Today was a good day!

The staff at Jean Vanier Catholic School LOVE our parents who support the learning in the classroom, the need for fundraising, and the family that we have become.  To say 'thank you' in a meaningful way, we offered a hot cup of coffee (donated by Starbucks! THANK YOU!) and some little delicious pastries to those who dropped their children  off for school.  Those who could, came inside where the library was all sent up (and warm!) for the chance to partake and visit!

Some just had to drive through, though, as they were on their way to work!  We thank you all!

In mathematics, we are being a study of shapes (geometry) and learning a whole new vocabulary!

Do you know what a parallelogram or a rhombus is?  Ask and the Grade 2 students will tell you!

The students are currently working on taking a square, folding it on the diagonal, cutting it into 2 triangles, and then using 4 of those triangles to create a new shape.  Wow!  Geometry requires a good understanding of the vocabulary used!

We have been combining our health and language learning lessons.  Today we finished writing directions on how to properly clean our teeth.  All students should be reaching their writing targets independently now.  That means that capital letters begin a sentence, punctuation ends a sentence, the majority of words are spelled correctly, joining words are not used to begin a sentence, adjectives are added, sentences vary in structure and paragraphs can be attempted.

Can you guess what we used to create the model of our teeth as we flossed?

Snow and Ice

There's a real difference between a student in September and a student in January.  Students are now comfortable within the classroom environment, know all of their peers, understand the expectations and are settled into the routine of learning.

Today the students worked on a variety of valuable skills.  The book that they are using is a non-fiction book.  They have been learning about the features of non-fiction writing since the beginning of the year. One of the skills that they were working on was reading a chapter to look for specific information.

Another skill was then processing that information and writing the information in their own words so that they could share their knowledge with others.

 Perhaps the most valuable skill that they practiced was co-operation.  The class only has six copies of the book, so they worked in small groups of three or four students.  They decided who would read, what was important to know, and how they could write the information in their brochures.  They discussed,  they shared and they negotiated.

The room was full of the comfortable hum of learning.  It was music to my ears!