Grade 2 Room 73 Team

Hello Everyone, We hope you have had a great week! This morning we started a personalized TWAS (this week at school).  The children have learned how to create a TWAS google document in their CBE GoogleDrive accounts and have chosen a person (or people) that they live with to begin a letter correspondence.  In this letter the children share about their week at school, and then request a reply back from the reader.  Please write all replies directly beneath the letter so that your child can keep a running record of the year's correspondence, as a keepsake.  There are two ways to do this: log in to your child's account and type directly on the same document; have the child "share" the document with you and then you can access the letter from your own account (because the students' accounts are CBE secured, they won't always share so this second option may not be possible for some of you). Taped into the communication folders is a copy of each child's Go...

Hello Everyone, I hope you are all off to a wonderful weekend start! It was lovely to meet with so many families over the last week during our community walk, picnic and at 'meet the teacher.' As the children settle into their routines we are finding our days whizzing by and the children's morning endurance seems to be strengthening daily. We will start rotating through math stations next week so we spent quite a bit of time working with math problems, as they tend to be the math station that requires the most "mastery" (mastery was our circle of courage focus this week; please ask your little one to explain his/her understanding of this tricky concept). The children are learning to be patient with themselves as they learn the skill of breaking down math problems and using their tools to work with the information they are given. I was impressed with their ability to recall the many strategies that they learned last year, and the ways that they applied these ...

Hello Everyone, Tomorrow is our library day; if you have library books at home, please bring them to school tomorrow morning so that you can either return or renew them. Here are the c and d word wall words for Sept. 19th - Sept 25: call can come came could do did down does Have a wonderful evening, Mrs. McArthur

Hello Everyone, I have noticed that the video I posted doesn't seem to play.  I will work on it when I am back at school this week and see if I can export it to a different format and reload.  So sorry; it's such a great video so I would love to share it with you all. I did have a home request for spelling words.  We are currently reviewing word wall high frequency words (we worked with most of them fairly regularly in grade 1); I am encouraging the students to read them off of the wall, try their memory recall and work on their sounding out strategies, so I did not post them, but I will put them below on this post in case any of the children are wanting to review. Our goal is to take spelling challenges, and receive new spelling words, each Tuesday so I will aim to post the words on Tuesdays as well.  We should be starting with our new grade 2 words shortly. Enjoy a beautiful Sunday, Mrs. McArthur be but big by before been back because

Hello Everyone, I hope you have all had a good week and that your little ones are settling in to their new fall routines. The children have certainly been trying very hard to put in their best efforts from 8:00am right through until 2:30, and are showing great perseverance as they take on their grade 2 tasks! We were very fortunate to have Ms. Watson come to our class twice this week and guide us in some important mental health lessons.  First we learned about our feeling and thinking brains, and learned how to recognize when our feeling brains might be starting to take over from our thinking brains, causing us to "flip our lids." Next, students from our class worked with Ms. Watson to create four movies that demonstrated some stressful situations we may be faced with.  We learned a POP strategy to help us through stressful times such as these. POP is an acronym for "Problem, Options, Plan." I have attached the videos; it may be a fun challenge to see if your ch...

Hello Everyone, As it looks like we are faced with a very rainy lunch hour tomorrow, the outdoor picnic has been postponed to the following Wednesday, September 20th. Thank you for your flexibility, Kiim

Hello Everyone, Wow what a wild, fast and wonderful week!  The days flew by and already the children are in the thick of leaning.  One of us stated, at the beginning of TWAS, "Mrs. McArthur what can we even write about; we've only been here four days," and then they proceeded to fill up three pages with the week's events.  So here is some of what was on those pages: We began the week with activities and discussions that focused on belonging.  Where we see it, why we need it, when we feel it, when we don't and why it is so important in our class and out in the community. We also talked a bit about our class rule:  kindness.  I will let them explain why we only need one rule, how everything (even signing out for the bathroom) relates back to kindness. On this path we also set up our Circle of Courage and began our recognition of Random Acts of Kindness, of which we saw many this week. Additionally we dove right in to our language arts, math, inquiry, ar...

Hello Everyone, We have an extreme tree nut allergy in our class so if everyone could take an extra minute to make sure that they aren't packing anything that has nuts, walnuts and pecans in particular.  Many of the new health granola-type bars have walnuts and pecans crushed up, so thank you ahead of time for taking that extra minute to double check ingredients.  I also wanted to let everyone know that we are planning a class picnic Wednesday of next week, September 13th. We will be walking just off of school grounds to the playground that is on the path that leads to the Cranston windmill.   All students, those that stay and those that go home for lunch, are invited, as are all family members who have completed volunteer forms. Feel free to send a picnic blanket for them to sit on, and don't hesitate to email or call with any questions/clarification.  Have a great night, Mrs. McArthur

Hello 73 students and student families, Well we have two days under our belt and what a busy two days it has been! I think we are all collapsing into some very big sleeps and the end of the day haha!  I will be posting an official "TWAS" (This Week At School) this Friday, which will give you a detailed look at our week one journey.  TWAS is co-created with the students, and outlines our activities throughout the week. Aside from sharing what our days at school look like, it is also intended to create a bridge between school and home life, initiating conversations about the topics and themes we explore in class.  I welcome comments, as it would be fun to share them, and differing perspectives, with the class. Aside from TWAS I will be posting spelling words each week.  This is not intended to add extra work to your busy schedules.  It is only there for a little extra spelling practice if you have the time and the interest.  The children will be working w...

Dear students and student families,   I am so excited to welcome you into our beautiful learning space, and the fantastic year ahead! We are in Room 73 this year, entering and exiting through door 3 by the playground.  This year’s school hours are as follows: Monday – Thursday 8:00 – 2:30; Friday 8:00 – 11:45. I will be meeting all of the students outside of door 3; morning supervision begins at 7:45. Students will need to bring a healthy lunch, a snack (no juice boxes), indoor shoes, a water bottle and, most importantly, their personalities!             The following is a a request from the office: If your child will be riding the school bus please make sure they have been registered using your MY CBE Account. We have attached the bus routes and times to this email  please review them and email Karen Hunter at  klhunter@cbe.ab.ca  which Bus either A or B your child will be riding. This will allow...