Pumpkin investigation continues

Fun day in grade 2 today. We spent much of our day working on Halloween activities. We worked with the grade 3 class on a math activity using our pumpkins. We worked together to count how many seeds in our pumpkins. We divided our seeds into groups and had to use counting strategies to count how many seeds we had. We needed to determine which class had more seeds in their pumpkin....Grade 2 or Grade 3!

The students used counting strategies like counting by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's to figure out how many seeds they had. In the end, we learned that the grade 3 pumpkin had more seeds! Great team work today friends! At the end of the day we enjoyed a fun Monster Mash dance party. Happy Halloween everyone!

Shared-Learning Video Chat!

We enjoyed a fun treat today. A grade 2 class in our city chatted with us on Twitter! They are also using pumpkins to count and describe. They asked us to guess how many seeds we thought were inside of their class pumpkin. Have a read at some of the tweet guesses we sent Mr. Robinson's class!

Mr. Robinson's class called us over Google Hangout. Google Hangout is a video chat that we used to do a shared read aloud. They started to read us the story...How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? It was so great to hear their grade 2 class read this story to us. Our class was really excited. They had many connections to the story today and we got to share one of them. We told their class how we cleaned our pumpkin yesterday. We had to separate the goop and the seeds!  We ran out of time and they will call us again tomorrow to finish the story! Ask your child about this neat opportunity!

Pumpkin Pumpkin

We continue to work on descriptive writing. Today the students focused on exploring nouns and adjectives in more detail. We used our Halloween word wall words to help us come up with fun ways to describe. We also talked about other nouns or adjectives that we can think of. Have a look at the list we came up with!


Next, the students used a pumpkin to help them come up with words to describe. Words that describe a pumpkin are adjectives. We used our eyes, our hands and even our nose to come up with some creative adjectives to describe both the inside and the outside of the pumpkin. 

Have a look at some of the adjective words we came up with today. We are using our pumpkin to help us with some pumpkin investigating. Tomorrow we will add to our investigation by estimating and counting the features inside and outside of the pumpkin! We will also get to work with the grade 3 class on a fun math activity. Don't forget to wear black, orange and have crazy hair!

Scientists in the School

Today all of the grade 2 students enjoyed a visit from Scientists in the School. We got to be real scientists for a morning! 
Students got to work at different stations and interact with different types of simple machines. We worked with wedges, pulleys, inclined planes, screws, wheels, axles and levers! We experimented with many different objects and tools that we learned act just like these simple machines. 
A big thank you to Alex's dad Robin and Frankie's aunt Tiffany for volunteering this morning! It is very much appreciated :-)

Homework

Have a look at our Word Wall Words for the week. Students have selected 5 words from this list as their Word Wall Words for the week. For homework this week, students can make sentences with each of their words, write our their Halloween words many times, spell the words out loud, write a story with the words, make a sentence with 3 or more words in it, etc. Please read the Word Wall Words page in the homework book for more ideas.

Students are also encouraged to read a book. They are eager to colour in a part of their caterpillars!!

Monday learning

In Math today, students began a describing numbers activity. They used the 100 chart to help them decribe the location of a number. We played a mystery number game and talked about how we can find that number on our chart. We crossed out numbers as we guessed. We used different strategies to help us. We learned that the numbers before the mystery number are smaller. 

The numbers after the mystery number get bigger. We are using those words to help us as we play the describing game. We also used other strategies to help us determine what Frank's mystery number is. We will play this game again tomorrow!

In Science we continued to work on our describing animals activity. Using our descriptive writing chart, the students finished describing their animal using their eyes and hands. They came up with many different words to describe their animals.


 Our Padlet Thinking list has grown. Click the link to view our Describing Animals Padlet thinking for today...
http://padlet.com/wall/describeanimals







A reminder that tomorrow we will be getting a visit from Scientists in the Schools! We will be exploring movement by investigating and experimenting with different types of structures. A BIG thank you to our volunteers who will be joining us tomorrow morning. Your help is very much appreciated!

Halloween in our Classroom

Settling back after a few days away at a technology in education conference. So much great learning was shared. I look forward to telling the grade 2's all about it tomorrow!

This Thursday we will celebrate Halloween! The students are invited to wear black and orange - AND crazy hair day! We ask that you do not wear any masks at school. 

Describing Animals

In class today, we continued to talk about animals which is part of our unit in science. We are working to describe animals and writing about it too. 

The students recalled a little bit about what it means to describe. They said that descriptive writing means when you describe a thing or a person or an animal.  They remembered that when you describe something, you can use your eyes and your hands. We used our eyes to see and imagined we were using our hands to feel how we can describe one animal of our choice today.

Working with a partner, we chose 1 animal from our animal book library. Next we had to look at the animal and use words to help us describe. We used a 4 Fun Facts sheet to learn about 4 things about a particular animal. The students came up with some great describing words. Here is our Padlet thinking so far: http://padlet.com/wall/describeanimals

We are almost finished this activity. The students will get a chance to finish describing their animals that they chose. We will get to share what we learned next time. I wonder if any of our animal wonders on our Wonder Wall will be answered?

Making Connections.

The students are making connections to the stories we read. We know Text-to-Text Connections, Text-to-Self and Text-to-World Connections.

Today we finished reading the Olivia story and made our own connections!

Classroom Notes

If you would like to purchase photos of your child, the order form is due on Friday November 1st to our office. There will be a photo re-take day this Monday October 28th!

On Tuesday October 29th, we will welcome Scientists in the School to our classroom. For additional information, check them out online via Scientists in the School on Twitter and Scientists in the School website!

We will be exploring movement and do some fun and interactive activities. Volunteers are needed for this event! Please sign and return the form as soon as possible. The volunteer form will be sent home today in your child's agenda today.

Describing Animals and New Word Wall Words

We continue to learn about animals in our class. Today we wrote about our favourite animal and talked about what we like about them. Students are using books from our wonder library to help their writing. We also started to talk about how we can describe an animal. We read a story about animals and worked together to build a map that shows what we can do to describe animals. Describing animals means talking about what animals have. One way to describe an animal is to talk about their colour. We describe this with our eyes. Next we talked about features of an animals body that we can describe by feeling ( with our hands). 

We will continue to talk about animals and describing more about them too. 

Our new word wall words are below. Can you make a sentence with each word?

We are starting to wonder...

In science we are starting our Animals Unit. We have talked about what is the same about animals. We described what they look like, where they live, what they eat and more. 

Next we created a wonder wall. This wall will help us as we learn more about animals over the next few weeks. The students wrote various wonders about animals. We hope to answer these wonders. We will be writing about and describing animals so we hope to learn new things. 

What is a good friend?

In Religion we are focusing on what makes a good friend. Students brainstormed what they think a good friend looks like. We made a list together and talked about what we can do to be good friends to one another. I explained to the students that Mme. Paradis is a good friend to me because she said thank you after I let her borrow our white chart paper. The students said that when a friend says thank you, they are using good manners. We added good manners to our list of what makes a good friend!

After I told the students the story of why Mme. Paradis said thank you to me, they decided that we need to say thank you to Mr. Bob. Mr. Bob learned that we did not have the grade 2 symbol in our classroom. So one day, he promised to give us a chalice to add to our prayer table. When he kept his promise, the students decided to make a thank you card for him! We wrote a special message to him,


and surprised him today in his class with our card. He was so thankful and really surprised!

Today in Religion class, the students started to write in their Important Book. Our first entry was about being a good friend. It is important to be a good friend. The students had really great ideas of what a good friend is. 

We used the iPad app called AudioBoo to read from our Important Book about good friends. Here are some of our entries:

RC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670637-rc-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

AO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670632-ao-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

EC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670630-ec-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

CW: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670628-cw-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

CO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670626-co-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

H: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670624-h-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

WN: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670621-wn-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

CL: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670619-dl-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

AB: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670617-ab-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

Finally, in the afternoon we spent time with our Grade 3 friends. We worked on math and language centers. The students really enjoyed working with their partners. It was a great friendship day.

Counting Strategies

Today in Math, the students continued to talk about representing (writing) numbers in different ways. We referred to our chart to help us!

Next, we started to talk about counting strategies. As a class we estimated how many cubes were inside of a bag. We talked about different strategies to figure out our answer. We counted sets of 10. With the leftover cubes we counted by 1's to get our answer. 

The students worked in partners with their own bag of cubes and small 10-frames. They had to come up with different counting strategies to determine how many cubes were inside of their bag. Some counted by 1's, some counted by 5's and some counted by 10's to get their answer! It was great to see the different counting strategies that we already know. Well done Grade 2's. We will continue to work with counting strategies and representing numbers tomorrow. 

Tuesday Learning

Welcome back! I hope you all enjoyed a great Thanksgiving holiday weekend. 

Today we got to add our 5 word wall words to our Word Wall. Have a look at the 5 new words we will work on this week.

Things to do with your Word Wall Words...

• Spell each word aloud three times, by the third time, try and close your eyes!
• When spelling the words, snap on the vowels and clap on the consonants
• Make a sentence with each word
• Write out each word 5 times
• Choose three of the word wall words and try to use them in the same sentence
• Have a spelling challenge with an older brother, sister or friend
• Choose a word and hunt for it in a book, magazine or the newspaper
  
  
  For Homework tonight, please make a sentence with each of our new word wall words in the Word Wall Words notebook. 

In Math, we were surprised to see we received a Twitter message from another Grade 2 class! Mrs. Nehme's Grade 2 class noticed that both of our classes are working on representing numbers in different ways. She sent us a Twitter message and asked us if we could represent the number 42 in 2 different ways. The class had so many ideas. We used tally marks, standard form, a number line and a number sentence to represent 32! Have a look.

Finally, in ART we are working on our Lines Project. We came up with a list of different lines. The students named the lines after reading our Lines That Wiggle book and from thinking about lines around us. We started with a large dot and drew lines that began at our dot and went all the way down, up or to the side. The students are working on showing different types of lines in each space. 

We are Thankful!

Over the past few days, we have worked on creating a Padlet to show what we are thankful for. Students wrote about what they wanted to say thank you for. Have a read at what they look like here: http://padlet.com/wall/grade2thanksgiving

We used our Padlet writing and the Thank You books we read this week to do many different activities. We added to our Making Connections chart. So far we remember that you can make Text-to-Text Connections and Text-to-Self Connections. We used our Thanksgiving books to think and write about what we are thankful for and what kind of connections we can make. We will continue to talk about connections next week!










We also used our connections and the Thanksgiving stories to create our Thank-You Tree. It sits beautifully on our Prayer Table! The students really enjoyed writing many thank you messages for the tree. It sits on our Prayer Table. We hope it will remind us that we need to say thank you to God everyday.

The students worked together as a class to collect and make the tree. We used the rocks and the sticks we collected yesterday and built our tree. It showed our great team work in grade 2!

At the end of class, Mme. Paradis walked in to listen to some of our thank you messages. She really enjoyed hearing our reading and seeing the tree displayed in our room. We were happy she enjoyed our hard work!


Wishing you and your families a lovely Thanksgiving long weekend. Take time to enjoy a nice meal together! You don't need turkey to celebrate Thanksgiving!! See you back to school on Tuesday.

-

Wednesday Fun

We worked hard today on many different activities.

In Math, we worked on our Math About Me representing numbers activity. We are almost done! We will put our whole project together tomorrow. We read about how a few students represented the number of letters in their names. We learned that there is another way to represent numbers - by using pictures! We know many different ways to represent numbers. We will continue to talk about representing numbers next week.

In Gym, we continued to work on using hula hoops in different ways. We are working on using the hoops in a variety of ways in intervals of 10. We are working in small groups.  Our goal is to present our unique hula hoop ideas to our small group and to the class.

In Language, we read a Thanksgiving story called Give Thanks for Everyday. While reading the students and I made personal connections to what the story reminded us of. We used the Thanksgiving book to share what we are thankful for. We will continue to talk about making personal connections tomorrow. We are also using Padlet to post what we are thankful for. We are going to refer to our Padlet messages to build a Thank-You Tree for our classroom!

Word Wall Words and Staying Organized!

Today we made a list of word wall words that we will work on for the week.

The words are: friend, really, said, Thanksgiving and with. In class we played some word wall games and talked about what the words mean. One game you can play at home is to spell out each word. Clap the consonants and snap the vowels. The students also made sentences with the words - you can practice this at home too!

Some students did not finish writing a sentence for each new word wall word. For homework, if your child brought home their Word Wall book, please finish making a sentence with each word. We are making a sentence with each word wall word! Some students challenged themselves and wrote a sentence with more than one word wall word in it. You can also highlight the word wall words in your sentence!

As a class we are working on being an organized student. Today we made a list and talked about what being organized looks like in our grade 2 classroom. The students came up with all of the criteria. We will keep working on this important learning skill as the days so by!

Math About Me

We continue to work on representing numbers. Today students began working on their Math About Me activities. We are using what we know about representing numbers to describe ourselves. Students counted letters in their name and represented it in 3 different ways or more! 

Tomorrow we will represent numbers to describe more about ourselves. 

                                          

First Week in Grade 2!

Week 1 in our new Grade 2 classroom has zoomed by!


In Art we are starting our Lines unit. As a class we read a line book and talked about all the different kinds of lines we can think of. Here is what our list looks like so far!

In Religion, we are starting to create our prayer table in our classroom. We talked as a class about what kinds of things we need to add to our table. The students mentioned a cloth and we talked about why they cloth needs to be green, and what time in the year our cloth changes to purple or white. The students also added a prayer book, a bible and a cross. We will continue to talk about the important role of our prayer table next week. 

                                  

In Math we continue to talk about how we can represent numbers in different ways. We created a chart to outline what we already know about representing numbers with different examples of how to show the number 13! 13 is the number of students in our classroom and it is great to see that the students already know a lot about how to show a number in a few different ways. We will continue to talk about representing numbers next week.

Reminder: Monday October 7th will be picture day. We will get to take individual and class pictures with our new grade 2 class!

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Who is this?

During Religion today I showed the students this photograph. They wondered who it was? They wondered why he was so important to add to our prayer table. For homework this weekend, the grade 2's will need to research who he is and why he is so important!

Our Class Promise

Today we talked about promises. We wondered...what is a promise? How do we make promises? What happens when we don't do our promises? We talked about what this looks and sounds like and made a chart. We explained that a promise is something you keep. You have to do it because you keep your word. If you break your promise you need to talk about it! 

We also wondered how do you make a promise? We learned that you make a promise with your hand and your heart. We all cut out our hand prints and signed them. They symbolize our promise to remember and follow the class promises that we created together this week! We placed our promise hands around our promise board to remind us that together as a class we will keep our word and keep our promises!! We also placed our first class book - (our promise book) on the table. We can read this book during quiet reading time.


Have a look at what our class promises look like!

Letters in my Name!

We started to work on representing numbers. Today we focused on counting letters in our names. The students are starting to build a Math About Me activity and counting letters in our name is the first part. After counting letters in our own names we started to think about how many letters are in our friend's names too. We are getting to know our friends more each day. We are learning on how to write one another's name! Tomorrow we will focus on representing numbers in different ways!

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This morning we had a dental screening. We learned a few important things. 

-Brush 2 times a day, for 2 minutes each time

-Don't forget to brush your tongue - it takes the bad breath away!

-Brush in a circular motion and NOT up and down!!

First Day Fun!

We had a great first day in our new grade 2 class. It was great to meet everyone! I look forward to great year together. Our October newsletter was sent home today. Please have a read about all of the important events going on in our classroom and our school this month. There is also a Blog/Twitter form attached. Please read and sign as soon as possible. 

Today we talked a lot about who we are, what we like and what we are good at. We are getting to know new friends! We also talked about what a caring classroom and school looks like. We are creating our own class book and talking about how we can live out our school motto.  We will continue to talk about that tomorrow!

Homework: Scholastic Book Order is due Thursday October 10th.
Please sign and return our blog form as soon as possible.
Tomorrow we have library! Please bring library books to school.