What a wonderful week! The weather has been great and we have been so lucky to be able to bring our learning outside and enjoy the lessons that the land is giving to us.
Just a reminder to continue to help your student dress for the weather so they are comfortable any time we go outside.
Literacy
This week we added the letters W and Z.
We have also been working on decoding (or sounding out) words. The skill of taking letter sounds we know and blending them together to read words is very complex and takes a lot of mental effort and attention. An important habit to instil in beginning readers is to look at all of the letters in the simple words they are sounding out. It can be overwhelming to string all letters together at once, even in short CVC (eg. cat) words. Once strategy to build up skill and confidence is to blend sound-by-sound. Students blend the first two letters together (c-a), then say the final letter sound (t) and then go back and blend all three sounds together (ca - t).
I Can Develop Skills for Geographic Thinking / I Can Interpret Explain How Seasons Change Living Things / I Can Use a Variety of Forms of Text to Share Information
We had prepared for our community walk by reading the book, "Into the Woods: Who's Been Here?" as a reminder to be mindful in using our senses to explore the world around us. In the story, two siblings go on a short walk and find all sorts of evidence of the animals who live in the woods.
We set off on our walk to look for evidence of animals that also make the community of Ramsay home. We didn't make it very far (only to the top lookout) and we were able to find quite a bit of evidence! We were so lucky to have been able to observe what we think is a great-horned owl. He quite unexpectedly let his presence be known by swooping down from the arena rafters right in front of us. We were also able to find where he had been perching and found an owl pellet! This experience gave us a really rich opportunity to discuss the animals that call Ramsay home and to talk about what adaptations they might have to survive a Calgary winter.
Once back in the classroom we were able to create some sketches of the owl in our visual journal. We also worked on creating a map our community walk where we identified the key landmarks of the area around the school and added details of the creatures we have seen or the evidence they have left behind.
Reminders:
Monday, October 25 - Library Day
Friday, October 29 - Halloween Activities (students can wear their costumes)
Monday, November 1 - Virtual Meeting with our Fence Project Artist
Veteran's Food Bank
Hello Ramsay Families:
In honour of Remembrance Day, we will be collecting items for the Veteran’s Food Bank. If you are able to contribute, please begin sending items to school on Monday, October 25th. We will continue to collect donations until Wednesday, November 10th.
Here is a list of their most desired contributions:
Collection list: (new items only please)
- Gluten free non-perishable food
- Canned corn, mushrooms, beef, chilli or stew
- Canned ham or luncheon meat
- Juice
- Flour
- Unscented fabric softener and laundry detergent
- Unscented lotion
- Dishwasher pods
- Bandages
Thank you in advance for supporting this worthy cause.
