It snowed this week!! It's winter :) Please be sure to send indoor shoes and to label all your child’s winter belongings – hats, scarves, mitts etc. As a treat, we added to winter songs to our Poems and Songs book, “Welcome to Wintertown” and “The Weather’s Just Fine!”.
Language On Monday, students did a picture walk (you can do a picture walkbefore you’ve read a book to predict what the text might be about orafter you’ve read a book to re-tell what the text was about) of Big Al . As they retold the story, they were asked to think about the ‘little fish’ and their point of view – how did they see Big Al at the beginning of the story? How did the little fish see Big Al at the end of the story? As we’re nearing the middle of the term, we’re switching our main focus from Social Studies into Science as we take a look at Energy and Waster. Students listened to the story Where Does The Garbage Go? and they also buddied up to read Where We Get EnergyWhere We Get Energy(grade 2s) and Using Less Energy(grade 1s). During another Reader’s Workshop, the grade ones read through a passage “How Plastic is Recycled” and the twos read “Maria Recycles” looking for the main idea and supporting details. (both passages taken from Read Works , a free resource!) Math This week the grade 2s worked with Kendra turning our “What’s in our lunch?” tally chart into a bar graph for the grade 1s. The grade 1s took some time to focus on strategies that should be used when taking a survey; ask the question clearly, keep track of who you’ve asked by writing names or using the name plates at table groups, organize your data neatly so it’s easy to read and understand when you’re done! Students are loving BUZZ! It’s an easy and quick game that we play when we have some extra time; we all stand in a circle, start at one and count out loud one at a time by 1s … 1, 2, 3, 4, BUZZ, 6, 7, 8, 9, BUZZ, 11, 12, 13, 14, BUZZ! If a student miscounts or forgets to ‘buzz’ when we’re at a ‘skip count by 5s’ #, then they sit out until the next round ;) Other It was Kendra’s last week L We had a wonderful celebration on Friday afternoon where Kendra shared special notes with each of the students and we shared our special book, the one we wrote just for her, full of ‘Teacher Tips’ (e.g., give the students candy when they’re good, taken them on lots of field trips and help them with their writing!). Kendra has been an invaluable member of our classroom community and she promises to come back and visit! *She’s also been tutoring some older students from both Annette/High Park because she lives in the local neighbourhood, so if ever you think your children could use a little extra homework help, please feel free to reach out!
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November 18th to 22nd: Empathy - understanding and sharing in the feelings and emotions of others11/22/2013 MATH:
We’re taking a deeper look at data management! We made our own surveys and asked everyone in our class our questions. We practiced tallying responses and going over what problems we faced when carrying out this process (e.g., "I thought I asked everyone in the class but I only have 15 tallies", or "I ran out of time because I worried too much about spelling or the perfect question to ask"). We also learned how to turn surveys into simple bar graphs. Ask your child about what our success criteria is for making surveys and bar graphs! We played this interactive game on the Smart Board as a class, try it at home! Great for grade 1s ;) For grade 2s, try reading these graphs and answering the questions. Even more links to lots of fun graphing games. *Extra practice and Homework* LANGUAGE: Our Daily 5 program is still underway! Some students get to read with Kelly or Kendra on the side during daily 5 activities as well. And again – a big thanks to our parent volunteers that come in to play word games with the students! One morning as students were signing up for centres and doing the morning routine, we watched a short video on the Smart Board, Franklin's Nickname Watch it again at home and then have a discussion about empathy; how did Bear feel? Did the other characters think about his feelings? How would YOU feel if someone gave you a nickname that you didn’t like? As an integrated Social Studies lesson, we had a discussion on Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and how we can show empathy towards those who were affected. It started off with a newspaper article from Teaching Kids News (an amazing website for kid friendly but current news articles!). After a long class discussion about our feelings and even a visit to Google Earth to see where the Philippines are in our big wide world, we wrote empathetic journal entries. Please take some time to reread this article with your son or daughter at home and have another discussion about how they’re feeling. This week we read two books about empathy, one chosen by Ryan (because his name was pulled out of our droplet bucket on Monday!) and then another voted on by the students. Ask your child about Those Shoes and Big Al Your child can show empathy by: Helping and understanding how others in the family feel Using words to describe how others may be feeling Understanding, sensing and sharing in the feelings and emotions of others Showing love, sympathy, compassion and encouragement Speaking from “I” and owning his or her emotions Questions to discuss with your child: What is empathy? How can we show empathy? What does it mean to be empathetic? Projects to do together: Engage your child in volunteer opportunities, such as helping at the food bank or other community organizations Develop a family project that is meant to help others When reading or watching the news, encourage a discussion about how those involved might feel If you and your child take on one of these projects and would like to add a short entry to the blog about your active citizenship, please send me an email and I'll include it in our next update :) SOCIAL STUDIES: This week we cleaned up any unclaimed clothes in the lost and found sort. Tanya and Duncan have volunteered to take them to a local charity for those in need. Stay tuned for their report on where the clothes are being taken and who we’re helping out! What a great group of active and responsible citizens we have! Mrs. Wheeler even came into Room 102 and thanked our class personally for all our generous work! As a final task, we buddied up with a partner this week to reflect on our Mini Flip Books all about our roles and responsibilities. This was our chance to choose 2 stars and 1 wish; two things what we’re really proud of (the success criteria that we achieved) and one thing that we could have improved (something that we missed including from the success criteria). Working with a buddy helped us get another point of view on our work, because sometimes it’s hard to see what we missed. OTHER: Field Trip time! A permission form came home with the students on Friday – we’re going to Pioneer Village!! On this trip we’ll be taking part in the “Toys of Yesteryear” program that touches on both the social studies and science curriculum. What are some of the winter holiday traditions from the past and how have they changed? The exchanging of presents is an age-old tradition at this time of year, but what materials were used and how were simple toys made? “It’s play time! Discover toys of the past in our interactive display! Make your own toy, take part in storytelling and play with toys just like the pioneer children did. Once you have had a chance to see how much fun the pioneer toys are you won't want to go back to the modern ones!” *This is a parent-driver field trip – it can only happen if we have enough parent volunteers offer to drive! If you’re unable to come and stay for the day, that’s ok, you can drop us off and then simply come back to pick us up ;) Please contact Barjinder if you want to help out. MATH: We’re taking a deeper look at data management! We made our own surveys and asked everyone in our class our questions. We practiced tallying responses and going over what problems we faced when carrying out this process (e.g., "I thought I asked everyone in the class but I only have 15 tallies", or "I ran out of time because I worried too much about spelling or the perfect question to ask"). We also learned how to turn surveys into simple bar graphs. Ask your child about what our success criteria is for making surveys and bar graphs! We played this interactive game on the Smart Board as a class, try it at home! Great for grade 1s ;) For grade 2s, try reading these graphs and answering the questions. Even more links to lots of fun graphing games. *Extra practice and Homework* LANGUAGE: Our Daily 5 program is still underway! Some students get to read with Kelly or Kendra on the side during daily 5 activities as well. And again – a big thanks to our parent volunteers that come in to play word games with the students! One morning as students were signing up for centres and doing the morning routine, we watched a short video on the Smart Board, Franklin's Nickname Watch it again at home and then have a discussion about empathy; how did Bear feel? Did the other characters think about his feelings? How would YOU feel if someone gave you a nickname that you didn’t like? As an integrated Social Studies lesson, we had a discussion on Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and how we can show empathy towards those who were affected. It started off with a newspaper article from Teaching Kids News (an amazing website for kid friendly but current news articles!). After a long class discussion about our feelings and even a visit to Google Earth to see where the Philippines are in our big wide world, we wrote empathetic journal entries. Please take some time to reread this article with your son or daughter at home and have another discussion about how they’re feeling. This week we read two books about empathy, one chosen by Ryan (because his name was pulled out of our droplet bucket on Monday!) and then another voted on by the students. Ask your child about Those Shoes and Big Al Your child can show empathy by: Helping and understanding how others in the family feel Using words to describe how others may be feeling Understanding, sensing and sharing in the feelings and emotions of others Showing love, sympathy, compassion and encouragement Speaking from “I” and owning his or her emotions Questions to discuss with your child: What is empathy? How can we show empathy? What does it mean to be empathetic? Projects to do together: Engage your child in volunteer opportunities, such as helping at the food bank or other community organizations Develop a family project that is meant to help others When reading or watching the news, encourage a discussion about how those involved might feel If you and your child take on one of these projects and would like to add a short entry to the blog about your active citizenship, please send me an email and I'll include it in our next update :) SOCIAL STUDIES: This week we cleaned up any unclaimed clothes in the lost and found sort. Tanya and Duncan have volunteered to take them to a local charity for those in need. Stay tuned for their report on where the clothes are being taken and who we’re helping out! What a great group of active and responsible citizens we have! Mrs. Wheeler even came into Room 102 and thanked our class personally for all our generous work! As a final task, we buddied up with a partner this week to reflect on our Mini Flip Books all about our roles and responsibilities. This was our chance to choose 2 stars and 1 wish; two things what we’re really proud of (the success criteria that we achieved) and one thing that we could have improved (something that we missed including from the success criteria). Working with a buddy helped us get another point of view on our work, because sometimes it’s hard to see what we missed. OTHER: Field Trip time! A permission form came home with the students on Friday – we’re going to Pioneer Village!! On this trip we’ll be taking part in the “Toys of Yesteryear” program that touches on both the social studies and science curriculum. What are some of the winter holiday traditions from the past and how have they changed? The exchanging of presents is an age-old tradition at this time of year, but what materials were used and how were simple toys made? “It’s play time! Discover toys of the past in our interactive display! Make your own toy, take part in storytelling and play with toys just like the pioneer children did. Once you have had a chance to see how much fun the pioneer toys are you won't want to go back to the modern ones!” *This is a parent-driver field trip – it can only happen if we have enough parent volunteers offer to drive! If you’re unable to come and stay for the day, that’s ok, you can drop us off and then simply come back to pick us up ;) Please contact Barjinder if you want to help out. This week I (Kendra) taught the class as part of my practicum expectation so I will fill you in on what we did!
Language Arts: We continued with our Daily 5 routines this week. Thanks to the parents who came in to run our “literacy games” centre! Students know that they are to try centres that they don’t always sign up for – ask your son/ daughter what centre they tried this week? We also wrote a first and second draft of our Progress Report Reflections (now posted outside our classroom). Social Studies: This week we finished up our Mini Flip Books showing our responsibilities as a son/ daughter, student, and friend. We also started reading a story and listened to a book talk on the Smart Board called Lily and the Paper Man which is about a young girl who is scared of a homeless man she always sees; with his torn clothes, holey boots, and lack of hat on a cold winter day, Lily asks her mom about the man. We discussed similar experiences we’ve had in our lives; we will finish this story next week! This led to our big activity on Friday afternoon – our class took responsibility for our school community and sorted the whole Lost and Found bin so students could easily find their lost items. Anything that is unclaimed next by week will get donated to people who are less fortunate – like the Paper Man. The class really enjoyed taking this responsibility on! Math: We learned about tally charts and bar graphs this week! As an introduction we did a class survey asking the question: How did you get to school today? This was a practice for our class tally chart: What’s in your lunch? For the next couple weeks we’re tracking what food group our recess snacks belong in using tally marks! We also practiced tallying with our big buddies this week. Social Studies
On Monday, November 4th, we had a special visit from Barjinder, Harmanjit’s mom, and we learned all about their family celebration of Diwali! Over the weekend Harman gathered with family and friends and neighbours to lightdiyas, set of some fireworks and eat a feast – it’s a tradition. We even got to taste some traditional food, Veggie Samosas, and we created some traditional Indian art, Rangoli. Rangoli is an art form often associated with Diwali; a brightly coloured design created using different materials such ascoloured powders, seeds and grains, flower petals, pencils, pens and paint. After we created our pattern, we got to light some diyas (oil lamps). It’s tradition to set these lamps outside the home in the hope that Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, will visit and bring good fortune and blessings to the family. Thanks again to Harmanjit’s family for telling us all about their Diwali celebration and for sharing some of their traditions! Before Progress Reports go home, we always take the time to talk about the Six Learning Skills: Responsibility, Organization, Independent Work, Collaboration, Initiative and Self-Regulation. These big ideas can be pretty difficult for small children to grasp, so we continued our discussions and ‘real-life classroom examples’ this week. Students even wrote reflections in their journals “I use _________ when I _________ because __________”, for example, I use responsibility when I sit away from my friends on the carpetbecause then I can pay attention to the lesson. Language Kendra continued to work with students on their Mini Flip Books but this week we really tried to understand the Success Criteria – what are the ‘things’ that we need to do, in order to be successful?! Take a look at the picture of our success criteria on the photos page (*refer to your e-mails for the password). We kept going back to our work, to check and make sure that we were following all the instructions. Soon, the students will be doing an oral presentation, talking about their different roles and their changing responsibilities. We added some new games to the Daily 5 Word Work centre this week and they're a hit (with the students AND the parent volunteers! Remember Jenga? Well, we've modified it ;) Each block has two Dolch Words written on it; if you pull out the block and can read BOTH words, then you get another turn to pull and place a block! We also played Initial Consonant Bingo and rhyming and spelling puzzle games too! *Scholars Choice is a great resource for Education Games; you can shop online or visit the two Toronto Locations. Math This week we watched Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3 on YouTube to talk about growing and shrinking patterns . The pattern starts to grow by 1s as it increases all the way to twenty, then the pattern switches and it continues to grow, but this time by 10s! 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, then to 99! At 99, the tree gets WAY too heavy and the #s start to fall OUT of the tree – a shrinking pattern by 10s: 90, 80 70, 60 , 50 40, 30 … Then, the pattern switches again – ask your son or daughter how the story (and the pattern) ends J Language
Daily 5 is awesome J We’ve focused a lot on Word Work and Word Work Games over the past few weeks. Students are using what they know about the ‘at’ and the ‘ing’ families to create new words – that fat cat was singing! With volunteers, they’re playing Tic, Tac, Toe, Go Fish and Sight Word Uno with the Dolch Word List Words. You can play games at home too! Visit this site Halloween Glyphs: Glyphs are often theme-related and artistic. Once they’re completed, the picture can then be compared to the glyph’s legend (it tells what each shape, colour, number etc. stands for) to help you get information about the person who created the glyph. When you come for interviews please be sure to check out the pumpkins on the wall! *This activity was used for Oral Language – how well were the students able to listen to the oral instructions, process the information and then create the artistic output? Some read-alouds we’ve shared recently: Cinderhazel: The Cinderella of Halloween (we did a class Venn, comparing both of the characters!), Diwali,Light’s for Gita (both read for our study on Changing Family Traditions and Celebrations), Somewhere Today: A Book of Peace, The Peace Book, A Bear in War (all on the theme of Remembrance Day) Social Studies Scavenger Hunt: Kendra created a cross-curricular activity for the kids; as a team, they had to decide on roles (Reader, Hunter, Recorder, Checker) and then find hidden Snap Cube Pattern Trains around the room. So for example, The Reader would read “Find an AB pattern near the couch”, the Hunter would go to find it and report back the colours of the pattern, then the Recorder would colour the train and the Checker would edit and double-check to see if the right colours were used! Ask your son or daughter which role they played and what their responsibilities were! As an assessment task, students are creating Flip Books to show the differences between roles and responsibilities. They each have three roles: son/daughter, student, friend – what are some of the different responsibilities that come with each role and who is affected by your choices? This past month, we’ve started to focus on another strand in the curriculum, “Changing Family and Community Traditions”. It was so great to read about and hear students talk about (part of their Oral Language strand) their Thanksgiving family traditions and how they have changed over the years. Thanks to all who did their homework Math We collected so many coins for the Change for Change coin drive!! Way to go! We had to do some problem solving though; how would the Toronto Foundation for Student Success be able to count them all?! Someone came up with the great idea – we should SORT the coins for them! It would be easier to count if all the ‘like’ coins were grouped together ;) Real Life sorting at it’s best. Once the coins were sorted (pennies, nickels, dimes etc.) the students used some hundreds charts to do preliminary counting – we counted the nickels and practiced skip counting by 5s!! (skip counting is also a form of growing patterns for grade 2s; the # grows by 5 each time). Our Halloween math was also a lot of fun; the grade 2s worked a lot with real-life pumpkin seeds to create growing patterns and the grade 1s worked with foam shapes (witches, bats, ghosts) to create repeating patterns. Other Report & Learning Skills: We’ve been talking a lot about the expectations of our classroom program and I introduced students to the six learning skills: Responsibility, Organization, Independent Work, Collaboration, Initiative and Self-Regulation. We had many class discussions about all these big words and broke them down into easy to understand, real-life, grade 1 and grade 2 examples. When you come for interviews, check out the student’s cooperative learning! Also, most days after Daily 5, the students are asked “How did you use your learning skills this morning?” and most of them have some great, concrete examples! So, instead of asking your child “How was school today” – ask them WHAT LEARNING SKILL DID YOU USE MOST TODAY?! Flat Stanley & Stanley: Flat Again Students are having a blast listening to our Flat Stanley read aloud series J Take a look at his interactive website and the Just For Kids page!! Halloween: It was so much fun to see the students in their costumes! Kendra and I were a mouse and a giant cookie! Rather than Daily 5 that day, students worked on a Halloween packet, full of Number Sense, Reading and Writing activities. It was just for extra practice and fun! Check out the booklet when your son or daughter brings it home :) |
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
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