Animal Research!

Today started with poetry challenge. Right now our class is working hard to get 5 "punches" on their cards so that we can earn our poetry buttons.  Library was a bit short today because we were so focused on our poetry challenge.  For the last 10 minutes of library we were allowed to play with Mrs. Kidd's farm.

The rest of the morning was business as usual. First we did family writing, then wordwork, and then math centers.

This afternoon we did our animal research. A few of us made our way through the whole animal list and have chosen the animal that we want to study. The rest of us will need one more day to search and make our decision. Ask me if I have made a decision, or what animals are on my short list so far. 

After that we had gymnastics. Today we used some activity cards and we got to try to perform the moves that were on the cards. Some of the moves were solo moves and some were partner moves. At first, we raised our hands to show Ms. Boyer our move and then Ms. Boyer gave us a new card. Once Ms. Boyer was sure we had the hang of it, we got to go pick our own cards whenever we were ready.

Tomorrow our helper is: Jasper

Home Reading Update

This morning at poetry challenge we had a lot of people ready to perform! It was very exciting to see so many great poems.  In writing time some of us were ready to start adding our family pieces to our books. We are using some fancy paper to make nice backgrounds for our work and we are using string to attach our puppets.

In word work the grade 1's practiced this week's words by writing them each three times in neat lowercase printing. The grade 2's started learning about homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings.  Today we talked about the to, too, two homophones and practiced using them. Ask me to explain when we use the these homophones. 

This afternoon we started our animal research study. Today we each got a list of animals that live on Nose Hill and we started looking up each animal on google images with a partner. We are doing this so that we can make a short-list for ourselves. Eventually we will be narrowing down to one animal that we would like to become an expert about.  As we look at the different animals we are putting a star beside the ones we think might be interesting to research.

Home Reading News: Starting next week we will be expanding the home reading schedule to include Mondays! A few of our volunteers from the community will be taking the Monday spots, but this means there will be some spots opening up on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. If you are interested in volunteering please check the home reading calendar. 

Our helper tomorrow is: Cedar

Don't forget we have Library tomorrow!

Who, What, Where, When, Why

This morning in journals we talked about the 5W's. The 5W's are who, what, where, why, when. We talked about the 5W's because using the 5W's can help us decide what to write next and can make it easier for us to add details to our paragraphs.

In wordwork the grade 1's worked with Ms. Boyer on their new words for the week while the grade 2's had a little bit of extra journal time. This week the grade 1 word family is -ack. Our sightwords are on, for, are, as.

In math we started by learning a new game. The game is called the attribute game.  At attribute is a way you can describe something, or a characteristic of an object. We used shape blocks that are red, yellow, and blue. They are also thick and thin. In the game each person takes a turn to add a new shape to the set. When they add a new shape they can only change attribute from the shape before. It is a good game for getting us to think about different attributes. After that we did our pattern centers.

This afternoon we shared our guess who posters. Each group read out their clues and then we tried to guess their animals. Our class was able to come up with some really great animal clues. We will be putting the posters up in the hallway tomorrow. If you happen to be in the school please stop by to see them! If you aren't able to make it to see them in person, here they are:



After that we had gym. We have started our gymnastics unit. Please remember to wear comfortable, stretchy clothes for the next few weeks. Please also remember that we need to be able to have bare feet, so tights with feet aren't a great choice.

Our helper tomorrow is: Katie

We are keeping our fingers crossed that the weather will warm up for Friday. If it does warm up, we are hoping to go to Nose Hill. Please email Ms. Boyer if you would be able to join us. 

Report Card Day!

Today we are bringing home our report cards! Report cards are one way for Ms. Boyer to communicate our progress to us and to our families. Report cards are not a competition. Every student in our class has strengths and areas for growth. We are all at different places in our learning and that is ok. The important thing is to understand where we are now, and what we plan to do next. At home, please take some time to look at the report card. There are a lot of things to celebrate in our report cards (we're pretty smart kids!), and of course some things that we can keep working on. If you aren't sure what the numbers mean on the report card this is how we have talked about them at school:

With our report cards we are also bringing home a special gift from Aksel and his grandma! Aksel's grandma has been volunteering with our home reading program and donated some of her amazing jams as a special gift to all of our hardworking grade 1-2 students. What a great way to celebrate an awesome first term!

Please remember to return the signed report card envelope next week. We will re-use these envelopes for the June report cards. Also, please remember that there is no school tomorrow. Have a great weekend!

Our helper on Monday is: Liam

A new sharing category!

Today was another day of continuing our project work. We worked on our family writing, pattern centers, and animal clue projects. All of our groups were able to finish the typing part of their animal clue projects and are now working on creating their posters! This project should be wrapped up tomorrow and ready to put on display next week.

In wordwork the grade 1's reviewed the words for this week and also the words from the previous two weeks. This week's words were the -ap family and the following sight words: than, it, he, was. The grade 2's continued their vowel practice.

Lily's sharing was our last day of sharing our favourite toys. After her sharing she got to throw the stress ball at our chart to see what category we would be sharing next. Our new category is favourite character. This might be a character from a book, tv show, movie, or anything else that has characters. We brainstormed some things you might bring to share about the character. You might bring things like the book the character comes from, a picture of the character printed from the computer, an action figure that you own, or even a drawing you have made of the character.

Tomorrow our helper is: Abdul Ahad

We are bringing home a notice about Dr. Coffin t-shirt orders today. The forms are being sent home with the oldest Dr. Coffin student in each family. 

Kids at Work!

Today was a just keep going sort of day. We are in the middle of projects in almost every subject so there isn't a lot of new stuff to share, but there is a lot of great work going on. In writing we are busy working on our family paragraphs. Those of us who have brought some notes from home are finding them very helpful as we construct our paragraphs. If you haven't done some home research yet, it is highly recommended! Remember, you might want to take notes about ideas like names, ages, favourite foods, hobbies, jobs, and sports your family members enjoy.

In math our pattern centers continued today. We had some more friends who were able to complete 5 or more patterns today. We are becoming more efficient with our work by recording our patterns as soon as we make them so that we can't forget our ideas!

This afternoon we worked on our animal clue projects. We have two teams finished! We are expecting the rest of the groups to be finished this week and should have the posters on display next week.

After that we had gym where we played beach volleyball! Then we went to music. We had a chance to experiment with lots of different instruments today. Mr. O'Reilly gave us time to see how many different tunes we could find and how many different instrument families we noticed. We noticed 5 different instrument families: woodwinds, percussion, brass, electronic, and strings.

Our helper tomorrow is: Lily

This morning we focused on a few important ideas in our writing. Ms. Boyer has noticed that quite a few of us are splitting words up over two lines. Like TH
IS. It is quite difficult to read words written this way so Ms. Boyer has asked us to try to write our words all on one line. like THIS. We also focused on remembering to start our sentences with an uppercase letter, and on spelling some important sightwords like with and they correctly. Ms. Boyer has noticed that these words are often spelling incorrectly in our journals.

In math we were focusing on trying to record more patterns today. Ms. Boyer noticed that some of us were forgetting to record our patterns last week and didn't have very much work showing in our books. Today we had two people who were able to get 5 patterns recorded today. Those friends were staying really focused and didn't let themselves get distracted by other centers. Well done!

Please remember it is treat day tomorrow! Remember to bring 25 cents!

Our helper tomorrow is: Aksel

Drumming Day 5: The Big Show!

What a great group of drummers we have in Room 2. Our class did a fantastic job at our drumming celebration!





Before the drumming celebration we worked on our animal clue projects. Today most groups were finished their research and were ready to start typing up their clues.

After that we went outside and did some building in the snow. The snow clearing bobcat was here yesterday to clear the snow from the basketball court so there were really neat piles of snow to work with. Some of us are making forts, some are making animals and people, and others made things like furniture and slides.


Our helper on Monday is: Aiden

Drumming Day 4

Today in our poetry challenge four more groups were ready to share their performances, copied poems, and created poems. After poetry we worked on our family writing. 4 more students brought research from home shared their research strategies with the class. Most of us are getting very close to having our puppets finished and a few of us have already completed our first paragraph of writing.

When it was time for math, Ms. Boyer started by showing us two examples of pattern tub recording. She asked us to look at both examples and tell us the ways that the example were different and the ways that one example showed more learning that the other. Here are the two examples. Ask me to explain why one is better than the other. Hint: There are 6 things that make one of these examples better than the other.

This afternoon we worked on our animal clues. Some groups have finished their research and have moved on to typing up their clues on the computer. Ask me how my group is doing. 

Tomorrow is our drumming performance and it is also Fresh Air Friday. We will have to be flexible with our outdoor time tomorrow so that we can be available for our drumming rehearsals. The drumming performance will start at 11:00 and parents are welcome to attend.

Please remember that toys need to be left at home unless they are coming to school for helper sharing. Many students plan to bring toys for recess but it is often difficult to leave them in backpacks and they end up in the class where they can be very distracting to our learning. Thanks!

Our helper on Monday is: Aiden

Drumming Day 3

This morning we had a chance to start our poetry challenge. At the end of center time some of us were ready to share our first challenge with the class. Some of us chose to create a poem, some of us chose to copy a poem, and some of us chose to perform. Ask me what I am working on and how it is going.

After library we got back to our family writing. Quite a few of us brought notes from home that will be very helpful for our writing! Thank you to the parents and siblings who helped with this work!

After recess we did word work. The grade 1's worked with Ms. Boyer to review the words of the week and to start a new activity with the words that they will be finishing up tomorrow. The grade 2's had one final day to complete their vowel hunt.

In math we had our second day of pattern tubs. Ask me which tub I was at today!

This afternoon Ms. Boyer was in a meeting so Mrs. Bigelow came in as our guest teacher. We worked on our animal guess who projects that we had started on Friday. After that we played Newcomb ball in the gym and went to drumming. Please remember our drumming performance is on Friday morning.

Please remember tomorrow is fun lunch! 

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