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!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
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
Categories |