October 11 - 14

 

What a wonderful week!  We packed in so much and took full advantage of the gorgeous weather by going up and visiting the park around the community garden on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon to continue to make observations using our senses around the season change.  We also had a wonderful field trip to Bow Habitat Station and I would like to thank the parent volunteers who came with us and helped to make it a memorable day.  

I Can Talk About the Water Cycle and Its Importance to Living Things:

I Can Count Objects and Sort By a Variety of Attributes

During our time in the community garden, we also spent some time collecting natural artifacts.  Students were asked to collect a variety of fallen leaves and then were asked to work with a partner to create categories to sort them into.  Students chose a variety of attributes such as color, shape, size, texture (supple or crunchy), and even if it had been snacked on by an animal or insect.

Literacy:

This week we introduced the words:  a, and, in, is, I

These, with last week's words (the, on, to), will be words that students are expected to read with  automaticity and fluency and spell correctly while writing by the end of the school year.  

Grade 1s worked on the sounds for B, C, and D in phonics.

Grade 2s worked on the sounds for er, ir, ur, ai in phonics.

Reminders:

Wednesday, October 19th - Library Book Exchange Day

Thursday, October 20th - School Council Meeting

Friday, October 28th - Non-Instructional Day, No School for students

October 3 to 6, 2022

 

What a beautiful holiday weekend!  I hope everyone was able to spend some time with family and enjoy the gifts given by mother nature.  Our class has been thinking about the things we are grateful for and we are definitely grateful for the beautiful weather as we take our learning outdoors.   

I Can Explore the Changing Season with My Senses / I Can Find Warm Colours in the Natural Environment

We had a chance to head outside the green space next to the rink with Ms. Rowland's class.  We worked with our partners from the other class to match fall colors to paint swatches.  This activity leant itself nicely to talking about warm/cool colours and to talk about complementary colours.  

This was a great opportunity for students to build their relationships within a larger learning community and learn to negotiate and make compromises in a learning task.  It was also a good chance for us to sharpen our observation skills and our capacity to learn from the land.

I Can Use a Variety of Mediums to Create Art

This week we spent some time reflecting on the things we were grateful for and how we could show gratitude for those things.  Then we worked on completing a drawing of a tree coloured with pencil crayon.  We focused on how to add detail and show texture using line and colour.  Afterwards, we used watercolour paint to make leaves that represented the things we were grateful for.  

Buddies

This week we also had a chance to meet with our Grade 4/5 buddies from Ms. Elder's class.  Students worked together to create a disguise for turkeys to avoid Thanksgiving.  Our work was based on the story linked below.

Turkey Trouble

Reminders:

Monday, October 10th - Thanksgiving - No School

Wednesday, October 11th - Field Trip to Bow Habitat

Thursday, October 12th - Alternate Library Book Exchange Day

September 26 to 29

 Every Child Matters

This week we engaged in some important learning about National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and the impact that residential schools had on those who didn't go home, survivors, their families, and communities.  Most of our learning centered around picture books and the stories that were shared in a developmentally appropriate way for young children.  

We started with the story "Stolen Words", and while not an actual account of a survivor's story, it helps students to make connections to one of the impacts of residential school (the loss of language) and helps them to build empathy around the deep loss.  

We also read the story, "Shi-shi-etko".  In this story, Shi-shi-etko is counting down the days until she has to return to residential school.  As she does so, she spend her time with family and in the outdoors around her home.  She works on collecting  elements of nature that contain important memories of home and she collects them into a memory bag.  These memories and their connection to home helps her endure her time away from her family.

On Thursday, we read two stories, "When I Was Eight" and "Not My Girl".  These stories, written based on the authors experiences, help students to understand the harsh realities of residential schools and how children were treated there.  They also help students understand that the impacts of residential school and the loss of culture were not limited to the actual school, but often followed students as they returned home.  After reading these two heavy stories, students were given the opportunity to engage in some mindful coloring and any questions or concerns from individual students were addressed.

For the afternoon, we headed outside to learn on the land as part of our commitment to reflection and reconciliation.

We also spent some time this week thinking about a Canadian Hero and his impact on cancer research.  Some of our learning consisted of watching a video about his life and reading a story told from the perspective of his best friend, Doug.  Afterwards, we reflected on the motto from this year's run, "I'm Not a Quitter" and created a visual journal page of things that were hard for us and who were the people there to support us.  Later in the morning we joined the other students in the school for a run.

Reminders:

Wednesday, October 5

• Picture Day

Friday, October 7

• Professional Development Day - No School for Students

Monday, October 10

• Thanksgiving - No School

September 19 - 22

 

Thank you so much for attending our school's open house on Friday!  I enjoyed connecting with students and their families.  I'm so glad that many families got their first opportunity to come into the school and see where children spend their days.

I Can Decide to be Active / I Can Understand the Basic Rules of Games and Fair Play / I Can Show Cooperation within Small and Large Groups:

Last week we were so lucky (for the most part) to have great weather for our soccer residency.  Students enjoyed learning skills such as dribbling, passing, and fancy footwork.  It was great coming to see build confidence in trying new things over the course of the week.

I Can Make and Share Observations of Changes in the Season:

On Thursday we took the opportunity to go to the top of the hill, near the community garden  with Ms. Rowland's class to make some observations of fall in our own sit spots.

We used our senses to help us make observations, recording what we saw, smelt, heard, and felt.

Reminders:

Monday, September 26

• Terry Fox Run at 11:10am.  Wear red, white, or Canadian themed shirts.

Wednesday, September 28 

• Library Book Exchange Day 
• Virtual Parent Association AGM (see weekly email from the office for more details)

Thursday, September 29

• Orange Shirt Day - Wear an Orange Shirt for Truth and Reconciliation

Friday, September 30

• National Day of Truth and Reconciliation - No School for Students

September 12 - 16

 

I hope everyone is enjoying the last weekend of summer!  In this upcoming week we will be talking about the change of the season that comes with the fall equinox on Thursday.  We took the opportunity this past week to go outside with Ms. Rowland's class to look and see what our surrounding school grounds and community green spaces look like at the end of summer.  We also participated in a giant, outdoor sharing circle to talk about some of the early changes that signal the beginning of fall.

I Can Use What I Know About Letters to Sound Out Words

Students in both grades have been using their phonic knowledge to sound out words in decodable passages.  Decodable passages are simple sentences and/or stories that can be sounded by students based on their phonics knowledge.  As their knowledge of letter-sound correspondence grows, so will the difficulty level of the decodable passages they are working on.

It as important for beginning readers to be given immediate feedback on the accuracy of the letters they are sounding out to ensure they don't develop a habit of guessing when trying to read.  Student attention should be focused on the letters and not on the pictures when they are trying to decode a word.

I Can Identify What Makes a Sentence a Sentence

We have been working on identifying features of a sentence (beginning capital, end punctuation, a 'who' (noun), and a 'doing' (verb)).  We also used the opportunity to look at the sentences we have written together as a class as a stepping off point to orally extend the story by sharing with a partner or a small group.

I'm afraid I wasn't very good at taking pictures this week 😔 and all I have are these two from a paint mixing activity we did.

Reminders:

Monday, September 19 to Thursday, September 22 -

•     Soccer Residency! Come to school ready to go.  We start first thing in the morning at 8:30am.

Wednesday, September 21 -

•     Learning Commons - Library Book Exchange Day

Thursday, September 22 - 

•     School Council Taco Night (see email sent on Thursday for more info)

Friday, September 23 -

•     Non-instructional Day - No School for Students
•     Meet the Teacher Open House from 11:00am to 12:30pm.

Monday, September 26

• Terry Fox Run

Thursday, September 29

• Orange Shirt Day

Friday, September 30

• National Day of Truth and Reconciliation - No School for Students

September 6th to 9th

 

This week we continued to work together as a classroom family to build our community norms and expectations.  We've been looking at this through the lens of the Medicine Wheel and have so far talked about what we need for our MINDS and SPIRITS (emotions) to be well and successful at school.  We will continue this work in the next few weeks as we explore the needs of our HEART and BODY at school.

I Can Understand the Relationship Between Letters (graphemes) and Sound (phonemes):

We have started our work in phonics and understanding how letters can represent different sounds.  In grade one, students have worked with the letters S, A, and T and by the end of the week we were sounding out simple words (at, sat).  We will continue to work on building this knowledge of individual letter sounds over the next few months.  

In grade two, students have been reviewing some letter pairs that work together to produce one sound (digraphs).  This week they have worked on ng, ch, and th.  We will continue with some review before moving onto long vowel patterns.

I Can Examine the Patterns in Cycles:

We have been looking what makes a pattern a pattern (core, repetition) and have been using loose parts to make our own.  

We have also been doing some review of how to represent the numbers 1 to 10 in grade one and numbers that make ten pairs in grade two.

I Can Explain What Primary and Secondary Colours Are:

This week we had a chance to get hands on with colour theory and used play-dough to explore what happens when primary colours are mixed together.

Students were then able to use their play-dough to continue mixing colours and/or to make a picture on an index card.

Reminders:

Wednesday, September 14 - Our First Library Day

Thursday, September 15 - School Council Meeting at 6:30pm in the school Learning Commons

Friday, September 16 - Early Dismissal at 12:41pm

September 19 - 22 - Soccer Residency

Friday, September 23 - Meet the Teacher Open House from 11:00am to 12:30, no school for students

Welcome Back! September 1 - 2, 2022

       Welcome Back!      

It was great to see almost everyone's smiling face this week!  It was great starting to get to know the kids and working towards building our classroom family.  

This blog will help keep everyone informed about the happenings in the classroom.  If you would like to see your child in the pictures of this blog, please remember to fill out the consent to publish forms in your MyCBE account (an email with links was sent out earlier this week). 

Here's a look at our classroom:

This past week we have been working on building community within our classroom.  On our first day we read the story, "The First Day Jitters", by Julie Danneberg.  This story was a stepping off point for us all to talk about our first day back at school and how we might be feeling.  We tied this work into math and created a whole class pictograph showing how everyone was feeling.  

Upcoming:

Monday, September 5th - No School

Friday, September 9th - Early Dismissal at 12:41

Friday, September 23rd - Non-Instructional Day, No School for Students

Friday, September 30th, National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, No School for Students