Drumming Day 2!

Today we started the day by finding out about our new center: Poetry Challenge! The purpose of the poetry challenge is to help us get smarter about poetry by exploring poems in different ways. For this challenge we each have a ring with 4 paper cards on it. One card says our name and then we have three poetry punchcards: perform, create, copy. Our challenge is to try to perform 5 different poems by ourselves or with friends, create 5 poems of our own, and copy 5 poems onto big chart paper and read them to the class. Each time we complete one challenge (eg. perform 1 poem), Ms. Boyer will hole punch our card just like a ticket collector on a train. Once we have 5 punches on a card we get to go to the button making station and make ourselves a special poetry button using Ms. Boyer's button maker!

After centers we learned about the next step in our All About Me project. This step is called family writing. Once our family puppets are finished we will write one paragraph about each member of our family to include in our books. To begin we came up with some possible topics we might want to write about. We came up with: name, age, favourite things, hobbies, sports, jobs, and why we love them. In order to make this part of the project a bit easier, we decided it would probably be a good idea to take a few notes about our family members at home and bring them with us. We might want to write down things like the correct spelling of our family members names, their ages, and maybe a few key words like foods, jobs, or hobbies that we might need to have at school. 

After recess we did word work. The grade 1's learned about some amazing people at school called Tiny Teachers! (Ask me to explain Tiny Teachers!) Working with Tiny Teachers really helped the grade 1's with their word practice today. Ms. Boyer noticed that almost everyone remembered to use lowercase letters and keep their letters on the lines today.  The grade 2's worked with Ms. Boyer and talked about letters, and letter combinations that cause vowels to make their long sounds. When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, Magic E, and the igh letter combination were some of the things they talked about.

Then it was time for math. Today was our first day working at our new pattern centers. Before we began we made a checklist to help us remember the steps we needed to include in our math journals. Here is the checklist we created:

After lunch we had another chance to try to get our colour pages into the GREAT column. Many of us were very focused on comparing our work to the assessment chart and were really trying to include facts from all the different categories. Ask me how my work is going. See if I can assess myself using this chart:

Our helper tomorrow is: Katie

Drumming Day 1

This morning we started with journals. Some of us had guided reading while the rest of us focused on our journal pictures. Here are some of the things we are focusing on in our journals writing:
- Adding more details.
- Using lowercase letters.
- Write more sentences.
- Adding finger spaces.
- Careful sounded out spelling.

After recess the grade 1's did wordwork with Ms. Boyer. We practiced our new words for the week. We are studying the -an family and some sight words. Here are our as for the week: can, pan, fan, plan, ran, to, in, is, you.  The grade 2's worked on their vowel sounds wnd i
In math we learned about new pattern centers we will be starting tomorrow. The new centers are: making music, snap cubes, shape patterns, action patterns, and beads. We will get to start these centers tomorrow and will try a new center each day.

This afternoon we worked on our colour page. Before we started working we made a chart that described a great, good, or ok colour chart.  Now we are using this chart to see how we can make our work even better. Here is our chart:

Then we had gym. In gym we continued with volleyball and got to play with the nets! Tomorrow we will start playing games. After that we had our first day of drumming! Our drumming teacher's name is Roger and he is really funny! Today he taught us about the type of drum we are playing. It is a djembe and it comes from the rainforests in West Africa.

Tomorrow our helper is: Jasper

* We still have quite a lot of toys coming to school. Please remember to leave your toys at home so they won't get lost or become a distraction in the classroom. Thanks!

Blue Day Friday

Today was a blue day and it was too cold for us to do our learning outside. Instead, we got started on our new science study of zoology by doing some work inside.

But, before that we got to see our big buddies! We spent some time reading books and playing games with our big buddies. It has been quite a while since our last buddy day so it was really nice to see them!

To begin our study of zoology we had to figure out what zoology means. We learned that the -ology part means to study something and then we figured out that the zoo part must be about animals. Once we put those two things together we figured out that zoology is the study of animals! To begin learning how to be zoologists we are creating a guessing game where we need to do some animal research. Here is an example of an animal clue that Ms. Boyer shared with us:

Since this is our first time doing this kind of research we are working in groups. Ask me who is in my group and which animal I am studying. We are doing research in books and then writing clues so that people will be able to try and guess our animal. We will be making our clue games into posters that will go on display in the hallway near our classroom. We will let you know when the posters are finished so that you can come play. Today our groups tried to find out information in these categories: appearance, tracks, food, sounds, habitat, survival strategies, and family groups. Next week we will continue with the research and then start making our posters.

Next week we will be participating in our drumming residency. Our drumming time is from 2:45-3:15 everyday.  Since our drumming time is late in the day and some of us sort of start to lose energy at that time we will be having an extra snack break at 2:30 just to make sure we are all well prepared for drumming. If you think this extra snack might be helpful please feel free to pack a little extra snack in your lunch bag. 

Our helper on Monday is: Josie

Brrr!

This morning, after guided reading and centers, we worked on our All About Me project. Since we are focusing on the part about our families right now we started reading a non-fiction book called M.O.M (Mom Operating Manual). This is a funny book that talks about moms and the things kids need to do to keep their moms in mint condition and operating at "peak performance". Some of the tips include: Letting your mom get uninterrupted sleep, giving your mom time for exercise, making sure she has access to lots of fresh clean water, and making sure she eats at least two nutritious meals a day.

After recess we did word work. The grade 1's met Ms. Boyer to review the -at family words and our sight words for the week. Ms. Boyer was very impressed that we could all spell the words correctly! The grade 2's worked on their vowel sounds word hunt. Then we did math. Today we started a page in our math journals to explain our understanding about repeating patterns and growing patterns.

This afternoon we continued working on our colour pages. Today we discussed trying to come up with facts that showed lots of different ways that we have become smart about colours rather than only focused on one thing such as colour mixing. Here are a few examples of some great work in-progress:


In gym we started with a fitness drill because we were sort of in the yellow zone and needed to burn off a bit of extra energy to help us get back to the green zone before music. In the drill with Ms. Boyer said "go" we had to run between the lines in the gym. When she blew the whistle we needed to freeze and then do the activity that Ms. Boyer called out. These were things like burpees, pushups, situps, and mountain climbers. When Ms. Boyer said "go" we would start running again. We did this activity for 5 minutes and were breathing really hard at the end! After the drill we continued with volleyball skills.

Then it was time for music. In music Mr. O'Reilly played a saxophone for us. We learned that a saxophone has a few parts that click together. It also has a neck strap that you can use because it if very heavy. We also learned that it is in the woodwind family of instruments. So far we have learned about 5 instrument families. Ask me about the 5 instrument families. 

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. Right now it is looking like it might be too cold to go outside, but please come prepared anyways just in case it warms up a bit. 

Our helper on Monday is: Josie

**At the end of the day we seem to have had a bit of a snowpant mix-up. If your child has black snowpants please check to see if the correct pair came home. We have a pair of Jupa size 4 snowpants here and are missing the same pair but in a size 8. The missing snowpants should say Nelson or Sierra in them. Thanks!**

Today we had our second Coffin Cares Assembly. Mrs. Polski talked to us about what we need to do on Blue Days, and we celebrated students in our school who have been showing lots of caring.  Before the assembly we had a little bit of center time. We worked with partners to explore the poetry books.

After the assembly we had library. Then we worked on our family puppets.

After recess we did wordwork. Today it was the grade 2's turn to work with Ms. Boyer and the grade 1's practiced writing their words for the week.  The grade 2's are focusing on vowel sounds. Today we talked about short and long vowel sounds and started looking at words to figure out if they included short or long vowel sounds. Tomorrow the grade 2's will do word hunt activity and the grade 1's will work with Ms. Boyer.

In math we listened to a story called Muncha Muncha Muncha.

This story had patterns in it. Some of the patterns were repeating patterns and some of the patterns were growing patterns. Ask me to explain and show repeating patterns and growing patterns!

After lunch we worked on our colour pages. Today we had to finish at least 2 facts in order to earn computer time. Before we got to work we each shared one colour fact as a way to help give each other ideas.

In gym we continued with volleyball skills. We started practicing volleys. We are getting a lot better at throwing overhead at the wall.

Tomorrow our helper is: Abdul Ahad

Back to work!

Today we officially got back to work on some of our big projects. To start Ms. Boyer showed us the new center job for this week: exploring poetry books. She told us that we will be starting a poetry challenge during centers next week and that this week was our chance to get warmed up by exploring the poetry books and looking for poems we really like. While we were exploring we used sticky notes to mark pages that we though Ms. Boyer should share with the class.

After centers and guided reading we got back to work on our All About Me project. This week we are working to finish our family puppets. Once the puppets are done we will start doing some writing about our families.

After recess we started a new word work routine for 2018! Today the grade 1's met with Ms. Boyer at the carpet to begin practicing our first word family (the -at family) and 4 sight words. Our words for this week are: the, of, and, that, cat, mat, sat, hat. Tomorrow the grade 1's will practice these words with an activity at their desks while Ms. Boyer works with the grade 2's. We will alternate each day so that both grade 1's and grade 2's have some lesson time with Ms. Boyer and some independent practice time.

Then it was time for math. In math we continued our pattern hunt around the school. We were trying to see if we could find some more complicated patterns today. Yesterday we found a lot of different ABABAB patterns. Today we found some more of those but Jasper and Ashton also managed to find an ABCBABCBABCB pattern and Josie and Taylor found an ABACABACABAC pattern. **Now that we have started our pattern study this is a great time to begin working on the patterns section of Mathletics at home.**

After lunch we continued working on our colour page in our art journals. Once we had the steps from yesterday finished it was time to start thinking of the facts about colour that we want to share on our page. To help each other our we came up with a list of key words. Here are the words we came up with: primary, secondary, tertiary, warm, cool, wheel, spectrum, tint, and shade.  Ask me what facts I can tell you that use these key words!

Then it was time for gym. In gym we continued our volleyball skills and then we had music. It was nice to see Mr. O'Reilly after such a long break from music! We started learning about different styles of music. We listened to country, pop, and rock music.

Tomorrow our helper is: Lawrence

Request from Ms. Boyer: Many people in our class are very excited about the neat things they got as gifts over the holidays and quite a few toys have shown up at school. In order to help everyone stay on-tasks in the classroom and to avoid the inevitable tears that can arise from lost or broken toys it is best to keep toys at home unless you are bringing them for your special helper sharing. Thanks! 

Welcome Back!

This morning we started with journals. We started with our pictures. Then we had a nice story called " The Most Magnificent Thing". The story taught us that even if you think something you made doesn't work well it still might have a purpose. And it taught us about being methodical. That means paying close attention and doing each step carefully.

Then Ms. Boyer showed us a learning target that will help us improve our journal writing. In a target our goal is to get to the center. Here is the target we are using for our journal writing. We will be using this target for the next few months and we will be working to get to the center.

After recess it was time for math. Today we did a pattern hunt. We were searching for patterns around the school. A pattern is something that repeats over and over. So far we found some height patterns, colour patterns, line patterns and shape patterns.

This afternoon we started with a story called "My many Coloured Days". Then we started working on a page in our art journals to wrap up our science study of colour. This page will be our way of showing what we have learned in our study and proving that we have become smart about colours.

Our helper tomorrow is: Joachim