Happy Halloween!

This morning we took a break from our name writing to do a special halloween writing activity. We brainstormed lots of Halloween words and used them to create bingo cards for our afternoon party.

In math we worked in our table groups to do a graphing activity with Smarties! We had to sort, count, and graph our smarties together. Once we had completed our graphs we got to eat the Smarties!



This afternoon we had a lot of fun showing off our costumes for the Halloween parade. Afterwards, students got to use their custom-made Bingo cards with Halloween related words for a fun game of Bingo. Then we watched a halloween movie to end the day.


Just a reminder room 2 will be holding conferences this Thursday, Nov.1 from 4pm to 7pm and Friday, Nov. 2 from 1pm to 3:30pm.

Halloween Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Halloween!  It will be business as usual in the morning and we will have our halloween celebration in the afternoon. For the morning please have your costume stored in your backpack or in another bag that can be left at your coat hook.

After lunch recess all students will be invited to change into their costumes for our Halloween Parade. Please make sure you are able to get into your costume independently as it will be pretty tricky for Ms. Boyer to help everyone all at the same time!

The parade will begin at 1:15. Any parents who would like to come see the parade are welcome to come to the learning commons.  After the parade we will get to do some Halloween activities in the classroom.

A visit from Mrs. Yoon

This morning Mrs. Boyer was away so Mrs. Yoon came in to be our teacher. Mrs. Yoon is very excited to get to know us and will be spending a few more days with us before Ms. Boyer leaves to have her baby.

With Mrs. Yoon we worked on our journals and did a bit more work with interpreting graphs.

This afternoon Ms. Boyer was back and we worked on our arthropod research. Before we started our work we made a checklist of the pieces we have completed so far and learned about the next steps.

So far we have completed:
1. Diagrams
2. Life Cycles

Next we will research:
1. Diet
2. Habitat
3. Survival
4. Interesting Facts

Tomorrow is Treat Day! If you would like to buy a treat please remember to bring 25 cents. 

This morning we started with our usual routine of guided reading and centers. Now that we have had a few days of guided reading we are starting to get used to the schedule and things are going much more smoothly!

After guided reading we had a lot of sharing from centres! We had many people ready to share poems they had learned to perform, copied from our poetry books, or wrote themselves. It is great to see everyone working together and pushing themselves to try new things during these poetry centers!

Then it was time for writing. We worked to get our rough copies of our names project all finished so that we can get going on our good copy (written on fancy paper for grade 1, and typed in Google Docs for grade 2).

After recess Mrs. Yoon came in to work with us for math while Ms. Boyer had a meeting. We had another day of practicing interpreting graphs. We have really focused on trying to improve at questions such as "how many more?", "how many fewer?" and on improving our understanding of concepts such as increasing and decreasing.

This afternoon in computers the grade 1's went to abcya.com while the grade 2's got their Google Docs started for our names project.  After that we had gym, library, and music. Thursday afternoons just seem to fly by with all our different activities!

Today we are bringing home a blue card that contains our log-in information for the computers. On this card you will find our student information plus our log-in info for mathletics and Raz-kids. 

This morning we had guided reading and centers. At centers lots of us are starting to share the projects we are working on for our poetry bingo challenge. Ask me if I have been working on copying, creating, or performing poems. 

After centers we worked on our writing about our names. Today we were trying to get our first two or three sentences done. We used some sentence starters to help us and copied some words from the papers we brought from home.

After recess we worked on interpreting graphs. We have spent a lot of time learning to make our own graphs but needed some practice at being able to use other peoples' graphs to find out information. We practiced on paper in the classroom and also practiced by playing a game on the computer. Here is the game we played: Fuzz Bugs Graphing

This afternoon we had some finish up time to work on our name writing and then went to gym. We played a new game called "Little Chicks". Then we worked on our insect and arthropod research. Today we watched some videos to get information and made a list of interesting facts about insects and arthropods. Ask me an interesting fact I remember from today!

Names project, measurement, and reseach

This morning was our first day of guided reading and our first day of home reading book exchange! Ask me if I had guided reading today and who my guided reading teacher will be (All the grade 1's and most grade 2's had guided reading today). We are bringing home our second home reading book today. Please remember that these books should come back to school each day so that we can have a new book to practice each evening.

In math we did a measurement challenge with leaves. We started the challenge yesterday by collecting leaves and putting them in order from smallest to largest with our table groups. Today we using ordering, comparing, and measuring to figure out the widest, narrowest, longest, and shortest leaves that we had collected.

This afternoon we continued working on our life cycle diagrams for our arthropod research. Before we started this work we learned a fancy new word: Metamorphosis. We learned that this word describes the process of an insect or other animal going through its life cycle. We learned that some of our arthropods go through complete metamorphosis and some go through incomplete metamorphosis. Here is a video we watched about the process:

Home Reading!

Today we are bringing home our first books for Home Reading! Inside the bag you will find our book for tonight, some information for parents, a recording book, and a book mark of reading strategies. Please be sure to spend about 15 minutes practicing reading the book with an adult and then don't forget to put it back in your backpack so that it comes back to school tomorrow. Each day we will have a chance to re-read the books with a volunteer and pick a new one to bring home.

Parents: If you are interested in volunteering for home reading please check the Sign-Up Genius for available days. 

Tomorrow we will also be starting our guided reading groups here at school. Each student has been placed in a small reading group and will spend time with a teacher developing their reading strategies and comprehension skills.

Leaf art!

Today was all about leaves! We have been noticing all the different shapes and sizes of leaves that are falling around our school this week and thought that a day all about leaves would make sense. We started by going on a leaf hunt in Barrett Park to find different sizes, shapes, and colours of leaves.  We also talked about the different textures we might find and tried to look for leaves that were still flexible but not too wet.

After recess we used our leaves to create some leaf art. We made animals, cars, and even towns! Here are some pictures of our artwork.





We will be starting Home Reading on Monday. We will be looking for volunteers who can start coming in on Tuesday. If you are able to volunteer please sign-up on Sign Up Genius. We are hoping for 2 volunteers each day. Have a great weekend!

Literacy Night!

Tonight is literacy night! The evening will start at 6:00. Today during our literacy time we went over all the stations so that each of us will be able to guide our parents through the stations and show them some of the things we do here at school. 

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. Please dress for the weather!

Fun Lunch!

This morning we started with centers and then we worked on our name cards for our names project. We are using beads to make our name cards look really fancy. It is sort of a tricky job because the beads are small so we need to be really focused when we are working.

After recess we worked on our graphing project. Some of us have finished but some of us will need one more day to finish.

Then it was time for fun lunch! Thank you to all the volunteers who came today and made our fun lunch possible. We had a great time!

This afternoon we worked on our arthropod diagrams. We started by learning to give each other feedback. Ms. Boyer taught us how to give Oreo Cookie feedback. Please ask me how we do this and why it is called Oreo Cookie feedback. After we had given each other feedback we got to work trying to finish our diagrams and incorporate the feedback.

Don't forget that tomorrow is picture day! 

Also, we are hosting our first ever literacy night on Thursday night. At this event we will be sharing some of the activities we do here at school and giving you information about our home reading program! We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Helping the birds

Today was Fresh Air Friday. We started the day with centers and then got going on our outdoor project for the day.  We have observed that with all this early snow most of the insects have gone underground or aren't around anymore and many of the berries and seeds are covered by snow. We wondered if this might be making life a bit tricky for the birds. So, we decided to make some natural bird feeders to help the birds get through this unexpected early snow that has probably come before they were ready to migrate.

To make our feeders we went to the Whispering Woods to collect supplies. Mrs. Hamby, Mrs. Armour, and Ms. Boyer also brought some extra supplies for us to use like birdseed, lard, apples, grapes, and twigs.

Once we had collected our supplies we created our feeders in the classroom.

At the end of the day we took them outside and hung them up in the trees for the birds. We hope they enjoy these yummy surprises!

Author Visit: Alice Kuipers

This morning we started the day with our new centers. We didn't have very much time yesterday so today we returned to the same center to have some more time. At the end of center time a few people were ready to perform poems or share their bookmarks.

After that it was time to go to the learning commons for our author visit. The author's name was Alice Kuipers and she has written a lot of books for kids and young adults. She lives in Saskatoon but is originally from England. Today she talked to us about how she goes about writing a book and talked a bit about some of the books she has written. Here is the link to her website: http://www.alicekuipers.com/

After that we had a late recess and then we had a meeting with Mrs. Polski. Mrs. Polski has been getting worried that some of us are going to start losing things because it was getting a bit messy at our coat hooks. She talked to us about some strategies she would like us to use to help keep our coat hooks tidy and our things safe.

After lunch we had our computer time. We had another chance to try out the games at Math Playground. Then we played soccer for gym and had library. In library Mrs. Kidd told us that she might be holding a story writing contest soon! The winner of the contest will get a copy of one of Alice Kuipers books. She told us to stay tuned for more information coming soon! At the end of library Ms. Boyer showed us a new chapter book she bought that we will be reading as a read-aloud in our class. It is called The Wild Robot and is written by Peter Brown.  Ms. Boyer read us the first chapter. Ask me what has happened so far. 

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We will be doing an activity to help the birds get through this early winter we are experiencing.

New Centers

This morning Ms. Boyer was away for an appointment and Mrs. Bigelow was here instead. We started the day by meeting with Room 1 and the Portable to learn about some new centers. These centers will happen at the beginning of the day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. To start, our three centers are: poetry, bookmarks, and literacy games.

After that we did the first part of our names project. We will be creating fancy name plates to go with our awesome portraits. Then we will start using our name homework to write about our names.

In math we started a new survey about fun lunches. We are trying to find out which type of fun lunch is the most popular. Once we have this information we will share it with the fun lunch organizers.  ** Please note that the deadline for ordering for the first fun lunch is Thursday Oct. 11 (not Friday as noted in the handout). 

This afternoon we started working on our arthropod diagrams. Today we focused on identifying the main body parts of our insect and making sure that our drawings included them all. Next time we will start adding the labels and title.

Tomorrow morning we will be welcoming a guest author to our school!

This morning we pretended it was Monday and started with journals. During journals we had an interruption. It was a lockdown drill.  In a lockdown drill we practice going to our safe spot in the classroom and we practice being completely silent so that it seems like our classroom is empty. At the end of the lockdown drill our school resource officer came to talk to us. He said we did a great job!

After recess we had booktime and printing. Then we worked on graphing. Some of us used the time to finish up our vehicle graphs. The rest of us had a chance to try making a graph on the computer. We used our vehicle survey information and tried to see if we could make a computer version of the graph using this website Create A Graph. Ms. Boyer said not to worry if we weren't able to get one done today because this was just our first chance to practice.

This afternoon we had some finish up time and then played our 4 corner soccer game in gym. After that we got ready for our arthropod research project by looking at examples of diagrams and deciding what makes a good diagram. Here are the requirements we came up with and that we will be using when we start our own diagrams tomorrow:



After that we had music. Today we started presenting our musical research projects to the class!

Terry Fox Run + It's a Girl!

Today was a very exciting day in Room 2. We started our morning with a story and then went to read with our big buddies. After that we got ready for the Terry Fox Run by having a conversation about Terry Fox and the reason that we run. Then we got our stickers ready for the run.

Before recess Bella from Grade 6 came to visit us with a very special surprise. Bella knew that Ms. Boyer had not told the class if the baby is going to be a boy or a girl so Bella made a special cake to reveal the surprise! The cake had plain white icing but when we cut open the cake it was pink inside! Surprise! It's a girl! After the big surprise we all got to eat a piece of the cake. It was delicious. Thank you Bella!

At 10:30 we all went to the gym for a special Terry Fox Assembly. The grade 5-6 students told us a bit about Terry's story and then lead some warm up exercises. Then it was time for the run. Our class did an amazing job and ran a total of 138 laps! 

Have a great long weekend and Happy Thanksgiving!
FYI we are bringing home an orange fun lunch form today.