TWAS January 26
Hello Everyone,
It was so nice to be able to touch base with so many of you over the last couple of days at conferences. Fifteen minutes is a very short time so please feel free to call or schedule another meeting if you are wanting to spend a little more time discussing your child's learning. Likewise, for any families who were not able to meet because of time conflicts, I would be more than happy to schedule a meeting for a time that better suits your schedule.
We have started to work with the wonderful belongings that the students are bringing in, and really enjoyed Ms. Brace's extremely cool, very old, belonging that really got us "Seeing, Thinking and Wondering." We are also applying our new sketching skills and trying to visually capture what we see. Some very impressive work is happening here :)
Our magnet work continues to be a favourite as the children work through the different stations conducting their experiments. With each new station that they move to they are showing substantial growth in their learning and thus ability to independently work through the steps to complete each experiment. They are also starting to make connections to magnets in their world and are pointing them out as they notice them throughout their days, such as the computer cord plug-ins.
Our research continues into what good writers do to make good books. Our focus has been on internal/external conflict and character development. Ask your little one to explain our character development activity and if time, give it a try. It's a lot of fun. One person choses to be a simple character, (we did a little girl walking to schools sees an injured squirrel and wants to take it home to help it) and the other people asks the person playing the character questions (such as favourite song, colour hair, are you in the future etc.); as the questions are answered the character grows and grows into something that is round brilliant and interesting.
We will be starting to look at all of the interesting ways in which writers solve problems in their stories . . .. We also enjoyed our time with Ms. Patton working on our spelling and word work with word family games.
Our math work continues to move in a few directions. We have enjoyed DEAC (drop everything and calculate) playing some counting games with cards. It's great practice at home as well. Ask your child to teach you or a sibling how to play speed or odd/even and everyone can brush up on some math facts. For an extra challenge try playing speed with subtraction instead of addition. The children also really enjoyed some math story drama that we did with counting chips. They are so good at it!
We have also been continuing our place value work with two digit addition (re-grouping and no re-grouping) and many of the children are enjoying some fantastic "ah ha" moments as their math knowledge comes together in so many places.
As we continue to work on our math problems, the children are becoming more and more confident and are really enjoying the extra challenges that we are working with. Here is one of the problems that we did with this week. If time permits have your little one work through it with you, or even modify it to make a new problem for them to solve:
It was so nice to be able to touch base with so many of you over the last couple of days at conferences. Fifteen minutes is a very short time so please feel free to call or schedule another meeting if you are wanting to spend a little more time discussing your child's learning. Likewise, for any families who were not able to meet because of time conflicts, I would be more than happy to schedule a meeting for a time that better suits your schedule.
We have started to work with the wonderful belongings that the students are bringing in, and really enjoyed Ms. Brace's extremely cool, very old, belonging that really got us "Seeing, Thinking and Wondering." We are also applying our new sketching skills and trying to visually capture what we see. Some very impressive work is happening here :)
Our magnet work continues to be a favourite as the children work through the different stations conducting their experiments. With each new station that they move to they are showing substantial growth in their learning and thus ability to independently work through the steps to complete each experiment. They are also starting to make connections to magnets in their world and are pointing them out as they notice them throughout their days, such as the computer cord plug-ins.
Our research continues into what good writers do to make good books. Our focus has been on internal/external conflict and character development. Ask your little one to explain our character development activity and if time, give it a try. It's a lot of fun. One person choses to be a simple character, (we did a little girl walking to schools sees an injured squirrel and wants to take it home to help it) and the other people asks the person playing the character questions (such as favourite song, colour hair, are you in the future etc.); as the questions are answered the character grows and grows into something that is round brilliant and interesting.
We will be starting to look at all of the interesting ways in which writers solve problems in their stories . . .. We also enjoyed our time with Ms. Patton working on our spelling and word work with word family games.
Our math work continues to move in a few directions. We have enjoyed DEAC (drop everything and calculate) playing some counting games with cards. It's great practice at home as well. Ask your child to teach you or a sibling how to play speed or odd/even and everyone can brush up on some math facts. For an extra challenge try playing speed with subtraction instead of addition. The children also really enjoyed some math story drama that we did with counting chips. They are so good at it!
We have also been continuing our place value work with two digit addition (re-grouping and no re-grouping) and many of the children are enjoying some fantastic "ah ha" moments as their math knowledge comes together in so many places.
As we continue to work on our math problems, the children are becoming more and more confident and are really enjoying the extra challenges that we are working with. Here is one of the problems that we did with this week. If time permits have your little one work through it with you, or even modify it to make a new problem for them to solve:
Brinn, James and Noah are all building super cool lego spaceships. Their work has just begun.
Brinn's spaceship has 8 blue pieces, 7 red pieces and 5 grey pieces.
James's lego ship has 4 red pieces 11 green pieces and 6 yellow pieces
Noah's spaceship has 5 yellow, 5 green and 7 blue pieces
Who has done the most building?
Whose lego pieces, when added together, has an even sum?
Whose lego pieces, when added together, has a 7 in the ones place?
Super challenge bonus question: What is the sum of all of Brinn, James and Noah's lego pieces, when they are added together?
Mrs. Sedgwick and Ms. MacMillan have a fantastic Mission Impossible set up for phys-ed, and we are very excited to go on our first grade 2 field trip to Niitsitapi on Wednesday (please note that we are leaving directly at 8:00 that morning so we will need all of the students to be at the school 10 minutes early that day). On Tuesday afternoon, we will be baking cookings (yummiest STEAM project ever) to bring with us as an offering of thanks for the wonderful hosts who have welcomed us in to this very precious learning space.
I'll say goodbye, wish you all a wonderful weekend, and leave you with a final note from Ms. Thomas:
Artist of the Week
David Bowie:
This week we will be listening to and celebrating the music and life of the late and great David Bowie. Through the diversity of his music, we will be talking about the profound impact he had on music, and creative thought. Also, we will be considering his perspective on identity and his unique “rebel spirit”.
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