Report cards are going home today, please look for them in your child's backpack. Please sign the envelope and return it on January 6, 2020.
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Families, please remember that tomorrow is pyjama and stuffed animal day! From 2:00-3:45pm, Parent Council will be hosting a movie afternoon. The movie will be the Netflix special Klaus. Klaus is a about a simple act of kindness that always sparks another, even in a frozen, faraway place. When Smeerensburg’s new postman, Jesper, befriends a toymaker Klaus, their gifts melt an age-old feud and deliver a sleigh full of holiday traditions!
Report cards are also going home tomorrow, please look for them in your child's backpack. Please sign the envelope and return it on January 6, 2020. Additionally, ALL indoor shoes are coming home tomorrow. Please check and make sure that 1) the shoes still fit 2) your child knows how to tie their shoes if they have laces Finally, ALL leftover mittens, hats, scarfs, socks, etc. will be sent home tomorrow. Anything unclaimed will be put into the lost and found. As for today, students worked on practicing a new reading comprehension skill: determining the author's purpose. Every author writes for a reason and when we think about what the author wants us to learn from a story, we can understand that story better. After re-reading Night Tree, students discussed what the author wants readers to learn from this book. At first, students thought that the author was trying to tell us to be nice to animals. But, once we remembered our lessons from Social Studies, we learned that the author was teaching us that every family is different and that not all family traditions are the same (but they are special in their own, unique way). Sometimes author's make their message very clear, by simply writing directions. Students practiced this by writing the steps to building the perfect snowman! Students are also bringing home a book to practice over the Winter Break called Two Dogs. This book is theirs to keep, be sure to have your child practice. It has some of our Rainbow Words and words that have different sounding endings than the letter would suggest: when a word ending in s sounds like /z/. For example: bugs, dogs, or has. Families, don't forget that tomorrow is ugly sweater day! Both Grade 1 and 2 finished their third unit in math today. Both grades were working on patterns! Grade ones continued their exploration of finding patterns every where. We learned that our calendar is a pattern (repeating days of the week, repeating months) and that even the sun rising and setting is a pattern. Seasons are a pattern, too, as all four repeat every year. Practice creating patterns from the environment by working on the below weather calendar. Have your student complete extend the pattern: rainy, sunny, sunny, cloudy An extra challenge would be for your students to make a longer core with the additional symbols and then extend that core for the whole month! Grade twos finished up their unit continuing their work on predicting pattern terms. They practiced many strategies to make good predictions, including using the last known term and using the length of the core to guess terms. We also talked about considering the most likely term, meaning that when we circle the core the object we see more of is could most likely be our missing term. However, this strategy may be quick but can often lead to more mistakes. In the extension question below, "strategy 4" refers to using the most likely term: Before we finished up our exploration of Rural vs. Urban communities, Room 9 learned some new Word Work games to make learning sight words fun! See some photos below of Word Egg Flip and Treasure Hunt! These games have students both say and write their sight words. During our review of Urban communities, students were takes with answering the questions: Which is better, rural or urban? Why? Our class discussion brought up many answers such as:
Rural because it's peaceful and quiet. Urban because everything is here! Rural because I would like to see more animals. Students also had to identify this they would see that would let them know they were in an urban community such as: a lot of people, more cars, buses and trains, traffic lights, and big stores like a Wal-Mart! Families, please remember that tomorrow is Crazy Hair Day! We started off our last week before the Winter Break learning how to retell stories. Students learned how to retell a story with the beginning, middle, or end. Students read the story, "Night Tree" and used their knowledge of the beginning, middle, and end of the story to retell it using key parts. In math, grade one students began searching for patterns within their environment. They learned that many things are patterns, even postal codes. Students are able to identify a variety of patterns, identify cores and terms within a patterns, change a pattern, and identify how and when patterns repeat. Students used different symbols to change postal codes into identifiable patterns. They gave "L" to letters and "N" to numbers to see that, in fact, postal codes are patterns! For example: T3G 1G6 = LNLNLN Grade twos learned how to predict pattern terms today. They learned that predications are guesses that use information provided. Students use their prediction skills to extend patterns. By looking at the last term provided, students can predict later terms in the pattern. For example: This pattern has a total of 11 terms. We want to predict the 14th term. To get to the 14th term, we need 3 additional terms added on to this pattern. The last term provided is a whit heart, if we look at the first white heart in the pattern, we can count three terms after that to predict the 14th term, meaning the 14th term will be a white square...see below: Students can practice making predictions with the below patterns: Finally, with the help of our AMAZING volunteers, our grade 1 and 2s were able to help bake and decorate cookies with their grade 6 buddies! Each student was given a cookie to decorate and they practiced their measurement skills by helping to bake the cookies, too. It was such a great way to wrap up our day.
Dear Families,
As we close out another year, we thought we could bring some school spirit to the building. We will be having a special theme each day next week. Your student is more then welcome to participate. Monday: Jersey and Hat Day Tuesday: Crazy Hair Day Wednesday: Ugly Sweater Day Thursday: Pajama and Stuffy Day On Thursday December 20, 2019, from 2:00-3:45pm, Parent Council will be hosting a movie afternoon. The movie will be the Netflix special Klaus. Klaus is a about a simple act of kindness that always sparks another, even in a frozen, faraway place. When Smeerensburg’s new postman, Jesper, befriends a toymaker Klaus, their gifts melt an age-old feud and deliver a sleigh full of holiday traditions. Students are welcome to wear their PJ’s and bring a stuffed animal. Parent Council will be providing popcorn and a juice box. Also, students will be coming home with their report card, so please look for it and return the signed envelope on January 6, 2020. Have a great Winter Break! Grade one and two finished their review of the individual letter sounds today as they explored the letter Zz. Like the sound a bee makes, the Zz says words like zipper, zero, zebra, and zoo. Watch for these letter books in your students backpacks and be sure to practice them at home.
While we may be completed our individual letters, there are still many letter combinations that require a lot of practice. Students have worked with blends such as Fr and Br and they have also worked with digraphs such as Th, Wh, Ch, and Sh. Helping students at home practice a variety of letter clusters will support them in their reading and writing greatly. So, when a student asks "how do you spell...?" try getting them to stretch and sound out the word instead. Listen for the individual sounds and see if they can spell unknown words on their own! In math, grade ones practiced finding errors in patterns so that they are able to create and extend patterns. Grade ones are challenged with finding the pattern core and then circling the core every time it repeats. As soon as we can't circle the core (because the pattern has changed), we know that's where our error is! Grade twos worked on changing patterns today so that they can determine if patterns or make patterns that do match. As long as they can make a core that matches, the pattern will match. So, if a core follows the general rule of "thing, different thing, thing" students just have to follow that general rule to create patterns that match. For example: ABA ABA ABA follows the general rule thing (A), different thing (B), thing (A) 121 121 121 also follows the general rule thing (1), different thing (2), thing (1) meaning ABA ABA ABA and 121 121 121 are two patterns that match! In Social Studies, we started examining the two different types of communities: rural and urban. Today, our focus was on rural communities. In Rural communities, you have more opportunities to know a lot of people that live near you and everyone goes to the same buildings (like the grocery store) because there are not many to choose from. Students were very interested to find out that I grew up in rural community and that my family still lives on our farm there. Students were so curious about my life on a farm, as it is so different from how they are growing up, that we spent our whole period asking questions and never got to finish our work! That kind of curiosity is amazing! Afterwards, we had an assembly put on by the acapella group, HOJA. It was so much fun to spend the rest of our afternoon singing and dancing along! Families, don't forget tomorrow is our bake sale. Treats are 25 cents each! The PLP Classroom at Rosscarrock will be hosting a Holiday Bake Sale on Friday December 13th for all of the students at Rosscarrock School. Treats cost 25 cents each and students are limited to two treats until all of the students have had an opportunity to buy something. There will be a variety of items. Students explored the letter Yy today, an interesting letter to learn. That is because even all by itself, Yy has three sounds! First, Yy as a consonant makes the sound as in yes, yellowfins, you, or year. Then, Yy as a vowel. It's first vowel sound is the long /I/ sound and is generally at the end of a one syllable word. These include my, by, shy, or cry. Finally, Yy also makes the long /E/ sound, generally at the end of a two syllable word like happy, funny, or penny. Watch for the Yy book in your student's backpack today! In math, grade ones used their knowledge of pattern cores and terms to correct errors in patterns. Because we can identify the pattern core, we can identify the errors in a pattern too. Work with your student on the below questions: Grade twos worked on showing patterns in different ways so that they are able to create and describe the same repeating patterns in different ways. Students are using letters to change a pattern and they know their biggest rule is: same shape, same letter. By assigning letters to the bubble patterns below, grade twos will be able to determine which patterns match the letter cores identified:
Families, please remember that we have our school bake sale on Friday, Dec 13th. All treats will be prepared by our PLP class and will cost 25 cents each. Students will have the opportunity to visit the bake sale and purchase their items. Grade 1 and 2 students continued their respective work on their Patterns Unit today. Grade 1s continued practicing changing patterns with letters, remembering that the same shape receives the same letter. Grade one students have now practiced changing patterns with both letters and numbers so that they can determine if a pattern matches. Have your student work on the extension question below: Grade 2 students continued with their work of writing pattern rules for patterns that have more than one attribute change. Grade twos are using very specific vocabulary during these lessons to describe patterns. Students can practice these at home by quizzing their families. Have them create a pattern, hidden from sight, and then describe their pattern to a family member. The family member tries to recreate the pattern based on the rule provided. See how close you can get! We also talked more about our lesson with Constable Hartmann from yesterday. Students read the book "It's Okay to be Different" by Todd Parr and then complete some snowflakes to show how unique they are as individuals. See some of the beautiful work below! We also used our knowledge of shapes and Polar animals to create some animal shape art today! Students are learning shapes and patterns can be found within any natural object, including animals! Students we tasked with using only 2D shapes to create one of the Polar animals we've looked at in science. This was an art + science + math activity!
Families, please remember that we have our school bake sale on Friday, Dec 13th. All treats will be prepared by our PLP class and will cost 25 cents each. Students will have the opportunity to visit the bake sale and purchase their items. We started the day off exploring how animals can adapt to extreme conditions. Most students did not know what I meant when I said "extreme conditions" so we watched a National Geographic documentary called "Unsung Heroes of the Arctic" about animals living in the Arctic. Students were able to then visualize Arctic conditions. They simply could not believe it was cold enough to freeze the photographer's eyelids shut when he blinked - the link to watch is below! Students learned that to "adapt" means to change and we discussed how the animals in the video have adapted to their environment. For example, the Arctic Fox has white fur so that it is easily hidden in the snow. Afterwards, we talked about Polar Bears and how they adapt to extreme conditions too. We learned that Polar Bears have many features to help them live in the Arctic, like large paws to help them walk on ice and swim fast. All students are bringing home an information sheet about Polar Bears to read to their families, please practice with them and discuss what other adaptations they have learned about so far! Afterwards, we were pleased to welcome Cst. Gary Hartmann to our class for a special lesson. Mr. Hartmann focused on the special skills and talents we each bring to our communities, comparing each of the students to a snowflake - no one is exactly the same. Students were also able to interact with a new member of their community, learning that we each have many roles within our different communities. Mr. Hartmann's first job is keeping people safe, but he also helps educate kids! Students completed special snowflake art that they are bringing home tonight! After Daily 5, grade ones learned how to show patterns with letters. Allowing they to translate repeating patterns from one representation to another. Much like showing patterns with numbers, students are practicing assigning the same letter to the same shape. See if your student can determine if the two below patterns match by assigning letters to each shape: Grade twos are working on describing pattern rules for patterns that have two attributes changing. Students are able to identify which two attributes are changing, and then use specific words within those attributes to write for specific pattern rules. For example, in the pattern a) below, the pattern rules would be:
Shape: square, circle, circle, repeat Colour: white, grey, grey, repeat See if your student can write the pattern rules for b) and c) below! Grade 1 and 2 ended their week with the exploration of the the letter Xx. The sound of this letter is /ks/ as in ax. We were able to blend many words like fax, six, mix, fix, wax, fox and box! Have your student read their Xx books at home as well!
In math, we focused on categorizing shapes. Next week, our art project has a large shape component and we want to make sure that students are comfortable identifying shapes. See the below 3D shape categorizing activity below to practice some more at home! We spent gym class with our grade six buddies today! We learned some more cooperative games using our large parachute and we even created a relay race. Having the support of the older grades only enhances our sense of community within Rosscarrock. Students begin to value their community more when they feel a sense of belonging, which our grade 6 buddies support when they care for and teach us! Next week, we have a special lesson from our school constable, Gary Hartman. Please support our classroom success by reinforcing proper classroom behaviour at home. Students are expected to show respect during ALL lessons; however, when a special guest comes into our room, the expectation only increases. Additionally, there will be a bake sale put on by our PLP class next week on Friday, December 13th. All treats will be 25 cents! |
Mrs. BergHi! Welcome to our class blog. Our blog celebrates student success in Room 9 at Rosscarrock School. Archives
March 2020
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