Last Week Peek

I have a bunch of videos and photos to post today, so I will let the pictures do most of the talking.

Physical Education

We were so successful improving our hula hooping skills that we have now moved onto skipping. This is one talented group of kids. Check out our moves.....

 

Every Friday, the entire school meets in the gym to participate in our school wide Health Hustle lead by Mrs. Tarnowski. Here's a peek inside our gym during last Friday's Health Hustle.....

 

 

Non-Fiction Writing

 

We are wrapping-up our study of penguins and non-fiction text features. We completed some amazing penguin reports, which are now on display on the bulletin board outside of our classroom. Come on down our hallway and take a look when you have a chance.

 

 

We also had a chance to integrate a lot of artwork into our penguin theme unit. Last week we were very fortunate to have Mrs. Barone working in our classroom. One of the amazing things about Mrs. Barone is that she is also an artist. She was able to share her artistic talents with us and we created some amazing pieces of artwork.

 

 

These penguins are just the cutest things I have ever seen.

 

We are also loving "Ready Freddy! The Penguin Problem" by Abby Klein. We only have two chapters left to read and we're eagerly awaiting to see how the story ends.

 

 

 

Math

 

After completing a very successful unit on place value skills, we decided to revisit even and odd numbers. Here is a cute bulletin board display that ties in perfectly to our new study of communities. The students created almost identical houses as well as some creative and colourful houses. The identical house were all given an even address whereas the colourful and creative houses were given an odd address. Welcome to Even and Odd Street.

 

 

Social Studies

 

Speaking of communities, last week's focus was on community helpers. We took the opportunity to improve our inferencing skills while learning about the people that work and contribute to the success of our community. Students were divided into groups of two and were assigned one community helper. We researched books and created clues about our special helper. The class then worked together to examine each of the clues and used their background knowledge (schema) to guess the community helpers.

 

 

This week, we will be learning about the changes that have taken place in our community. It will be fun to research and learn about what school was like for our grandparents.

 

Enjoy your evening!

-Mrs. Singh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place Value, Penguins and Hula Hooping

SNOW DAY!

 We spent a few extra minutes outside today to enjoy the small amount of flurries that accumulated on our school field. Wow, was it ever cold outside. Don't forget to bring your snow gear to school tomorrow,this includes your mittens and toques, just in case the cold weather keeps up.

Last week, we started making some New Years goals. They are all on display outside of our classroom. We will be working hard to accomplish these goals throughout the year.

In Math, we have been working on place value. We have been completing many hands-on activities to help us strengthen this important skill. One of our favourite and engaging activities we have completed are creating our initials with base ten blocks and recording the value.

We have also been learning a whole lot about penguins and non-fiction text features.

We are also creating our own non-fiction penguin reports. So far, we have written about how penguins look, where they live, what they eat, and about penguin families. My students favourite part has been learning about how the adult penguins regurgitate into the penguins chick's mouth to feed their baby. Totally gross but awesome at the same time!

Our non-fiction reports should be completed by next week and I can't wait to display all their learning and hard work.

Along with our study of penguins, we've been reading some works of fiction from the Tacky Penguin series. So far we've completed a Tacky the penguin craftivity, a Tacky descriptive writing assignment (adjectives) for the stories Tacky the Penguin and Tacky in Trouble. Tomorrow we'll be reading Three Cheers for Tacky and completing a few more writing activities based on the series.

Finally, in gym, we are learning to improve our hula hoop and skipping skills. I  was able to capture a few short videos that showcase some of our amazing hula hooping accomplishments. These kids are ROCK STARS!

The next two are some of the awesome tricks we have been practicing. The first one is hula hooping around the knees and the second one around the neck.

I cannot figure out how to change the position of the last two videos so you will have to view them sideways. If anyone knows how I can change this please let me know. I have tried everything.

Enjoy your evening. See you tomorrow!

- Mrs. Singh

Place Value, Penguins and Resolutions

Welcome Back! It was great to get back into the swing of things at school. We started the day off with a little New Years fun. Every hour on the hour we opened up a brown paper bag with a message, treat or activity for all of the students. It was our way of celebrating and counting down the day since we could not be could all be together on New Years Eve. At 9:00 we found new erasers for everyone in our first paper bag. At 10:00, our paper bag contained a silly message stating that we could work with our shoes off (this was, by far, our favourite). At 11:00 we found 20 sets of sparkly stickers to share with each other. At 12:00 we found another message encouraging us to chat with our friends. At 1:00 our paper bag contained sour keys for everybody to enjoy and finally at 2:00, another message giving us 20 minutes of free centre time. Not only was it fun and exciting waiting for each hour to roll around, it also gave us a little practice and review with telling time.

 

We also wrote some personal and school resolutions to work toward as we start the month of January. We read the story Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller, to help us better understand what is a resolution and why we make them. I found this video link of the story if you would like to hear it again.

 

 

In Math, we started learning about place value. We will be learning about the ones, tens, and hundreds place values for the next couple of weeks. This can be a difficult concept for some students to really grasp but we'll continue to practice it everyday. Here is a great place value song and video to reinforce what we will be learning in class.

 

 

Finally, in the afternoon we started our study of penguins. This theme unit will be part of our Science curriculum, however it will provide us with a ton of opportunities to learn about non-fiction text features and complete a whole lot of non-fiction informational writing. It should be a lot of fun since I also have some fun craftivities planned to incorporate as well.

 

Well, that's a little snapshot of our first day back.

See you tomorrow!

-Mrs. Singh

Creature Features

Today we completed our Creature Feature riddles. Yesterday, each of the students chose an animal and then researched information and facts about the animal of their choice. They started creating riddles using the information they gathered. Today we completed our riddles and added a few last minute details to our illustrations. We read our riddles to Mr. M's class and they tried to guess our chosen animals. Here are some photos of our completed work:

A Whole Class Bulletin Board Display

A Close-Up View

 



 

We Love To Show-Off Our Work

 

Could You Guess Our Creatures?

I was able to snap a few shots during calendar time today.

First up, our "Celebrity of the Day" completed the calendar duties on the calendar wall.

 

The rest of the class completed their calendar activities in their Math binders.

 



 

Here are some students working and learning together on our classroom computer.

 

I hope you are all having a FANTASTIC Thursday! Tomorrow will be Friday and the end of another fun and busy week.

 

-Mrs. Singh

 

Fun with the iPAD

This morning, our class had the opportunity to use the school's iPAD. We attached the iPAD to our classroom document camera. The document camera allowed us to enlarge the image on the iPAD and view it on our classroom projector screen. The entire class was then able to utilize and benefit from the iPAD, rather then one student at a time. Isn't technology amazing? The spelling City app was downloaded onto the iPAD, so we played a few spelling games using our words of the week. All the students were having a great time learning and practicing their weekly words and there was a TON of enthusiasm in the air. What a great way to start the day!

 

After our fun with the iPAD, we completed our weekly word work activities in our work word duo-tangs. It is really amazing to see how much my sweet ones and twos have learned in just 3 short months. They are turning into independent lovely learners. Yay!!!!!

We also had a chance to visit the computer lab today. Most of the students accessed their RAZ-Kids reading accounts and engaged in a variety of activities to help improve their reading and comprehension.

 

In the area of Math, we are continuing to improve our number sense by describing, comparing, and ordering numbers up to 100 as well as using mental math strategies to solve addition and subtraction facts to 20. Grade two students will be moving onto double-digit addition and subtraction without regrouping shortly. I always find that double-digit addition and subtraction is much easier for students when they have their basic facts memorized. For this reason, during the month of December, we will begin a new morning Math warm-up that will help all of the students memorize and master their basic math facts.

 

We have been having a lot of fun in gym learning and performing a number of folk dances. One of our favourites is the Kinderpolka. The Kinderpolka is a children's dance from Germany that mocks the adults scolding finger and uses a clap and slap pattern. The students create a circle and are assigned a partner. Next, they perform a number of side steps, stomps and claps which are repeated several times throughout the music. Too cute!

 

Tomorrow, we will be working on completing some animal classification riddles that we started working on this afternoon. Each of the students chose an animal and then researched information and facts about the animal of their choice. They started creating riddles using the information they gathered. Tomorrow they will have other students in the school try and guess their animal after reading their riddle. I'll definitely be posting photos of their work on this blog.

 

Have a great evening! See you tomorrow!

 

- Mrs. Singh

When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.

This week in our word study, we will be learning words that have the long a vowel sound. Last week, we learned how this sound can be created with the magic "e". Some other spelling patterns that create this sound are :

ay as in day

ai as in pail

eigh as in sleigh

One way to help the students remember the ay and ai vowel patterns is to remember this rhyme:

"When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking."

Here is a fun video and song clip to help reinforce these patterns:

 

 

We created a list of words with the long a vowel sound and we will continue to add to the list as the week progresses.

 

Onto animal classifications...

 

Today, in Science, the search was on when six poster boards were displayed throughout the classroom. Each poster board represented one of the six animal classification groups that we have been studying (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects). Each of the students cut out animal pictures from a variety of magazines and then pasted the magazine pictures onto the appropriate poster boards.

 

    

 

Searching through magazines

and

our mammals poster board

 

 

When we were all finished, we checked over our work and crossed out any animals that were pasted into the incorrect group (penguins had some of us confused, but we learned that they actually belong in the bird category).

 

Next we completed our animal classification windsocks (which some students have taken home to complete as homework) and displayed them hanging from our ceiling.

 

 

 

Have a great evening!

-Mrs. Singh

 

 

Animal Classification

Animal studies have to be one of my favourite parts of the grade 1 & 2 science curriculums. There are so many opportunities for hands-on learning in our own backyards that it will definitely be a focus that last throughout the school year.

 

Yesterday, we started our animal study by discussing and sharing our background knowledge (what we already know) with our classmates. After this discussion, the students worked cooperatively in small groups, searching through a variety of animal books discovering things about a variety of different creatures. We also recorded information about what animals can do, what they have, and what they need in order to survive.

 

Today the students took their learning a step further when I introduced two new vocabulary terms, vertebrate and invertebrate. A vertebrate is an animal that has a spine, or a backbone. An invertebrate is an animal that does not have a spine. We watched a short movie clip from the website BrainPOP Jr about classifying animals to help further our understanding. Here is a link to the video: http://www.brainpopjr.com/science/animals/classifyinganimals/

 

After watching the video, the students were given a piece of paper divided in half. They labelled one side of the paper vertebrate and the other side invertebrate. The students then illustrated an animal that would fall under each category. Finally, the students used Q-Tips to create a backbone in their vertebrate. Their final projects turned out great.

Tomorrow we will be taking our learning a little further by identifying and describing 6 animal classifications including mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, and insects.

 

Ms. Judy, the public librarian, came to visit once again for our book club activities. Today she read a story called "Snap" by Damian Harvey. This story is about a Mother Duck that finds a lone lost egg. She decides to take it under her wing and raise it as her own. One by one, all her eggs hatch, but inside that lone lost egg is a very different looking duckling. Mother Duck loves all her little ducklings, no matter how different they may be.

 

We completed our book club session by working in our book club activity books and completed a number of activities related to the story.

 

-Mrs. Singh

Reading, Writing, BINGO, A Salamander, An Assembly, and Some Spelling

Just so you know, this post will be ALL-OVER-THE-PLACE. There is so much to write about because so much has happened this week.

First.....

This month our reading and writing goals have been focusing on connections. Making connections to the books we read enhances understanding. A story will become more meaningful when it triggers memories of similar experiences, feelings, people, or places from within our own lives.

Some of the types of connections students can make to the books we read are:

Text-to-Self : When a book reminds the reader of something that happened to them.
Text-to-Text : When a book reminds the reader of another book they have read.
Text-to-World : When a book reminds the reader of something that doesn't just affect them personally, but affects other people in the world.

Many of our connections happen during story read aloud times and group discussions.
I have been choosing to share books and stories about real-life situations, such as friendships, school, and feelings. Before, during, and after our read aloud times, the students are encouraged to make connections to the pictures, characters, and feelings from the stories.

Writing to connect is another important component of our Language Arts curriculum. This month we will be writing many personal narratives that invite readers to make connections to our own writing.
This week we wrote about different feelings and the experiences that cause these feelings. Before we begin any type of writing, we will usually complete a planning sheet that helps us organize our thoughts and ideas. Here are a few examples of our work...

A pre-writing planning sheet:

 

 

 

Two examples of student writing.

 

 

Second...

 

In math, we've been working on our number recognition skills all the way to 100. BINGO seems to be a favourite activity to practice this skill. Yesterday we had the opportunity to teach the sweet Kindies a little number recognition and play a little BINGO.

 

 

 

Third...

 

A special guest spent two days in our room this week. No, it wasn't the candy corn bandit but rather a very cute and slimy salamander. One of the our classmates happen to find the little guy near the basketball court by the doggy daycare. We quickly found him a cozy, moist aquarium where we could keep him safe. We spend a little time looking up information regarding his eating habits and habitat. We also had a little election and voted on a name. We decided on the name Zoom, appropriate because he was able to hide under the leaves in his aquarium so quickly. Today, with a little bit of sadness in our hearts, we let Zoom go and returned him to the spot we had found him. We knew he'd be much happier that way.

 

 

Fourth...

 

We completed a Remembrance Day writing activity with messages for the soldiers to display in the gym for our assembly.

 

 

 

Fifth...

 

Finally, I wanted to showcase a few more amazing spelling activities completed by three of my hardworking students.

 

 

A short vowel sunshine

and

a beautiful word pattern rainbow!

 

Some short vowel playdoh words

 

 

And Finally...

 

Don't forget that Sunday is Remembrance Day.

Please take some time to remember.

 

Have a wonderful weekend.

See you on Tuesday!

 

-Mrs. Singh