TWAS

September 22, 2017

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 strategies to a variety of problems. We also began to sketch out our first math art creations, as this is another of the stations. What wonderfully creative math minds we have in this space. These works will go on display, weekly and I'll be sure to post pictures on the blog!

We are continuing to play with story, daily, and have also started our first rotations through the Daily 5 stations. The students are all creating goolge slide presentations on the Daily 5 (work with words, read to someone, read to group, listen to reading and work on writing) so I'll let them explain what each station is in their own words.

We have started our first science inquiry. The children have chosen a critter that they are interested in researching, and are collecting valuable sources from which to gather information. Some have already completed their first investigation: draw and label as many parts as you can.

This week in social studies the students will begin to reflect upon their personal learning journeys. They will be asked to respond to the following questions (please enjoy having some discussions about these questions if you have the time):

My learning journey

1) I started to learn as soon as I was born. The first people that I learned from were the people that I lived with:

2) I learned many things from other people too (stories, friends, adventures):

3) The first time I went to school I was _______ years old. I went to:

4) My Kindergarten teacher was______________________________________:

5) In kindergarten I learned:

6) My grade 1 teacher was: _______________________________________________

7) In grade 1 I learned:

8) Now I am in grade 2. My teacher’s name is:____________________________________

9) This year I think I will learn:

10) I am learning all of the time, everyday and everywhere I go. These are some of the other things that I am learning:

11) These are some people that I love learning from:

We had some great circle conversations this week; my favourite was when the children shared their true feelings about our first Cranston Peace song of the year, "All You Need is Love." It was a very enlightening discussion (they are sooo funny); I will let them explain . . .

I will end this TWAS there, and leave you with these wonderful photographic memories from our week together.

All the very best,

Mrs. McArthur

Returning from our community walk