I would just like to start of by saying thank you to all the parents that have generously donated to our Stonegate Basket. The donations have been an overwhelming success.  It is amazing to see our basket overflowing with gifts.  Again, thank you so much and our family will be so appreciative.  

As for the classroom, the students are starting their new unit in letter writing.  We have read a few read aloud picture books that show letter writing.  Ask your child the five parts to a letter (Heading, Salutation, Body, Closure, and Signature).  We are working on Place Value in Math.  This helps the students understand how numbers are in relation to one another.  This is one strategy that can help them with addition.  Ask your child when we trade units in for a rod.  The grade one students continue to work on their research projects in Science.  Most students have completed the researching component and will begin writing about what they learned.  The grade two students conducted one experiment in which they mixed flour and water.  Ask your child what he or she observed/learned.

We are starting another food drive for families less fortunate.  Please bring in non-perishable items to school, such as pasta and canned food.  There will be a box outside our classroom.  Thanks again, for all of your generous donations.  

The students have been working on their last procedural writing piece.  Each student decided what they wanted to write a procedure on.  Ask your child what they chose to teach someone to do.  Last week, the students made their plans (brainstorming webs) and rough copies.  We are currently working on our final copies.  When we finish, the students will be starting their new writing unit on writing Personal Letters.  We have also started our new math unit Number Sense.  We will start the unit with Place Value.  Some key vocabulary words that were used today were digit, word form, and standard form.  The grade one students are researching about animals.  The grade two students are conducting different experiments on Liquids, Solids, and Gas.

The students are working on their good copies for their procedural writing.  The students will create one more independently before finishing the unit.  Our next unit in writing will be letter writing.  We are also wrapping up our Patterning Unit in Math.  The grade two students have been doing experiments in Science on the different properties of matter and the grade one students have been working on the five senses.

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend.  The students have been working on procedural writing in Language.  We made a procedure today as a class about our morning routine.  Ask your child what the title of the procedure was.  The students have also been working on their own task: "how to heal a cut/wound".  Ask your child for the steps they have included in their procedure.  We are still working on patterning in math.  The grade one students are looking at repeating patterns and labeling them and the grade two students are working on growing patterns.  The students were introduced today to the website IXL.  Please have your child go on this website to practice their basic math skills.  This will lay a good foundation for what we are learning in class.  Start with patterns and graphs since we have completed these two units.  Each day the students should be reading a book.  It can be a snuggle up book from school, a book on Raz Kids or a book from home.  IXL should be a part of this daily routine.

The students had their spelling test this morning.  Please make sure your child is studying the words at home.  They also had the opportunity to write letters to the special person.  This is a great activity to see the gains that students have made in their writing as they have to write the same letter each week.  In math, we discussed the importance of labeling our patterns.  That is, what is the ABC rule.  Ask your child what their pattern rule is for their snake.  The grade one students made a pattern with one changing attribute and the grade two students had to have two changing attributes.  We will continue to work on our snakes on Monday. 

The students have started their writing unit on Procedural Writing.  We have completed a few procedures in small groups and as a class.  The students brainstormed with their reading buddies ideas for their first independent procedural writing task that they will begin on Monday.  Ask your child what the procedure is about.  The students have brought home a rubric for the end of this unit.  The rubric will be used  to assess one of their writing tasks.  Please make sure to initial it and have your child bring it back to school on Monday.

Happy Monday everyone,

The students were introduced to procedural writing in our language period.  We also call this "How to" writing.  In other words, it is step by step instructions.  Ask your child one of the transition words we use in procedural writing, such as First, then, next, after that, and finally.  The students will be working on this writing task for the month of November.  We also started a new unit in math: Patterning.  We created linear patterns using pattern blocks. Ask your child how many times a pattern has to repeat for it to be a pattern and what is meant by "the core" .  The grade one students put labels of different body parts on their new friends in Science.  The grade two students learned about Diwali for Social Studies.  Our read aloud today was Enemy Pie.  We discussed how characters in books have different character traits.  Ask your child which character trait they shared with the class about themselves.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

It has been quite a busy day.  After the parade in the gym, the students were working on their haunted house pictures.  We had to cut it short so we could practice our spelling words for the week.  We then went to our Learning Buddies to do a Halloween craft.  Unfortunately, the students ran out of time.  They will continue to work on this craft tomorrow.  We then had our party in the afternoon, where the students had snack and watched the movie Monsters University.  The movie goes perfect with our class pumpkin as it is a character from the movie. I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween night!

Today the students worked on a Halloween poem.  Ask your child what the similarities and differences are between pumpkins and Jack O' Lanterns.  We will also be writing about our field trip in our Writer's Workshop this week. In Math, the students are working on different addition strategies. They have been anchoring numbers to 10 by using the 10 frame and using the words less than or more than.  For example, 3 is 7 less than 10.  They have also been using the addition strategy counting on in which they take one number and count on from there.  If you have the number 6 and 9, you would start on 9 and count 6 more.  We also read the book The Empty Pot by Demi, which was supposed to be followed by a reader's response about character traits found in characters.  We however, ran out of time, so we will continue with this concept tomorrow. During Social Studies, the grade one students created new friends by tracing a classmate, cutting it out, and decorating it.  We will be labeling these new friends with the different parts of the body.  The grade two students are working on the different properties of matter: gas, liquid, and solid.

The students worked on a Halloween poem today.  They had to read the poem to six different people before drawing a picture and answering questions regarding the poem.  The students practice fluency as they read the poem to others.  The students are working on identifying numerals, number words and ten frames.  The grade one students are working on numbers 1 through 10 and grade two students are working on numbers 1 to 20.  Practice writing out the number words with your child. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I checked Raz Kids over the weekend and saw that many students have started to do the readings and quizzes.  When you sit with your child as they read the stories, please encourage them to use different reading strategies and to think about the story.  The students worked on writers' workshop today.  The students had the choice to work on a new piece or work on a previous piece.  In small groups we discussed the writing rubric and what to keep in mind when writing.  Ask your child what we are looking for in writing.  We just wrapped up Data Management in math today and we will begin Number Sense tomorrow.  The grade one students will work on one to one correspondence with number words and the grade two students will begin with anchoring numbers to ten.  The grade one students are working on different ways in telling time, such as day and night, seasons, days, months, hours etc. The grade two students are comparing traditions and celebrations.

The students are almost finished their unit in Data Management.  The grade one students have been working diligently on creating tally marks and recording their data on a bar graph.  It is important that the grade one students know the 6 parts to the graph.  The grade two students have also been working on bar graphs, but have recently started pictographs.  They are learning to use symbols to represent their data and understanding scale.  For example, one symbol representing 5 votes.  Since it is a short week, the students will have their spelling test on the Thursday rather than the Friday.  Please make sure they are practicing their words at home. 

The grade one students have been working on telling time in Social Studies.  They started with daytime and nighttime and we are currently looking at different seasons.  We have discussed the activities associated with the seasons and the behaviour of animals.  The grade two students have been comparing traditions with classmates.

Starting next week, the students will begin the Snuggle Up Program.  The students will take home a book at their reading level to read and log into their reading log.  They will also have an opportunity to log onto the website Raz Kids for supplementary reading.

Each day of the week, the students work on a different language task.  One day is designated for spelling activities where the students practice their spelling words for the week and look at different grammatical structures and proofreading strategies.  One day is also designated for poetry where students read the poem and create "mental pictures" of the poem.  It is then followed up  with writing activities that also look at different writing strategies, such as rhyming words, sentence structure, sound blends, etc.  Today, the students worked on Writers’ Workshop.  They have already created a brainstorming web at the back of their notebook to refer to each time they are to write during WW (Writers' Workshop) about all the different ideas they can write about during WW and started their first writing piece.  Today's lesson that we discussed was about “the main idea” and “supporting details”.  Ask your child about these two concepts.  We are still working on Data Management in math.  We should be wrapping up the unit at the end of this week.  The grade one students continue to complete a tally chart by surveying their classmates and creating a bar graph based on the data they collect.  The grade two students have been working on pictographs where a symbol must represents their data.  They must choose how many students/people each symbol represents.   

Hello everyone,

We have been reading many read alouds in class this past week.  Read alouds allow students to hear the classroom teacher model fluency and expression. It also exposes them to vocabulary that is just beyond their own instructional level.  This is important as students become aware that “Reading is Thinking”.  As a class, we have been looking at making predictions at the beginning of the book, during the story and at the end of the story.  We have also been making different types of connections, such as text to self, text to text, text to world, and text to media.  When reading with your children at home, ask your child to make a connection.  We are continuing with our daily routine of the morning meeting in which students have the opportunity to correct language mistakes in our morning message, graph the temperature and learn place value and money.  In math, we are still working on data management.  The students are practising how to ask good survey questions, tally their results, record the data in their graphs and then create conclusions.

The students worked on their spelling exercises that assist in practicing their spelling words for the week, but also helps with other language concepts, such as editing, punctuation, and grammar.  We then had some time to work on Data Management in Math.  We discussed what makes a good survey question and the importance of having all the choices in the same category/group.  That is, when we look at the choices we would know what the survey question was asking. The students worked in groups to come up with a survey question and collect the data.  The students will create the graph and make conclusions tomorrow.  In the afternoon, the grade two students went to Mrs. Wilson's class and wrote about their favourite family celebrations.  The grade one students discussed the importance of rules and responsibilities in the classroom.  The students also had the opportunity to ask the grade five students a survey question that we have already surveyed and collected the data of our own class.  We will compare the data of our class and the grade five students tomorrow. 

Happy Monday everyone, After our routine morning meeting, we learned a poem about fall. Today we read the poem together as a class and then the grade one students drew a picture and wrote about their favourite fall activity. The grade two students did the same, but also looked at rhyming words, sound blends, and plural words. We will look at this poem again tomorrow to review these concepts. In math, the students had the opportunity to choose their own survey question and ask their classmates the question. The students will ask their learning buddies the same survey question tomorrow and compare the data of the grade 5 students and our classmates. Ask your child one conclusion they made from the data they collected today. In the afternoon, the students created Piet Mondrian inspired works of art. The grade one students used primary colours in their artwork and the grade two students used secondary colours. Grade 1 parents: ask your child what the primary colours are and why they are called primary colours. Grade 2 parents: ask your child what priamry colours they need to make each secondary colour. We will continue to review the colours in visual art.

The day seemed to fly by. After working on when to use a capital in our morning message, the students worked on their spelling words. They completed different activities that had the students practice writing them out. We then continued to work on our important pages. The students will be writing out their final copies tomorrow and hopefully, the class book will be ready to take home by next week. We then worked on Data Management during our double math period. As a class, we graphed our favourite sports. We reviewed the parts of the graph and made conclusions about the data. Ask your child what conclusions they gathered from our Favourite Sports Graph. At the end of the day, the students had the opportunity to read with their learning buddies. Mr. Blais is the Health and Phys. Ed. teacher. He would like to inform you all that the students are currently learning their home addresses and phone numbers. He would also like to remind students to wear running shoes on Phys. Ed days.

Hello everyone, The first two weeks are over…congratulations! We have been working hard on establishing the rules and routines of the classroom. As part of our routine, the grade one and two students have been switching between my class and Mrs. Wilson’s class. That is, Mrs. Wilson would take the grade two students from my class and hers and I would take the grade one students from mine and from hers to teach Math, Science and Social Studies. We have come to the decision, however that the students will only switch for Social Studies and Science. Language and Math will be taught in our own homeroom classes.
As for today, the students started the day working on a morning message. This is part of the students’ daily routine. During this time, the students are at the carpet trying to read through a morning message looking for different language concepts, such as punctuation, spelling, word families, vowel pairs etc. This morning, we reviewed the concept - when to use a capital letter. I introduced the acronym MINT: Months, “I”, Names of people, places, and things and The end of a sentence. Ask your child if they remember what MINT stands for. The students also had the opportunity to work on their “Important” pages. This activity is inspired by the book “The Important Book” by Margaret Wise Brown. I am hoping the final product will be complete by the end of the week. In Math, the students worked on graphing. As a class, we graphed the students’ birthdays. We discussed the parts of a graph such as the title, labels, choices, numbers, conclusions, and data. We will continue to work on graphing for the next month. We finished the day with the read aloud “The Dot” by Peter Reynolds and created our own dot artwork.
You will find a list of spelling words in your child's agenda. We will introduce new words each Monday and work on several activities throughout the week. The spelling test will then be on the Friday.

First Day

Welcome everyone to our class blog. I will be updating the blog with important information on what is going on at LKS and in the class quite often, so make sure to check the blog to stay informed. Today your child brought home two information packages in his/her agenda. There are a few sheets that need to be returned to school at your earliest convenience. Please make sure to read through the packages as as it will help your child with the routines of our class.
As for the first day, it went well. We read a few stories, did an art activity, and did some calendar work. The students are still getting to know one another and it seems as though we have a good classroom community. Over the next several weeks, we will continue to work on the rules and routines of the class and build a classroom community that is safe and warm. To review what happened in the class today, ask your child to retell you one of the stories we read today.

COMING SOON!