World Down Syndrome Awareness Day

In honour of Down Syndrome awareness day, we had many students participate in wearing crazy socks! We had wild, crazy, funky and mis-matched socks!

Journal entries this week were "free write". The students had a lot to write about after the weekend and many were able to fill up 2 pages!

This week in our fairy tale unit, the students had to come up with a hero/heroine and make him/her interesting (magical element and the helpers). They also had to create a villain (someone or some creature who will create a problem for the hero/heroine in their story). Their characters had to fit with the settings they created last week. We have some very creative writers, who have created wonderful fairy tale characters!

We also worked with a new set of spelling words this week. A "word sort" sheet will come home on the Monday of each week. Please make sure your child cuts and sorts the words and is able to explain to you why they go where they have sorted them. Also, it is important that your child know the meaning of these words. Homophones can be confusing but understanding which word to use and its correct spelling, is important.

A new activity was introduced to the students, called "Draw and Label". The students pulled a word from the word sort bags and had to sketch a drawing showing us the meaning of the word. 

In Math this week, the students were challenged with some mental math strategies to solve difficult subtraction questions without regrouping. They were shown how to make multiples of 10 and then subtract mentally by counting up. They had a lot of practice with this and took a quiz on Thursday.

This week in Science we started our new Building unit. This unit follows the Survivor theme and has the students in "tribes" to complete challenges. To kick off the unit the students chose a buff colour and had their pictures taken. They then created a tribe name. Our first challenge was to learn about fair tests. The students were given a task of copying a list of items from the board. Some students had broken pencils and some were sitting further away from the board and at a bad angle. 

The students were excited to open their TREE MAIL.

For this challenge the students were given cardstock, plasticine, a paper plate and unifix cubes to test whether a square support or arch support could hold the most mass. Their conclusion was that the arch support is stronger because the weight is more evenly distributed.

We started reading a new novel after recess while the students are having their morning snack. It ties in nicely with our new science Survivor theme!

For Art, we finished our water colour bridges. They turned out GREAT!

Congratulations to our super readers this week!

Some of our students were spotted at the family dance! What a fun night!

St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! We celebrated  by wearing green and completing a few activities throughout the day! A few of our students stumbled upon a riddle between our classroom and our 3A. It looked like fun so we thought we would give it a try and see where it led us!

We also read "The Luckiest Leprechaun" and worked on a colouring activity. The students were to read the instructions and colour the leprechaun according to their opinion.

We completed another Star Reading test and combining this with other reading assessments, the students have been assigned new reading levels. They were excited to choose books from new bins! Please let us know if you would like additional books at your child's level to read at home with them. 

We worked through our second week of the "Words Their Way" spelling program. Students are encouraged to play games off of spelling city throughout the week, to practice their spelling words/patterns. 

This week we started our new unit in Science. To kick of the unit, Peter Caron came in to teach the students about the strength of different shapes and four different types of bridges. The students loved the hands on experience and had the opportunity to build all four bridges. After completing each bridge, the students were quizzed on what kind of bridge they built and the shapes they saw in each completed project.

 In Language Arts, we continued to work on our fairy tale writing. This week the students worked on writing settings for their villain and hero/heroine.

 They also worked on their second paragraph for their All About Me project. The rough draft, or sloppy copy, is done in their workbook. We conference with the students to edit their work and then the good copy is typed on their chrome books. These are printed out and illustrated by the students. The All About Me project will be compiled and ready for them to take home as a Grade 3 keepsake at the end of the year.

In Math, we worked on subtraction fluency. The students used the concept of fact families to turn addition sentences into subtraction ones. 

In Gym, the students worked through a variety of stations focusing on their passing and receiving skills.

For Art this week, the students had the opportunity to chose one of the four bridges they learned about earlier in the week. Then they designed the bridge of their choice. We have not quite finished the project so stayed tuned next week for pictures of their final work.

Thank you to all of the families that came to Student Led Conferences this week. There were four stations to participate in, "Race From 1000", Tunisia Google Slides, Writing Workshop, and Words Their Way Sorting. It was so nice to see the students take charge of the stations and teach their parents what they have been learning in our classroom.

Congrats to our super reader!!

This week, we had an opportunity to read some books to the grade 1 class across the hall.

Congratulations to our new Student of the Week!