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.