Housekeeping
Shoes: Please send a pair of indoor shoes to school now that we’re entering the rainy and, ugh, soon to be snowy season! Change for Change: For the month of October, we are partnering with the Toronto Foundation for Student Success– let’s help students just like us! As the independent charitable foundation of the TDSB, the TFSS is your charity and it raises funds to support students in need, right here in our schools. TFSS supports approximately 147,000 meals for students every school day. Language The Daily 5 are up and running! We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the expectations for 1) Read to Self 2) Read to Someone 3) Listen to Reading 4) Word Work and 5) Work on Writing. Now, students sign up for 2 different activities in the morning and work through them during our morning Literacy Block. If you’d like to come in and volunteer to work at a centre, please contact Kirsten and she’ll put you on our schedule! We run centres from 9:00 – 10:00. Math Over the past few days, students have been learning how to use sorting and patterning centres. Once all the centres were taught, students then had the chance to rotate through all of them: 1) Sorting Buttons on the White Board 2) Making Patterns with Snap Cubes 3) Finding Patterns with # Cards 4) Fall Leafy Patterns 5) Sorting & Patterning with Word Families. Ask your son or daughter which centre was their favourite and why! As a fun Friay game, students had the chance to play 'cover the quantity' - a math game that encourages quick # recognition (on both dice and on paper with images) and mental math for addition to 12. Students would roll 2 dice and then would have to match the #s on dice, to the images on the page, writing the corresponding addition sentence. So for example, if a student rolled a 4 and a 3, they would match it to the image of a row of 4 planes and another row of 3 planes, writing the addition sentence 4+3=7. Check out some pictures in the gallery! Social Studies Our Changing Roles and Responsibilities: Kendra has been talking with the students a lot about their responsibilities at home and at school. To begin the discussions, students talked a bit about their changing responsibilities; as they age and get older, what happens to the roles that they play and the responsibilities that they have? Students listened to the story Froggy's Baby Sister and learned about how his responsibilities changed once he became a big brother. Some students made the connection that they too are a ‘big sibling’ while others connected the text in different ways; some students have a new role as a grade 1 student, no longer a kindie, or even as a new student to HPAS, moving away from their old school. Once students were able to identify a change in their role, they were asked to create images that reflected their ‘mini milestone’ – on one page, show the responsibilities that you used to have as Kindergarten student (I had to play nicely during centre time) and on the other page, show the new responsibilities that you have since your role has changed to a grade 1 or grade 2 student (I have to play nicely during the 3 recess breaks ). Ask your son or daughter about their mini milestone! Afterwards, we watched Franklin and the New Baby on the white board and used a Venn Diagram to compare the 2 ‘big brother’ stories. As part of our school responsibilities, we went out into the yard with Paula’s grade 5/6 class and took care of our food garden! The students rotated through 4 different centers and learned all about how we, as the students at HPAS, have to take responsibility for the care of our garden. Students had the chance to 1)Learn about invasive species and wee 2) Mulch 3) Harvest and 4) Compost *Check out the gallery to see some photos! Students also talked about their ‘Classroom Responsibilities’ and filled out some Yellow Pages to show each other how helpful they can be … “If you need help with using the Word List, then call Benjamin because he loves to read!”, “If you need help with the computer, then call Ryan because he knows how to use the tabs!”, “If you need help with building, call Isabelle because she loves to use bin toys to build towers!” Ask your son or daughter what ‘classroom job’ they took responsibility for ;) Changing Family Traditions: This week we watched 2 books on BookFLIX under the ‘Celebrations’ Tab: “Giving Thanks” and “Thanksgiving” – please re-read them at home again with your son or daughter as you complete this week’s homework! (please refer to your emails for the link to BookFlix and the Passwords!) Students drafted a 'practice' entry in their writing journal all about their families' Thanksgiving Traditions, then I conferenced with the students about "Two Stars and a Wish": a 'star' is something that we're very proud of and a 'wish' is something that, if they could, students should go back and change because then they could improve. We've all got strengths, but we've also all got areas in which we could improve too! Some students were 'stars' at including spaces and neat printing, while some 'wishes' were to go back and check spelling using the word lists, or stretch ideas by adding more supporting details. After the conferences, students 'published' their journal entries and fixed up their wishes; their finished work will be posted in the classroom for all to see and celebrate!
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Congratulations to Grace! She was the recipient of this month’s Character Education Certificate for “Respect”. For the month of October, we will be focusing on ‘Responsibility”
A big thank you to Allan, Gabriel’s dad, who came in this week to help us take portraits of each other! He taught us that years and years ago it would take a long time to have a portrait painted, so that’s one of the main reasons that the camera was invented – for portrait photography! Housekeeping Shoes: Please send a pair of indoor shoes to school now that we’re entering the rainy and, ugh, soon to be snowy season! Home Notes: Please empty your son’s or daughter’s Home Notes folder regularly; the papers sent home are meant to be kept at home. The Carnival Comes to HPAS: Some families have already donated to our “Art Studio” basket – keep it coming!! The kids are excited at the chance of winning a pizza party J Thank you! Language As part of our literacy program, we have begun to practice The Daily 5 : Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing and Word Work. So far, students have practiced increasing their stamina for Read to Self, are experts at sitting EEKK! with a buddy during Read to Someone (Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee) and are excited to use the computers and listening centre for Listen to Reading. Next week, we’ll talk about Work on Writing and Word Work. Integrated Social Studies: As a lead up to our Character Education assembly on Monday, Kendra read us the story Do Unto Otters, all about good manners and “Respect” – treat others how YOU want to be treated! To re-read the book at home and discuss with your son or daughter, you can watch this fun video on YouTube After the assembly, we watched Franklin's Day Off to reinforce the new Character Education Trait, “Responsibility”. Math We’ve started our Patterning Unit! First, we need to remember how to sort objects based on their attributes (e.g., colour, size, shape etc.). Once we’ve sorted our objects, we can begin to create patterns. First, we talked about the ‘building block’ or the ‘pattern’s core’, like AB in an orange, apple, orange, apple pattern or AABC in a blue, blue, red, green, blue, blue, red, green pattern. Next week, we’ll take a deeper look at growing and shrinking patterns. * In grade 1, students are expected to create and extend repeating patterns involving one attribute while grade 2s are expected to identify and describe repeating patterns and growing and shrinking patterns. HOMEWORK: Help Peg and Cat finish the chicken dance patterns! Finish the Pattern Game How does my pattern grow? What comes next? Growing Number Patterns **This game is suitable for grade 2s; you may want to use a 100s Chart while playing this game Other Town: Our Responsibility as Members of the TDSB Community On Friday I read an excerpt from the book I Have the Right to be a Child about every child’s right to healthy food, each and every day. Then, I shared with the students the sad fact that some boys and girls, right here in our city, go to school most days without eating breakfast or sometimes without bringing enough food to eat for lunch. Arthur has been teaching the kids a lot about the five food groups during health class, so our kids were really worried when they heard that some students, living in the same city as us and part of the same school board as us, might not be getting the healthy foods they need. So, we started talking about how we could help. If you’d been in our room, you’d have heard a conversation something like this … “Could we bring in food from home? Sure! Like foods from the Grains group, healthy crackers, pastas, oatmeal. But what about the Dairy Foods and some Fruits and Vegetables, they need to be kept in a fridge, and we don’t have a fridge in our classroom. Hmmm. We could bring in a box and put freezer packs in it to keep them cold? Yeah, that could work! But wait … freezer packs only last for a day, and we’ll be collecting food for more than just one day. What if we change the freezer packs at the end of the day? We could put in new ones? Hmm, that could work … but that would take a lot of remembering on our part, what if we forgot to change a freezer pack, and then all the food would spoil, that wouldn’t be very helpful, would it?” So, we decided on … bringing in coins! If we could bring in some money, then we could give the money to the right people at the right school and THEY could buy all the healthy foods (like yogurts and milk boxes and bananas) whenever they need them. For the month of October, we are partnering with the Toronto Foundation for Student Success. Please send in “Change for Change” – let’s help students just like us! As the independent charitable foundation of the TDSB, the TFSS is your charity and it raises funds to support students in need, right here in our schools. This could be through Student Nutrition Programs, eye checks, free glasses, emergency funds for boots, clothing and food, hearing checks, after school programs, and more. TFSS supports approximately 147,000 meals for students every school day. To Learn more about TFSS Click Here to play TONS of nutrition games! |
In our Room 108 Classroom Community, we foster an engaging, respectful and caring environment. I aim to balance a consistent program with flexible responsiveness to students' individual needs. Archives
November 2017
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