Bye Bye February!

If I had only known how long the snow and arctic cold would hang on...

Yet another week of lots of indoor recesses. Spring cannot come soon enough!

This week in Language, we read another poem titled "Pour dessiner un bonhomme" for our shared reading. This will be it for winter themed poems, it's time to start thinking about spring. We reviewed the "an" and "oi" sounds in "Maman" and "Les petits pois". We began a new cycle of writing centres. The guided centre focuses on learning about different types of punctuation and when to use each. In our guided reading centres, we have been focusing much more on comprehension strategies. The students tried out a new reading website called "Pas à pas lecture" in the computer centre. I shared "L'hiver parfait de Winnie" as a read aloud. It was a fun story about a witch that is tired of winter. (I can't relate at all! Lol) The illustrations are great and this book is from the school library so students can borrow it go read again, if they wish. 

We started a new format for the number of the day this week. It's a little more challenging as it includes several addition and subtraction questions and also requires the students to really implement what they know about even and odd numbers. They have been enjoying practising 2-digit subtraction on the SMARTBOARD. The class also learned about area and perimeter for the first time. I like to use the analogy that they are gardeners. They need to think about perimeter as the length of fencing they need to put around their garden and area as the space within the garden where they get to plant. Other than a few students who were confused between the two, most caught on to these concepts well. We will do the odd question in our daily math problems over the next little while and we will get into a larger unit on this later in the school year. We spent quite a bit of time this week discussing how to solve word problems: write down what you know, circle the words that tell you what type of calculation that's needed (+, -, ...) show the equation and find the answer, and finally, write a sentence with the answer. 

On Friday morning, the class attended the play "Charlotte's Web". Unfortunately, I was at an inservice at the board office and missed out on it. The class told me all about it though when I got back to school. I mistakenly put in their homework that we were skating on Tuesday. I'm sorry for the confusion, the class will be skating on Tuesday, March 10. There will be lots going on over the next little while. Please check the agenda for information on any upcoming activities.

Have a great weekend!