write this mathematical thinking in an equation.  They thought it was so cool!

I think they are so smart!

Pirates and Assembly and Stories...Oh my!

Just before we started Spring Break, we met a real pirate.  She came into our class and asked us all to join her crew.  She was willing to offer some basic training before we could be considered to join her on the high seas!

There were four different learning stations.  At one station the students learned the importance of a keel to allow boats to stay upright in the water.  Now the students understand the word buoyancy!

At another station, the students learned the importance of distributing the weight of the cargo to ensure the ship will be able to stay afloat.

Why do some things sink and some things float?

The students were able to make predictions and then try out the different 'treasures'.

The students were able to try to create one type of boat and see how much weight the boat could hold before it sunk.

The pirate helped each and every student make their own paddle boat using wood, screws and an elastic.

We all worked so hard to create these working models that we were able to bring home!

Thanks moms and grandmothers for coming in to help us.  What a lot of learning crammed into one busy morning!

Did you hear?  Another Grade 2 teacher had her head shaved because she had challenged her class to earn a certain amount of money in their quest to save the sea ice and ultimately the polar bears.  

We watched!

Crazy socks for a great reason.  We support everyone, even those who are different from us!

Each assembly is focusing on a different grade and this Monday was the Grade Two classes' turn.

We sang, read a poem.....

and some of the students read about what we are learning in science....

What an amazing planet God has given us!

Meanwhile.....

Mrs. Gumpinger challenged each and every student at our school to help fill the pool at WEM, by encouraging teams and neighbours and cousins and friends to buy tickets to the parent council's fundraiser.  LAST DAY TO BUY TICKETS IS APRIL 15!  

GET YOURS NOW!!!

The students are loving the opportunity to read a 'bedtime' story to their classmates.  If your child missed their turn because they did not remember to bring a book, there will be an opportunity when the rest of the class has had their turn, for your kiddo to bring a book to read.  

Everyone will have a chance!