A Smorgasbord of Stuff

I'm back and feeling 100% better. All the hugs I got today sure helped out as well. I missed every single one of my 20 amazing students and am so happy to be back.

 

Today I introduced the class to a new reading comprehension strategy called inferencing. Inferring is understanding what is not written with

words in the books we read. We can take clues from the text (pictures clues, word clues, or how a character behaves and acts) and our schema (what we already know) to form a new idea.

We started our first lesson with a mystery box activity. I placed an object inside of a sealed box. The students took turns shaking the box and using their senses to guess what was inside. We recorded our guesess on a large chart. Next, the students were given four clues to help with their thinking .

1. It is black.

2. It is round.

3. It is made of glass.

4. It helps you to see different things in our world.

We recorded their new guesses on the chart and after a lot of discussion we opened up the mystery box to find...

You'll just have to ask them to find out what was inside. Now that we are warmed up and are becoming inference investigators, we'll be engaging in a number of activities over the next week or two to strengthen this important reading comprehension skill.

 

Computer Lab

After our Language Arts lesson, we headed up to the computer lab. The students have been working toward improving their keyboarding skills. At the beginning of each computer lab time, we take 10 -15 minutes to practice our keyboarding skills. You can visit the website that we use by clicking here. We've only been using this website since we returned from Winter break, but already I am seeing improvements in their keyboarding skills.

 

 

After our ten minutes of keyboarding practice, the students are always given the choice to continue or choose one of the teacher approved activities listed in their computer lab duo-tangs.

 

This may include accessing our raz-kids reading accounts,

 

engaging in some Math activities on Starfall Math,

 

or using our creative sides to create images on Kidpix.

 

Math

You may have noticed your child coming home with a Math activity containing 12 math addition or subtraction questions. These are part of our daily addition and subtraction Math drills. The students are given 1 minute and 30 seconds to complete the twelve questions. If they are able to complete all twelve question correctly during the given time, they move onto the next drill sheet. If they are unable to correctly answer each of the questions, they will receive the same drill the next day. Our goal is to have all students memorize their basic math facts in order to help them be successful with double digit addition and subtraction, a skill taught in grade two.

 

Literacy Day

This Friday is Family Literacy Day. I hope that many of you will be able to spend the first part of the morning reading with your child and engaging in some of the literacy activities happening throughout our school. Today the students chose their favourite book and created a cute craftivity to showcase our book recommendations for others to read.

 

 

Here are a few of our favourite fiction books.

 

As well as a few of our favourite non-fiction books.

 

 

Finally, here are two of our favourite classroom books decorating our classroom doors. These have been part of our read aloud times this year.

 

 

Gym

Last week I posted a few videos showcasing our amazing hula hooping skills. After another week of practice, we are now able to perform some more unbelievable tricks.

 

Here the are.....

*changes in level of body position while hula hooping

 

*changing the position of the hula hoop from our necks to our arms

*hula hooping while on our knees

 

Have a nice evening!

-Mrs. Singh