Ready Set Go!

This morning after guided reading we were finally ready to play our Guess Who game! Here are some pictures of us playing the game. It was really fun! We will have our bags here to share with you tonight and then we will be using some of our ideas to start our big All About Me project.

After recess we met with Room 1 and the Portable to learn about a new friendly competition we will be having from now until our winter break. Room 1-2 and the Portable will each be trying to grow an amaryllis plant. An amaryllis plant grows from a bulb and grows very quickly. It should take about 6 weeks to have a blossom at the top of the plant and the plant will get very tall. We will be measuring our plant everyday to see which plant is growing faster and then we will wait to see which plant blooms first. Which ever plant blooms first wins! Ready, Set, Go!

After lunch we finished up the final part of our secondary colours page and then we got ready for Parent Teacher Conferences. After that it was time for gym and music.

Ms. Boyer is looking forward to seeing everyone at conferences tonight and tomorrow. Please try to arrive a few minutes early so that you have time to look through your work with your parents before it is time to meet with Ms. Boyer.

Our helper on Monday is: Katie

Graphs and Secondary Colours

This morning we started with guided reading and centers. Then we worked on our Guess Who Game. When we were finished our clues we went with some friends and started practicing reading our clues so we will be ready to play the game.

After recess we started making graphs to show the results of our Yes/No surveys. We started by setting up the page and tomorrow we will try to add our towers and get the graphs finished.  Ask me about the important pieces that a graph needs to have!

This afternoon we worked on our secondary colours page. We mixed the primary colours together to make the three secondary colours. We are showing the ways to make secondary colours by making colour equations on our page. Ask me about making secondary colours!

After our painting activity Jasper shared his favourite book. Then it was time for gym. We did our small equipment stations again. When we finished gym we had our finish up or free choice time. We have been really focused this week so everyone had earned free choice time! Lots of us chose to do iPads.

Tomorrow our helper is: Aiden

Guided Reading!

Today was our first day of guided reading! First we had to meet at the carpet so we could find out our groups from Ms. Boyer. Then we took turns going to guided reading and got our folders and books ready to go. When it isn't our turn for guided reading we do our new centers. This week the centers are: word work on ipads, bookmark making, and literacy games.

After guided reading we worked on finishing our Guess Who clues. We were really focused and lots of us got 10 clues finished!

In math we conducted our Yes/No surveys. We used tally marks in bundles of 5 to record our results. Some of us are realizing that learning to count by 5's will make this type of work even easier!

This afternoon we continued our colour study by looking at secondary colours. We learned that the secondary colours are: green, purple, and orange.  They are called secondary colours because they are made by adding two primary colours together (and 1+1=2!).

Then it was time for gym. In gym we did small equipment stations. They were balls, scoops, skipping, and hula hoops. After that we went to music. We got to start using the instruments for our music project!

Thank you for all the food donations that have been brought in. Tomorrow is the last day to bring in donations. 

This morning we started with journals. After we finished our pictures Ms. Boyer showed us her journal entry and we had to decide what she had done well and what she needed to fix. We noticed that she did a good job with her finger spaces between her words, she didn't have any popcorn letters, and she remembered to make the word "I" an uppercase no matter where it was. But, we noticed that she forgot to put the periods in her writing and forgot to put capital letters at the beginning of her sentences. We helped Ms. Boyer fix these things in her journal and then we went to write our own entries.

After recess we did word work and printing. The grade 1's worked on the letter J (Josie was very excited, she has been waiting for a long time to finally get to J!). The grade 2's started practicing spelling number words correctly. So far the grade 2's have focused on spelling days of the week and months of the year correctly and now we are adding in numbers to 20. These spelling words would be a great thing to keep practicing at home!

Then it was time for math. Today we needed to decide on our question for the "Yes or No" surveys we are going to be conducting. We spent some time talking about how to make a Yes or No question and then we each went and wrote our own. After that we talked about tally marks. We learned that tally marks are a great way to record the results of your survey because they can help to keep your work organized and make it less likely that you will make a mistake when you are counting up your totals at the end. To make sure we are all comfortable with tally marks we did a little review practice to finish our math time. Tomorrow we will conduct our surveys and record our results using tally marks.

After lunch we finished up our Nose Hill posters. We will be putting these up on display for you to see when you come for parent-teacher conferences.  Then we had gym and our finish up/free choice time.

At the end of the day all the grade 1-2's met together to talk about guided reading. We will be starting guided reading tomorrow morning at 8:45. We will be finding out our groups tomorrow and we will begin our new centers routine that will happen along with guided reading. Please make sure you are on-time for school so you don't miss anything!

Our helper tomorrow is: Lawrence

Remembrance Day

Today was our Remembrance Day assembly. Our class did a great job of showing respect during the assembly and our performance of Waltzing Matilda was awesome! Between the dress rehearsal and the real thing, the assembly took up most of our morning. We had a bit of time for centers and watched a few remembrance day videos at the end of the day. Here is a great video that explains the purpose of wearing poppies. The video is from Scotland, but the information is very applicable for Canada.

Our helper on Monday is: Abdul Ahad

Getting ready for Remembrance Day

Today we spent the first part our our morning finishing up our Remembrance Day artwork for tomorrow's assembly. We have created poppy artwork that is inspired by Kandinsky's Circles. The project required a lot us to use lots of stamina to stick with it, even when we through we couldn't possibly cut one more circle!! The final products look amazing and will be a beautiful addition to tomorrow's assembly.

After recess we practiced our song for tomorrow and then we worked on our Guess Who games. We are trying to write at least 5 clues (and hopefully more) about ourselves and then we will get to try out our games next week. These games are a warm up for a big project we will be starting about ourselves and our families.

After lunch we completed our primary colours page in our art journals using paint. We had to be careful not to let our red, yellow, and blue paints mix or our primary colours page would have looked more like a secondary colours page!

When we were finished our primary colours page we went to the music room to practice our song with all the other grade 1's and 2's. We sound really great as a big group! Then we had gym and music. At the end of the day some of our grade 2's performed the poem In Flander's Field for us. They have been learning the poem during word work.

Tomorrow is the Remembrance Day Assembly and it is also picture re-takes day. Due to these special events we will be staying indoors for the morning. Students are invited to wear black, white, and red (and maybe something a bit fancier than usual) for the assembly.  Please also remember to bring donations for the Veteran's food bank if you haven't already (our bin is still pretty empty).

Today we are bringing home a special red card that has all of our log-in information for our CBE account, mathletics, and raz-kids. Mathletics and Raz-kids are great ways to reenforce the skills we are learning at school. Our Raz-kids accounts have been set to our current reading levels. In mathletics, the sections about shapes and data (graphing) would be great places to start. 

Our helper on Monday is: Abdul Ahad

Home Reading!

Today was our first day of home reading! That means that your child will be coming home with their first home reading book today.   In your child's home reading bag you will find a book, a recording book to help keep track of their reading, and some information about learning to read.

Here's what you can expect from home reading this year:

Home reading is in place to help developing readers practice important skills associated with literacy. Some of these skills include comprehension strategies, fluency, vocabulary, sight word and high frequency word recognition, phonemic awareness, and decoding. The leveled books are at the student's independent reading level. This means they can read the book fairly independently with minimal support. 

In guided reading with a teacher at school, the students will work to read books at their instructional level. Here they are learning reading strategies, which they then practice at home through their home reading books. 

At Home:
Your child will bring home a new home reading book on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Please have your child practice their book a few times with an adult or older sibling. Once the book has been read please fill out the recording booklet, sign it, and return it along with the home reading book each Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Supervised daily reading practice is important to ensure success and supports your child's reading development. 

At School:
Each day (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) a volunteer will be here to help with the home reading program. Your child will re-read their home reading book to the volunteer and then choose a new book to bring home and practice. Your child will bring home a new book each time unless they are reading a chapter book. Those students who are reading chapter books do not need to bring their books back each day and should instead keep reading at home and just bring their books back when they need to exchange them. 

Happy Home Reading!