Snow, Valentine's Day, and a Full Week of School!

This week we had the most snow all winter... and no cancelled buses. The students loved being able to play in the snow at recess. Unfortunately with these weekend's warm weather, there might not be much left by Tuesday.

Here the students are participated in a stretching body break!

And we danced "La danse des canards" this week too. It was sung in several different languages, including French.

In language, we reviewed the "ar" sound and spellings in "Gaspar". We also read "Pour dessiner un bonhomme". We read "Le loup qui voulait changer de couleurs" for our shared reading.

In the guided reading groups, the students finished up their activities on narrative text and continued to work on their written retells. In guided writing, almost all have finished the "message du jour" activities and we are now looking at writing posters. Almost all have had a chance to write a blog post on Seesaw. I will be sending home the information on how to access your child's portfolio.

In math, the students continued to work on subtraction activities. They will be completing all activities over the next week and we will be moving on to new topics.

Subtraction on the Smartboard

They love Zap! Subtraction

In science, they continued to work on their projects. Most are done or just need some finishing touches. We will begin the new units on states of matter for grade 2 and forces and movement for grade 3.

In social studies, the grade threes did a written response to whether they thought a new mine should open or not, based on reading about the pros/cons. They then worked on posters about the displacement of animals to build a new road for the mine.

The grade twos completed activities on Kenya.

In visual arts, the students finished up their watercolour snowmen. We then began a new project on pastel patterned mugs.

In physical education on Valentine's Day, we had helpers from the 4/5 FI class leading group activities.

Happy Family Day and have a great long weekend!

Learning to Blog and More Cancelled Buses

This week we had yet another day with cancelled buses. The students even started blogging!

In language, the students reviewed the "ul" sound and spellings in "La libellule". We also read the poem "Le bonhomme de neige".

The reading strategies we practised this week focused on decoding skills, ensuring that they read carefully look at both the beginning and ending of words and how to stretch out sounds then reread them.

For our read aloud, we read "Le loup qui cherchait une amoureuse". The class found it very funny!

In our guided writing groups, the students who had finished writing their two "messages du jour" got to put that skill into practice in our new class blog. We are using the Seesaw application. I began a class blog and now the students will be adding their own posts in a writing centre. The blog is private so the only way it is accessible is by invite only. A letter will be going home soon explaining how you can access your own child's portfolio. This portfolio will show the posts that they create and any photos of work that they would like to add to their portfolio for you to see. I will send the letters once all groups have had a couple of turns trying out posting messages.

Seesaw

Our class blog with my first post to get the students started

Learning to blog

Look at all the writing from one student during our 15 minute work on writing centre!

In math we focused on subtraction of two-digit and three-digit numbers. We spent some time on how subtraction looks with base 10 blocks as it's very different from adding with the blocks. We also used the virtual manipulative website on the smartboard as another centre.

Subtracting on the smartboard 

Playing Zap! Subtraction

More Zap!

In science the students are working on their unit projects. The grade threes are showing the differences between natural and man-made structures. The grade twos are finding examples of the different types of simple machines that we learned about.

In social studies the grade threes learned about mining and tourism in Ontario. The grade twos completed activities on Egypt and learned about how Valentine's Day began and why we celebrate it today.

In physical education we are practising basketball skills. This week we practised the bounce pass, the chest pass, and dribbling.

Please remember that the "book-in-a-bag" is due back every Thursday for exchange. These are not books that we keep in the class so please return it on time for exchange, otherwise it will be the following week when it gets exchanged. 

Have a great weekend!

Colour House Assembly, Final Skate, and a P.A. Day

We started our week with a Colour House Assembly. The 4 houses competed in a scavenger hunt to find a variety of winter and Amherstview Public School related images around the school. It was also the first Tuesday since coming back from the holidays where buses weren't cancelled. We had our final skating afternoon. Thank you very much to all the parents who made it to the Henderson Arena to help tie skates and skate with us. It will be a short blog post this week as I was away yesterday at home with my youngest who was sick. I didn't get a chance to take very many photos and we have a P.A. Day on Friday.

In language this week, we read "Le bibliophile" to review the "ile" sound and spellings. We also read "Le bonhomme de neige". In our guided groups, we continued to look at narrative texts in reading and le message du jour in writing.

We finished reading "Le loup qui ne voulait plus marcher" and did a shared writing on the smartboard of a very detailed retell. The students have been practising taking notes on postings for their own retell during independent reading. 

We tried out a new resource in reading with a partner. The partners were given these inference cards to read together and then they had to take turns answering the questions. 

In math, we continued our math talks on problems with two-digit addition. Next week we will be starting math talks with subtraction. In our guided Math groups, we continued to work on addition and will be moving on to subtraction next week. 

In science, the students finished up all of their work. Next week they will be doing short projects to show their learning from the two units. If anyone has any old catalogues or magazines that they don't mind sending in, we could use some. Also, I'm looking for flyers from Staples, Rona, Lowes, Canadian, Tire, The Home Depot, and Walmart. 

In social studies, the grade threes are learning about the different industries in Ontario. Today they looked at the forestry industry and the fishing industry. They did some research on the iPad about the types of fish found in Ontario.

The Grade twos learned about the tradition of Groundhog Day. They also did activities on Italy and looked at two of its communities, Rome and Venice.

Have a great P.A. Day and long weekend!