The upcoming week

Just a quick note to let you know a bit about the busy month ahead when we return on Monday, November 14 from our Fall Break.  Mark your calendars! 

1.  Tuesday, November 15 (morning) - We will be making a special present for Christmas with the assistance of the people from Clay For Kids.  The students will be making their clay projects right in the classrooms, so no extra costs for travel this year.  Please send $8.50 for the cost of the clay and the instruction, as soon as possible.

2.  Tuesday, November 15 - Cookie Dough orders are due to the office and orders will be available for pickup Dec. 5th (one of the nights of our Three-Way conferences.)

3. Thursday, November 17 - We will be celebrating the 50th Day of School with a day filled with fun exploring the number 50.  Dress the children up for a 'blast from the past' 50's style! (see the letter above that was sent before Fall break began) 

4.  Wednesday, November 30 - The Archbishop Jordan High School is presenting the play "The Velveteen Rabbit" and we will be rearranging our schedule for that day to attend the early afternoon performance.  Mrs. Pohoreski is in charge of the arrangements, so I don't have a final total, but I do know that the cost of the play is $6.00 each so with bussing, I suspect the final charge will be between $7.00 to $7.50 per person.

5.  Monday, December 5 and Tuesday, December 6 - Jean Vanier Catholic School will be hosting Three Way Conferences for Grades 1 - 6 and interviews at the Jr. High level. (I don't know the plans for the Kindergarten class).  We will be booking those times almost as soon as we return from Fall Break, and will do our best to accommodate our busy families.  You might want to check how hockey, Brownies, dance and other lessons will be impacted and make plans to ensuring that the time we spend talking about your child's academic progress takes precedence.  We'll be making plans on how best to move your child forward to reach their personal best.  The Evidence of Learning binders will be sent home on Nov. 28 and can be returned either before or right at the scheduled meeting time.

Patterns all around!

Currently, the Grade Two class is exploring the concept of patterns in mathematics.  This curriculum adds more depth to the concept as the students move up the grade levels.  The students this year will explore numbers up to 100 and the students will explore numbers up to 1000.  The students are asked to describe, extend, compare and create patterns.  As well, their new learning to to do the same for increasing patterns.

 In pairs the students revealed a pattern that they created and then hid in a paper tube, to a partner, who then named the pattern using either alphabet letters, numbers or colours, as a way to describe the pattern.

This pattern could be named as aabc or as 1123 or as red red brown orange. The core of the pattern is repeated at least three times when the students are practicing creating a pattern.

The students used different paper elements to add to a Haunted House to create a pattern.  They then had the opportunity to name (describe) the pattern that they created and extended three times.  When the houses were finished, they shared the patterns with other classmates, who compared their own pattern with that of a friend.

Thank You!

THANK YOU to all the parents who came out to make our afternoon so successful!  Truly, the fun and games could not have happened without all of you.  I appreciate your dedication to your children, your willingness to be in costume and the way that the children smile when they see you!

We were lucky to have you all join us for this day!

Keeping Kids Safe!

For the Halloween party each class makes a 'treat bag' so that the students have something special to carry home all their 'loot' from the game stations that they will visit.  I thought that this year, our bags were especially big and roomy and decided that the bags could serve double duty. 

I try and use every opportunity to turn an activity into a true learning experience.  The students heard the sequence of the steps that they would be following in creating their Jack-o-Lantern bags.  They heard the words first, next, then and finally, which are words that they will be using in their own writing, when the assignment asks them to explain a series of events.

First the students cut out pumpkin shapes. Next they drew on the faces, cut out the features and then they traced them onto the front of the black bags.  Finally they were ready to paint!

Painting uses a different approach than colouring and for some, painting is quite a challenge!  What a fun way to overcome an obstacle!

This is the first time I have ever had children use 'Glow in the Dark' paint.  I hope that when these little Trick or Treaters are out on the streets Monday night, calling out "Halloween Apples, these smiling bags will be helping them be just a little bit safer!

Halloween

Halloween has got to be every child's favourite holiday!  I enjoy the opportunity that it brings to work on  early writing skills.  Since the beginning of the school year, the students have been labeling pictures.  When we talked about apples, we labelled.  When we talked about caterpillars and butterflies, we labelled.  The reason for this was to help them understand the concrete nature of nouns.

Nouns are the words we use to name a person, place or thing. This week, the students were introduced to adjectives.  Adjectives are the words we use to describe a noun.

As we completed a hands-on activity to create a Halloween character (another important word as we work to identify the characters in a story), we then thought of words that we could put in front of each label word (noun), to describe that label (adjective).  In this list, the student has written:

screws in neck, green skin, ripped clothes, metal shoes, spiky hair and black hair.  The underlined words are the adjectives.

The projects for witches were two-fold.  We created a large full body witch and chose different patterns of paper to ensure the witches were colourful.  We then just created a sheet focusing on her fancy shoes and striped stockings.  

This gave us another opportunity to work on adjectives as seen in this example.  To add a challenge, no adjective could be used more than once.  On this list the student wrote:

pointy hat, long dress, buckled shoes, magic broom, warty skin and curvy shoes

Today's character was a skeleton.  We read a book called "The Skeleton with the Halloween Hiccups" and then the book above which is a combination of fiction and non-fiction.  The words in the fiction part of the book are taken from an old Negro spiritual so we tried to sing those words.  We watched a wonderful YouTube video that gave us a chance to listen and recall information about the bones in our bodies.  The students shared their recollections and then used those shared sentences to write four skeleton facts.  I hope if you just push the "play" arrow, it will play on the blog.  The students may want to watch it again!

We then listened to directions orally and followed the directions sequence to create our own little rattler!

It gave us all one more chance to create a list of adjectives for a skeleton!

Bunnicula

Having two grades in one classroom can be a bit challenging, but it does assist students in learning to become more independent learners.  They also learn to rely on each other more and to assist each other through positive interactions.  The Grade Three students are reading a novel called Bunnicula.  The vocabulary is challenging, the story is told through the eyes of a dog, and like most novels, the reader needs to make connections with the text to help understand the story.

As the students read, they use small coloured post-it notes to flag parts of the story.  For example, a yellow post-it means that the students can't read the word, while a blue post-it means that the part that the  student just read, confuses them.  If the student makes a connection, they use a pink post-it note.

Being able to talk to another student about the story is a bonus!

Words like tranquil, decipher and mongrel allow the students to use a variety of reading and comprehension strategies to figure out how the word is said and what it means.

Now the question is:  Is Bunnicula really a bunny dracula that sucks the juice out of vegetables?

Week of October 17

This week we are focused on the short vowel sound of e.  The specific rimes that we will be looking at in the classroom are -est, -ed, -en, and another one that I just can't remember tonight, but it is in the Spelling duotang.  The purpose of the practise is to get the students to see what words they can spell.  Some may be able to spell west, but others may be ready for the challenge of the word blest.  By working with your children at home, their areas of weakness should be noticed and through your support, those weak areas will be eliminated.  It's a win-win situation!  They get your attention and you get to be so very proud of their accomplishments!