Our study on communities is well underway. Last week we focused on types of communities (rural, suburban, urban) and the people that live and work there. We moved onto learning about how communities have changed over the years. We looked at photographs and books from when our grandparents were children as well as old photographs of Port Kells. Afterwards, we worked in groups to create venn digrams to compare communities of the past to communities of the present present as well as to demonstrate our learning. This week, we continued our study by learning about basic human needs and wants. We were inspired by another group of children from Surrey and watched a YouTube video they had created describing the differences between needs and wants. After much discussion, we decided that we wanted to create our own video. First, we each drew a picture showing one of the basic human needs. Next,  we were provided with the following sentence stems:

I need ___________.

I want ___________.

 

Finally, here is the video we created this morning.

 

 

We hope you enjoy our video!

 

Jump Rope For Heart

Divisions 4 & 5 have been skipping their little hearts out in gym for the past two weeks. We're getting ready for the big Jump Rope For Heart event day on February 13.

This important event will help raise money for the Heart & Stroke Foundation. Many students brought home fund raising forms this past week, however if you would like to register online, just click here. A BIG thank you goes out to Mrs.Tarnowski for organizing this important event at our school.

Here's an inspirational video of the Jump Rope For Heart Skipping Team to help get us pumped and excited for next week.

 

 

Enjoy Family Day! See you on Tuesday!

-Mrs. Singh

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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