We began the week by going over basic classroom and school routines that we will add to as necessary. The focus in our class is respect; respect for each other and respect for our environment. Each week, students will have a different class job to help out with.
In Language this week, we looked at the comptine "Tourlou". We looked at the different spellings for the "ou" sound. We also focused on what the different types of punctuation meant when reading and how it helped with comprehension.
We began our first few Daily 5 Language lessons. This week we looked at two types of reading to self, reading the pictures and reading the words. We worked on building our endurance by trying to increase our times for on-task reading to self. Next week, we will start some other parts of the Daily 5 as well as continue to build our reading endurance.
A fun read aloud for the week was "Qui m'amènera à l'école cette année?" The main character goes through all sorts of different ways of getting to school. I really liked the idea of floating on a million butterflies.
Today we worked on getting to know one another better and getting used to using French regularly by interviewing two other classmates.
I always get a writing sample from each student the first week in order to plan groups and lessons for writing.
Our first math unit is on reviewing addition and subtraction strategies to 20. We are also looking at how to solve word problems using a 5 step approach. This week we finished the first four steps. 1) Read the problem two times. 2) Underline what is being asked (the question). 3) Circle the important information (numbers and words that help to figure out whether it's addition/subtraction...). 4) Draw a picture to represent the problem. We will continue to practise the fourth step next week and then begin the final step of solving the problem. The students are also completing small booklets to practise their addition facts.
In Visual Arts, we began making Minion self-portraits. This week we drew our portraits. Next week we will be colouring them. Hopefully they will be completed and up for display for the Open House on September 29.
It was so hot this week that after this afternoon's assembly, we watched an episode of "Sid le petit scientifique". It was about animal habitats. This ties in nicely with our first units in Science, Growth and Changes in Animals (grade 2) and Growth and Changes in Plants (grade 3).
These are the chair bags that the students will use to store their drawing books and a small pencil case this year.
I hope everyone has a relaxing and restful weekend. I know I need it after the heat this week!
