Update from Ms. R

Thank you to all the families for understanding the reason for my three day absence this week. I was away for jury duty and luckily my group was not picked for jury selection. So I was back for Thursday and Friday and I am grateful to the supply teachers for taking care of the class while I was away.

Homework

The homework for this week is to read the non-fiction text about the body covering adaptations of different animals and to answer the reading comprehension questions. There is also a math sheet reviewing linear measurement. If you do not have a centimeter ruler at home there is a paper one on the sheet. If you cut off the paper ruler please remember to tape it back on the sheet as the back of the ruler has part of the question (from the other side of the math sheet) on it. This homework is due on Friday, November 2nd.

Parent Notes

1. On Monday, October 29th, our class photo will be taken. This is also a time for individual photo retakes if your child was away or if you wish your child's photo to be taken again. Please let me know by email if you wish to have your child's photo retaken.

2. Thanks for supporting our school's Book Fair this week! The fair raised a lot of money for our school's library. The Book Fair's bookstore partner this year was, Another Story Bookshop located at 315 Roncesvalles Avenue, in the west end of Toronto. Their website is www.anotherstory.ca . If you have never been to this part of the city, it's worth the trip with lots of coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants and other cool independent stores like a yarn shop and a chocolate shop (two of my favourite things...).

3. On Wednesday, October 31st it is Halloween! Our school has a tradition of a Halloween parade in the afternoon on this day. Children will put on their costumes AFTER LUNCH. My class has a tradition of making a healthy-ish treat and doing a Halloween craft. Please DO NOT send any candy for the class on this day. Our school is a NUT-FREE school and peanuts and other nuts are often in Halloween candy and should not be brought to school. (For example, treats like Crispy Crunch and Wonderbar contain peanuts, but it is not easy to see that on the packaging.)

*If your family does not celebrate Halloween and you would like your child to be excused from the celebrations, please email me and let me know. There are alternative activities available, but the office needs to know in advance.

Important Dates:

October 31 - Halloween - Halloween parade (pm)

November 11 - Remembrance Day - whole school assembly this day

November 14 - Progress Reports go home

November 15 (evening) and November 16 (morning) - parent/teacher interviews

November 16 - P.A.Day - no classes

December 7 - P.A. Day - no classes

December 22 - January 6 - Winter Holidays
January 7 - First day of school for 2019

News for October 26

News for October 26

This week the children measured the length of the hallway outside of our classroom, learned about the traditions of Halloween and even welcomed a new student to our class!

In math, the class continued the linear measurement unit by using what they know about non-standard and standard units. The students now have benchmarks for understanding the length of a centimetre, metre and kilometre. The children had many experiences measuring their bodies and things in the classroom using non-standard units (for example, plastic blocks) and standard units, using rulers and measuring tapes. At the end of the week, the class went into the hall outside our classroom and estimated, then measured, the length of the hall using metre sticks (standard units) and then grade two student bodies (non-standard units). The hall is 60 metres long or 46 grade two student bodies long! We talked about how this made sense, since a grade two student body is longer than one metre...

The class learned a different way to tell a story by using your voice and a piece of paper and scissors. The children learned how to tell a Halloween story by folding and cutting an orange piece of paper to reveal a jack-o-lantern pumpkin design. Each student told the story at least two times, so there could be one pumpkin to decorate the wall outside our class and one pumpkin to take home. The children were also give some orange paper to take home to orally tell the story to family members too.

In our guided reading groups this week, the children learned how to listen for and recognize words that rhyme. They read aloud the children's classic, Chicken Soup With Rice and noticed that many rhyming words share common spellings, for example, rice, nice, twice. Sometimes this strategy can be used to help spell unfamiliar words. If a child wants to spell the word "sheep", he/she can think of a rhyming word that he/she does know how to spell, to help them, perhaps "keep". (However, English is a crazy language and words that rhyme or sound the same, are not always spelled the same way, for example, floor and more, but this strategy does give some form to the phonetic spellings.)

In science, the children wrote down and shared their research questions for their animal research projects. These questions will be compiled into a graphic organizer to help the students organize their research next week. The class also read and wrote about various adaptations that animals have to their environments. Did you know that some frogs have long sticky tongues to help them catch flies?

In social studies, the class formally began the unit on Traditions and Celebrations by brainstorming the symbols, activities and food associated with Halloween. The children drew pictures of people celebrating Halloween and then wrote about their pictures in their journals.

Finally, on Friday, we planted an Amaryllis flower bulb. This type of plant not only grows beautiful flowers, but also it grows very, very tall flowers. So when I asked the children where the math was in this project, they said, "We'll measure it!"

Books read aloud this week:

The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg
The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter
My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak

Update from Ms. R

Homework

The homework for this week is for each student to interview a parent and write down the answers to the questions on the Parent Interview worksheet. There is also a math sheet reviewing ordinal numbers and fact families. This homework is due on October 26th.

Notes for parents

1. Recess - Last week I brought some soccer balls from home for our class to use at recess time. These are very popular, but we only have three to be shared among the students. (We had four but one was kicked over the fence into the parking lot and has yet to be found...) The gym teacher does provide some gym equipment, but there isn't enough to go around. If your child has a ball, skipping rope or frisbee, they can bring it to school to play with at recess times. Recess times are for physical play and exercise. Please be reminded that the Principal does not allow toys at school. Please make sure your child's name is printed CLEARLY on the item. If needed, your child can use one of our permanent markers at school to write his/her name on the item.

2. Email Communication - I'm happy to communicate with parents via email, but please know that I do not have continuous access to my email account during the school day. I try to respond to all emails within 24 hours during the week and by Monday morning on the weekends. If you would like to arrange a phone call conversation or a meeting with me, please email me the times you are available and wait for me to email back a confirmation of the date and time. Please do not come to the school without an appointment, as I often have meetings or personal commitments after regular school hours.

3. Book Fair - Our school's Book Fair is next week! On Tuesday (October 23) the class will go to the book fair to LOOK ONLY and write down the names and prices of books they like. On Thursday (October 25) we will go to the library to BUY books. On Thursday, please send money with your child in a small bag, labelled with his/her name to buy books. (Cash often falls to the ground and cannot be claimed without a name.) Popular books are often sold out, but they can be paid for and ordered to be delivered at a later time. This is a fund-raising activity for our school's library. Because of the Book Fair there will be no book exchange this week.

4. Borrow-a-book Program - This is a reminder that your child is able to borrow a book from our class library every day of the week! The children are able to exchange books during first period each day. I've noticed that only a few children are borrowing books from our class library of over 1,000 books. Children do not have to borrow books this way if they have books at home or books from the public library. The point is to have your child read for 20 minutes, or more, each day at home.

Important Dates:

October 22 to 26 - BOOK FAIR - Our class days are Oct. 23 (looking) and October 25 (buying)

October 31 - Halloween - Halloween parade (pm)

November 11 - Remembrance Day - whole school assembly this day

November 14 - Progress Reports go home

November 15 (evening) and November 16 (morning) - parent/teacher interviews

November 16 - P.A.Day - no classes

December 7 - P.A. Day - no classes

December 22 - January 6 - Winter Holidays
January 7 - First day of school for 2019

News for October 19

News for October 19

This week the class learned about two-digit subtraction (without regrouping), learned how to tie-dye fabric and, on Friday, welcomed our new student teacher to our classroom!

In math, the class reviewed strategies for subtraction. Children at this age will count backwards, use a 100 chart, fact families or use addition strategies to help them solve subtraction questions. This last strategy uses addition (which many children find easier) to help with subtraction. For example, 9-5=? is solved by making a dot or tally mark for every number counting up to 9 or asking what do you have to add to 5 to get 9? Fact families are the addition/subtraction sentences relating 3 numbers. For example, the fact family for 2,6,8 is 2+6=8, 6+2=8, 8-2=6, 8-6=2). The students then learned how to set up and solve two-digit subtraction questions to get the difference or answer to a subtraction question, keeping in mind the placement of the digits to show the correct place value. Of course, the class then applied these skills to solve word problems.

The children also continued to review ordinal number use as well. Later in the week, the students began to talk about linear measurement, using non-standard units. They used plastic cubes to measure a variety of items in the classroom.

The children continued to work on their fish books. Many children have finished their good copies and are working on their illustrations. Some children are still finishing up their good copies.

We are now over halfway through our chapter book read aloud of My Father's Dragon. The class has been discussing ways to help understand what is happening in a story that does not have pictures. One strategy is to "make a picture or a movie in your mind" as the author writes about what characters look like and what is happening in the story. Earlier in the week, we wrote down the things we knew about the dragon in the story (e.g., it has gold wings) and each child drew what they think the dragon looks like. Then the children wrote about how the strategy of "making a picture in your mind" helps them to understand a story. These drawings and comments are now on display in the hall outside of our classroom.

In our small guided reading groups this week, together we read aloud a funny book, Moira's Birthday by Robert Munsch. The learning goal this week was to read aloud with expression using the unusual spellings and the ! marks to help tell our brains how to say words in a story. For example, an ! tells the reader to say words loudly and with more energy and writing a word "aaaaaand" tells the reader to stretch out the word when it is said.

In science, the students reviewed the seven basic ways to sort the animals we find on earth. Each child selected an animal to research so our class will learn a lot more about 18 different animals! The class will be presenting the information on posters. The children learned how to use stencils to create large capital letters to make titles for their posters. A large title is important so that it is clear what the poster is about.

In art, the class learned about basic pigment colour mixing (which is different from mixing coloured light). Using Play Doh, the students created an artist's colour wheel to show the three primary colours (red, blue, yellow) and then mixed the doh colours to create the three secondary colours (green, orange, purple). Mixing all the colours together in equal amounts, made a sort of grey/brown/purple colour.

The students also created large portfolios to collect their work over the course of the year. They learned how to draw large "chunky" letters to draw their names on one side of the portfolio and the school year information (2018 to 2019) on the other side.

There is a tradition in my class of making pillows for the children to use on their chairs and on the carpet when listening to read aloud books. This week we began the project by tie-dying cotton fabric. Each child folded and twisted his/her fabric piece and wrapped elastics around it and put clothes pins on it. Then the students put the wrapped up fabric pieces into blue dye. The fabric pieces all have beautiful designs on them and look wonderful hanging up in the classroom. Next week, the children will design a second piece of fabric for their pillows...

On Friday, we welcomed Ms. Gashi to our class! She is a student teacher from the University of Toronto, Ontario Studies in Education (OISE) program and she will be in our class full-time for the month of November.

Books read aloud this week:

My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Ganett (chapter book, continued)
Math Counts - Length by Henry Pluckrose
Moira's Birthday by Rober Munsch (guided reading groups)

Sock puppet plays 2018

The children learned about how to creates puppet plays and how to work fairly in small groups. The sock puppet plays were a lot of fun to watch! You can watch them too...

Update from Ms. R

HOMEWORK:

The homework for this week is to write a fiction story about a spider in the homework writing journal. There is also a math worksheet reviewing two-digit addition (without regrouping) and ordinal numbers. This homework is due on Friday, October 19th.

PARENT NOTES:

1. Water Bottles: Students are allowed to have one water bottle on his/her desk. Please put only water in the bottles as spill often occur and juice can be sticky and tea is hot. We now have a system in our class that if a water bottle is empty your child will put the empty bottle in a bin and I will refill the bottle at the new water fountain down the hall. This minimizes disruptions during class time.

2. Agendas: We now know that our agendas will arrive by October 31. In the meantime, children will continue to bring home cards with the weekly word wall words (spelling) written down, so they are able to practise at home. When we get the agendas, the word wall words will be written down there as the agendas will be the place to reference these words, as well as a place to hold homework (there is a pocket in the front to hold loose papers).

3. Math Facts: A few families have contacted me about helping their children to increase the speed and accuracy of solving addition and subtraction facts. Automating these facts helps free up working memory, so your child can use their brain power to solve more complex questions. Homemade flash cards or ones purchased from the dollar store can be used to practise. Five minutes a day really helps! Have your child answer the questions and then trade places and have your child ask the questions and you give the answers. ALSO playing games with playing cards or dice is a fun way to practise. A roll of 4+5, for example, after being seen several times, becomes remembered quickly as 4+5=9.

Important Dates:

October 19 - OISE/UT Student teacher arrives in our classroom

October 24 - Our first library visit to borrow a school library book

October 22 to 26 - BOOK FAIR - Our class days are Oct. 23 (looking) and October 25 (buying)

October 31 - Halloween - Halloween parade (pm)

November 11 - Remembrance Day - whole school assembly this day

November 14 - Progress Reports go home

November 15 (evening) and November 16 (morning) - parent/teacher interviews

November 16 - P.A.Day - no classes

December 7 - P.A. Day - no classes

December 22 - January 6 - Winter Holidays

News for October 12, 2018

News for October 12, 2018

This was another busy four-day week in our class. The children learned about ordinal numbers, the seven general groups to sort animals and performed their sock puppet plays for the class!

The class continued to learn about homophones. These are sets of two or three words that sound exactly the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. For example, a few we have studied already are one/won and some/sum. This week we studied two/to/too a set of three homophones that are easy to spell but the trick is knowing the context of its use in a sentence to know which version to use. 

The students learned about the five stages of the writing process: plan, write the rough copy, edit, revise and publish. We discussed rereading and editing written work. In grade two, children are expected to be able to independently edit their work for a capital and period on each sentence, word wall words spelled correctly and to add any words that are missing. Sometimes, for a bigger project, students will edit their written work with the teacher and also publish a “good copy”. The children began a project to create books with stories about a fish. All the students finished planning their stories and most have written and edited their work this week.

In science, the children learned about the last four categories for sorting animals. The seven groups are: mammals, insects, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. They learned, for example, that a bird is an animal that has feathers and a beak. I have included and additional group “invertebrates” (animals without backbones) to include animals like worms, snails and squid (that otherwise would not fit into any of the “standard” groups). Insects are also invertebrates but at the grade two level, they have been given their own group.

In math, the class used what they know about single-digit addition and applied what they know to two-digit addition (without regrouping). They practised adding numbers vertically, starting with the ones and then the tens, and keeping the digits of the sum aligned with the ones and tens. Later in the week, the children learned about cardinal numbers (1,2,3,4...) and ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th…) and how to recognize and use them. The students also had a chance to work with a partner to solve one or two math challenge word problems.

The groups rehearsed and performed their sock puppet plays for the whole class. The students did a great job! The audience provided constructive feedback to the players, commenting on things they liked about the performance (“I liked when the sock stole the diamonds because that was exciting!”) and things that the players could do next time to improve the performance (“next time, please talk louder because it was hard to hear you.”) The plays were videotaped. These videos can be seen in a separate posting.

The children heard the book “One Shoe Blues” read aloud and watched a video of the story starring sock puppets and the famous blues guitarist B. B. King. Here is the link:

https://g.co/kgs/u9STkn

The children created the front covers for their fish story books. Each child created the three elements always found on the front cover of a book: the title, the author/illustrator’s name and a picture. These elements were made on white paper, cut out and glued on cardstock. 

Books read aloud this week:

More Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya

One Shoe Blues by Sandra Boynton

My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett (chapter book)

The Room 222 Thanksgiving recipes!

The Room 222 Thanksgiving recipes!

BUTTER - Pour 35% cream and a bit of salt into a jar with a tight fitting lid. Shake the jar up and down until the yellow butterfat makes a big lump and is separated from the liquid milk or whey. Pour away the whey (or save to for another use) and use the back of a spoon to press the butterfat and release more of the liquid.

SOUP - Chop up a variety of vegetables and put them in a large cooking pot. This year we had carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, broccoli and pea pods. Add water to cover the vegetables, bring the water to a boil, turn down the heat to simmer and cook until the vegetables are tender (about 20-30 minutes). Taste the broth and add salt to taste. This year, I added about 2/3 cup of quick-cooking minute rice for about the last 5 minutes of cooking.

BREAD - This is Welsh plank bread recipe that historically is cooked on a flat stone in a open fire. I use an electric frying pan and make a “tent” of foil over the top. You can also bake it in the oven.

2 packages of yeast

3/4 cup warm water

3/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon of salt

3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and let it proof for about 5 minutes. Put the flour and salt in a large bowl and add the milk and the yeast mixture. Mix everything together to create a dough. (You may need to add more flour.) Knead the dough until it’s smooth, about 5-10 minutes. Place a tea towel over the top and let the dough rise for 1 1/2 hours. Punch down the dough to remove most of the air bubbles. Place the dough in a large frying pan and pat down to about 5 cm thick and cover for a second rise of about 30 minutes. Turn the heat on to medium and cook on one side for about 40-45 minutes and flip over and cook an additional 40-45 minutes. (You can also put the disk of dough on a cookie sheet and bake for 40 minutes in a 350 degree oven.)

Update from Ms. R

HOMEWORK:

The homework for this week is for the students to practise skip counting using the annotated 100 chart sent home. This sheet is to be kept at home. Grade two students are expected to be able to count forwards and backwards by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, and 25’s from standard starting points (e.g., 10, 20, 30…) as well as unique starting points (e.g., 46, 56, 66…). We practise at school but five minutes a day helps to reinforce this skill at home. There is also a worksheet with a short science/language activity and a Thanksgiving math word problem. The completed worksheet is due on or before Friday, October 12th.

PARENT NOTES:

1. LOST & FOUND ITEMS: I am the teacher in charge of the Lost & Found at school. When cleaning up the items on Friday, I noticed that there were 41 sweaters and jackets with NO NAME on them. Please know that it is very difficult to return clothing, lunch bags and water bottles if these items are not labelled clearly with your child’s full name. (Many children have the same first name…) A permanent marker or purchased labels really help me to return the lost items to their owners.

2. INDOOR SHOES: To help keep our classroom floor clean and for times when the children are in gym/music/drama, if possible, please send your child to school with a second pair of “indoor shoes”. This stops dirty shoes from tracking mud etc. into the classrooms and the gym.

3. PARENT MATH RESOURCE: On Friday, the teachers attended a math workshop and I was reminded on an Ontario Government document meant for parents. The document is called, “Parents Guide to the Fundamentals of Math” and here is the link:

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/parents-math-guide.html

Important Dates:

October 10 - Our first library visit to borrow a school library book

November 11 - Remembrance Day - whole school assembly this day

November 14 - Progress Reports go home

November 15 (evening) and November 16 (morning) - parent/teacher interviews

November 16 - P.A.Day - no classes

December 7 - P.A. Day - no classes

December 22 - January 6 - Winter Holidays

News for October 4, 2018

This was a very busy four-day week at school, from the Terry Fox Run (when some students in our class went to the meet and some of Ms. Comor’s students came to our class) to our Thanksgiving Feast and two presentations in the auditorium (Earth Rangers and the author Philip Roy).

The class finished their time capsule books and we wrote a letter to “The Future Room 222”. We packed everything away in a box, taped it up and put it up on a high shelf, not to be opened until the last week of school nine months from now. It will be interesting to see what changed and what didn’t change.

In math, the children used a new kind of dice, decahedron dice, to practise single digit addition facts. Regular dice have 6 faces but decahedron dice have 10 faces so all the digits from 0 to 9 are represented. We also take a few minutes each day to practices skip counting orally. The class also has opportunities to apply counting strategies to quickly solve real-world math problems like, “How many living things are in our class?” and “How many human arms are in our class?”.

In science, the class learned about the group of animals called “fish”. Fish are animals that live only in water, breathe with gills and use fins to move around.

The students began making an ABC book and brainstormed the names of animals they know and sorted the names alphabetically.

The children played a writing game to help them use their imaginations when writing fiction stories. The students each got a sentence starter and had to write a few sentences to complete the story idea, for example, “One day the clouds rained purple grape juice and…”. We then had a sharing circle to share the stories. 

The children worked in their groups to rehearse their sock puppet plays. This week they created “credits” or the words in a video or movie that tell the title, creators and stars of the movie.

In art, the students played a cooperative drawing game from the 1800’s called “Exquisite Corpse”. The children drew a head, body and legs on a piece of paper folded into thirds, BUT they passed the paper around so that three people actually drew the character.

On Wednesday, our class celebrated Thanksgiving by making and eating food for our Thanksgiving feast! The class made butter, bread and vegetable soup. The students shook the butter jar for one minute each to separate the butterfat from the liquid milk to make butter. The children learned that cooking is really science (biology/physics/chemistry) and mixed yeast, water, milk and flour to make bread dough to be cooked in a frying pan. The students each brought a vegetable and the children washed, peeled and chopped the vegetables and put them in a pot with water to cook into soup.I also added some quick cooking rice to the soup at the end  of the soup’s cooking time. Please see recipes in a separate post.

While the children were taking turns helping to make the food, they wrote in their journals about why we celebrate Thanksgiving and they wrote about what they are thankful for in their lives. Some children had time to make Thanksgiving cards to take home to their families.

Later in the afternoon, the children learned about table manners, how to wait until everyone has been served to begin eating, how to say “Please pass the butter” to get something out of reach. Just like the story in the book “Stone Soup”, the class learned that when you work together, something wonderful can happen!

Books read aloud this week:

Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer

Secret Birthday Message by Eric Carle

Stone Soup by Jon J. Math

Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya