EQAO and Catching Up

It's been another busy week. This week, the grade threes wrote the EQAO test. Unfortunately with absences, it took a big longer than the three planned days and some students were still finishing up today. On the bright side, it gave me lots of time to really work with the grade twos that I don't usually get. 

This week, the grade twos looked at the comptines "Le dromedaire" and "Frou-frou!" with the dr/fr sounds. Today the grade threes finished up "Agnès l'araignée gagnante" with the gn sound. The class worked on self-editing their procedural writing and then they edited with me. Most are now working on their good copy. I've gotten through most of the GB+ assessments and just have 4 grade threes left to read with. There has been so much great progress in reading this year! This week's poems for our shared readings were about clowns and we will continue with the circus theme next week. 

In math, we looked at time quite a bit. We did several activities on the SMARTBOARD which really enforced the concept of time to the quarter hour. Most of the grade twos are even telling time to five minutes, like the grade threes do, and they were very proud to be able to do "grade three work", one of their favourite things about being in a split grade. The one thing they still need lots of practice in is calculating elapsed time. This is a very difficult concept for most students. Most of the grade twos are finished their time booklets. Just a few need to finish up, along with the grade threes early next week. Then we will do a short test and move on to fractions. Look for a rubric on the time unit to come home soon. 

Have a great weekend and enjoy all the nice weather we will be getting!

Extremely Short Week!!!

Im not sure who planned a PA day on the Friday of a week where we already had Monday for a holiday, but it made for a ridiculously short amount of time to get anything done. Especially when I had to be away on Tuesday for appointments. On Wednesday, the class did some Ketchup (catch up) on their unfinished work. In math, we did some work on time and looked at the different ways of thinking about multiplication (equal groups, repeated addition, and arrays). 

They worked on their art. They are colouring inspirational text posters to hang throughout the school. Yesterday the grade threes had another practise EQAO session with M. Virtue. Next week they'll write the test on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday during the first two blocks each day. 

The forms for our big end of the year trips on June 17 went home. The grade twos are really looking forward to our visit with all the grade two classes to the Canada Food and Agriculture Museum in Ottawa. The grade threes will be joining all of the other grade threes to go to Upper Canada Village to further their understanding of pioneer life. Here are the links for the websites to the two places if anyone would like more information. 

Canada Food and Agriculture Museum:

http://cafmuseum.techno-science.ca/

Upper Canada Village:

http://www.uppercanadavillage.com/

We will also being going to Goukd Lake on June 10 and the forms for that trip will be coming home shortly. 

Have a great weekend!

Celebrating Dance and So Much More

There is always so much going on this time of year. This week the grade twos looked at the comptines "Bruno" and "Le crocodile" with the "br/cr" sounds. The grade threes began the story "Agnès l'araignée gagnante" with the "gn" sound. They did their brouillon (rough draft) for the procedural writing pieces they are working on.  

We are pretty much done the units on Air/Water and Soils in science and will be beginning our last units of the year. This week the grade threes examined different components of soil and then looked at three different mystery soils to try to figure out of what components they were made. The grade twos looked at water a little more closely and did a review of the different states of matter, specifically for water. They looked at different images and had to decide if the water was in a solid, liquid or gas state. 

In math, the class completed short tests on money. Rubrics for the unit will be sent home soon. They began time and did a few activities to review temperature. We will be continuing with time next week and quickly move on to fractions. 

On Wednesday, we joined many other Kingston schools at Fort Henry for Celebration of Dance. It was a great experience to be among the 3000 students that participated. 

I hope everyone has a great long weekend!

Shared Writing and Getting Crafty!

We took a break from centres this week to get further ahead with our big writing piece and to finish up money in math. The grade twos looked at the comptines "Gloria" and "À la plage" with the gl/pl sounds. The grade threes finished up Sophie la photographe. They are getting so much better at answering questions thoroughly! We did another spring poem as a shared reading. It had many challenging words to decode this week but they were great and have come so far with decoding since September. 

We read several examples of "directives" last week and this week. We spent some time over two mornings doing shared writing of this. We then used those examples as shared readings as well. They understand very well the four parts of this type of writing (titre, objectif/but, matériel, and étapes). On Wednesday, we brainstormed ideas they could use to write their own instructions and they completed a plan. We will continue with a rough draft next week. While most of the grade threes were gone yesterday to a road race, the rest of the class worked in groups of four to group write the instructions for how to play snakes and ladders. We had the game out so they could go look at it and think about the steps they needed to include. 

Shared writing #1

Shared writing #2

Brainstorming ideas for their independent writing

Working in groups to write

Today the grade threes went to M. Virtue's room to do a practice EQAO session. This gave them the opportunity to get comfortable with their testing setting. While they were gone, the grade twos watched another part of the documentary "Chemins d'école". The first one we saw was on Nepal. The one we watched today was about Siberia. It ties in very nicely with the grade two social studies curriculum and really gives them a look at how other children in the world live. We had a gréât discussion about this afterward. 

There will be lots of things going on in the next while and the children will be very busy. Next week is Celebration of Dance, the grade threes will have track and field soon, there are more road races, and we still have two more big trips. Please check the agenda daily to stay in the know!

Have a great Mother's Day weekend! I hope all the moms enjoy the crafts/cards your children made. They worked very hard on them. 💐

Directions and Gregg LeRock

It's been a busy week. We're getting into that time of year where there's tonnes going on around the school. This week, the grade twos looked at the comptines "Les cloches" and "Les fléchettes" while the grade threes worked on the story "Sophie la photographe". We began to look at writing instructions this week by examining the text "Suivre les indications". The class learned about the four parts of giving instructions: title, objective, materials needed, and steps to follow. We also did another grammar activity with this text where we looked at which words were nouns, adjectives, and verbs conjugated in the present tense. Today we read another example of a text for giving instructions and then we did a shared writing of the instructions for coming into the class in the morning. We will do a few more modelled examples before the class writes independently. 

We continued with money and did a great lesson where the the class had to make different amounts together on the SMARTBOARD. They love pretty much any kind of interactive lesson that's been on there and I have to admit, I'm really loving using it too! I think I'd be lost without it now! We also continued with other money activities in our centres. 

On Wednesday, we went to see Gregg LeRock. The class really enjoyed the concert. He does a very exciting performance and really gets the audience involved. Many of the students even went up on stage with him for several of the songs. (And some teachers too!) 

Today was the first of a few spring road races. In a couple of weeks, the class will be going to a Fort Henry for Celebration of Dance. We've been practising a lot in class so we'll know the songs/dances fairly well when we go. I added some pictures of our class bulletin boards from the hall, showcasing their recent art and English work that they did with Mrs. Nada. 

PLEASE NOTE: There was a small error in the newsletter. Our class will actually be going to Gould Lake on June 10, not on June 11 as indicated. Please adjust calendars accordingly. 

Have a great weekend!