Weekly Summary

This week our VIP read one of his favourite books called "I've Lost My Cat."  The students really enjoyed this cute story of a young boy who loses his cat.  Perhaps you can ask your child to bring this story home from the library to find out if the boy eventually finds his lost pet.

Language Arts

This week during my Read Aloud I started reading the book "Frindle" by Andrew Clements.  The strategy that we focused on was improving comprehension by making a picture or mental image.  This is an excellent strategy for readers to used when recalling details in the text.  Making a picture or mental image assists readers in understanding what they read by creating images in their mind, based on the details in the text and their prior knowledge.

During Daily 5 "Work on Writing" the students continued to focus on developing clear and precisely written paragraphs including the creation of topic sentences, details and closing sentences.

After the students Read to Self during Daily 5, they are responsible for writing in their Reading Response Journals.  The students use these journals to respond to literature in order to gain insight to text, reveal their thinking, and interact with literature in meaningful ways.  Here, one of our students is reading an entry to the class from her reading reading response journal.

This week we had the opportunity to spend some time with our Grade 1 buddies from Mrs. Nuttall's class.  The Grade 1 students shared their "Owl About Me" books and then we read our "Halloween Riddles" to see if our buddies could guess what our costumes were.

Math

This week during Math Workshop we focused on skip counting to find the value of a collection of coins.  We also represented numbers in more than one way using coins.  The students enjoyed our "hands on" activity called "scoop and total."  In this activity the student scooped up a handful of coins and they used their knowledge of skip counting to add the coins together.

Social Studies

We continued our unit on India this week.  The students have enjoyed learning about the Quality of Life in India through the eyes of our friend Ravi.  We had the opportunity to watch a few videos to learn more about the customs and traditions celebrated in India.  One of the favorite celebrations that the students learned about is called "Holi" or the "Festival of Colours."  During Holi, people celebrate the end of winter by throwing coloured water and powder on each other.

Music

Mrs. Stanski has been busy preparing the school for the upcoming Christmas Concerts.  Our class will be performing this Tuesday, December 2nd.  Please remember to dress in "winter" wear such as hats and mittens.

Art

In art this week, our class made 3D paper ornaments for our Christmas tree that is being displayed in the gym during the Christmas concerts.

Congratulations to a few of our students who have made the 2,500 minute milestone for our Home Reading Program.  They were very excited to be able to choose a brand new book from my collection as their reward.

Congratulations to Mr. R for being acknowledged as our Student of the Week during this week's assembly!  You are a very kind, hardworking student who always works to the best of your ability!

Friday was our first "Snow Day" of the year!  We only had 7 students in our class for the day.  The students enjoyed having some extra time on the chrome books to work on their math skills.  They also had the opportunity to work on an extra art project with Mrs. Milson's Grade 3 class.  The student's artwork will be on display on the bulletin board outside our classroom.