Happy Birthday Baby Jesus

What a special day today was. We celebrated Jesus` birthday with so many great activities. We began our day with a mass to celebrate the 4th week of Advent (the theme of Love). 

Next, we went to the gym to eat a delicious turkey lunch cooked by members of the Vanier community. We are so fortunate to be part of this great school. They cooked us turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy and so much more! We loved it. Huge thank you to all those who spent so much time to cook for us and to celebrate Jesus` birthday in a special way. We ended the lunch with cake and happy birthday of course!

In the afternoon, each class got to visit with SANTA! He gave us some presents, including our very own plush beanie baby. We love them so much. What is the name of your beanie baby?
We also got to watch some Christmas movies and left with some sweet treats from Mrs. Swan and myself! We had such a fun day. 

Reminder that tomorrow (Friday December 20th) is a PD DAY - no school! We will enjoy the Christmas holidays from December 20th until January 3rd. Wishing you and your family a wonderful Christmas. May your holidays be filled with love and family. And may you enjoy many blessings over the New Year!!!

See you back to school on Monday January 6th, 2014!!!

DreamBox

Great News! Our school has signed up our class on DreamBox Learning. DreamBox is an online math program that children can access at home. A letter with password information was in your child`s school bag today. You can sign in and start using DreamBox for math right away. It will be a great tool to use over the Christmas break to play some fun math games and review some math concepts. 

You can find our class login page here: 

https://play.dreambox.com/login/bau5/38564

Click on our class, find your child`s name and put in their password. Happy playing (and learning)!!

Christmas Surveys

Our Christmas graphing continued today. We are learning how to read data using different types of graphs. We also continue to work on converting one piece of data on a graph into another type of graph (for instance data on a tally chart into a pictograph).

Yesterday, we spent much of our day composing survey questions. We used our questions to poll teachers and students around our school. We created a tally chart to track our data. We consulted our Must Have checklist to see what we needed to add to our work. 
Today, we used our tally chart data to create a pictograph! Students worked with their partners to create pictographs. We consulted our Pictograph Must Have checklist to make sure we included all of the important information. Students are recognizing that the number of tallies is the same number of pictures in our pictographs. 

Great work grade 2! Our charts will be posted in our classroom to remind us how to read graphs once we get back from our Christmas holidays. 

Graphing Must Have's

In class today, we continued to focus on data to show information. We are looking at charts and graphs to help us show information based on survey questions. 

We focused on pictographs today. Pictographs use pictures to show information. We used the same information from our tally chart to create our pictograph. The survey question was: What Christmas tree ornament is your favourite? We focused on pictograph must have's. This list helped us to create the pictograph in our notebooks. 

We also labelled our work to show where each must have is located in our graph. The Must Have list will help us this week as we think of our own survey questions, poll students around our school, use tally charts to collect data and transfer the data to make our own pictographs! Stay tuned. 

Data & Surveys

In class we are started new learning in Math. We are looking at data in many different ways. Data shows/shares information about something. We are exploring different ways to collect data and how we can show the same information using different types of graphs. Our focus is showing how we can use a tally graph to show the same information using a pictograph.

A pictograph shows information using pictures. As a class, we are focusing on determining what a piece of data must have. This checklist will help us as we create our own survey questions to ask around our school next week. We will be creating our own pictographs to share information about a topic of our choice!

Ask your child what a graph must have. We will continue to practice creating pictographs and tally graphs next week.

What Child Is This?

Great news! Our class, along with our whole school will be participating in our school's Christmas Play taking place next week. The play will take place in our school's gym on Tuesday December 17th at 2:15pm. A note went home today with information and an invite to all parents who can attend. Our class has been preparing our special Christmas song What Child is This? If you are able to join us, we would love to have you watch our performance! In the mean time, we will be practicing this song each day to prepare for our performance. I sent home the lyrics to the song today. Please review and practice each night. Here is the Veggie Tales link that we are using to help us practice the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0ba98gP1EA 

Song Lyrics: What Child is This?

What child is this who laid to rest 

On Mary’s lap is sleeping?

Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,

While shepherds watch are keeping?

This, this is Christ the King,

Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.

Haste, haste to bring Him love,

The Babe, the son of Mary.

So bring him incense, gold, and myrrh,

Come, peasant, king, to own him.

The King of kings salvation brings,

Let loving hearts enthrone him.

This, this is Christ the King,

Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:

Haste, haste to bring Him love,

The Babe, the son of Mary.

Hot 89.9 Christmas Surprise

Hot 89.9 arrived at our school this morning for a fun surprise! They entertained us in our gym while we ate breakfast! It was a rocking good time. Josie from the radio station spoke to us about the importance of eating breakfast each morning. She also shared with us why it's so important that we enjoy a healthy breakfast on a daily basis. We had a fun morning dancing with the whole school while eating a nutritious breakfast together. A huge thank you to 89.9 for the surprise today. Ask your child about our fun morning!

I-Can Checklists

In our Literacy Centers, we co-created I-Can checklists and have added them to our literacy centers. Together with the students, we created a checklist at a few of our centers. These checklists help us to keep track of what we need to do while working in the center.
We created one for the Read to Someone center. Our checklist reminds students how to find a just right book, and how to use our reading strategies while reading with a partner!

At our Writing Center, students are working on descriptive Christmas tree writing. They were using the checklist on their own last week so we decided to create mini checklists to refer to. Now students are using the checklists while at the center! Students are saying that the checklists help them to know what to do next. It is also helping students to recall what they can do in their groups while working on the acitivities. Way to go grade 2! Ask your child about our 2 I-Can Checklists...the descriptive writing checklist and the read to someone checklist. 

Advent Liturgy

This morning our class along with the grade 3 class led the 2nd week of Advent Liturgy! We have been preparing all week for this liturgy. Our classes did a wonderful job of singing our 3 songs and doing all of the readings. We were so proud of their great work!! A special thank you to the parents who were able to join us this morning. It was so wonderful that you could attend today!

During the liturgy, we talked about the theme of peace. Our 2 classes wondered about this theme and created a video to share what peace meant to us as we wait and prepare for the birth of Jesus at Christmas. We showed the video to the school today and then had a discussion as a school how we can prepare our hearts during the Advent season. 

In addition to the movie we created as a class, we watched a special video that talks about the story of Advent through a social media perspective. It ties in perfectly with our school board's focus on being safe, responsible and kind digital citizens.  What would the story of Advent look like if it happened in modern time? Here is a link to this beautiful video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sghwe4TYY18&feature=youtu.be

Language and Math Goals

We had a very busy week in Grade 2! Students worked all week on various patterning activities. We focused on repeated patterns and growing patterns. We talked about changing attributes, the pattern core and the pattern rule for many different pattern questions. 

Today we worked on an activity using snap cubes. We had to explain pattern rules using the manipulatives. Ask your child to identify the pattern rule for a growing pattern!

In Language we continue to talk about descriptive writing. We have been using adjectives to describe a Christmas tree and writing a story about it. We created a descriptive writing "look for" checklist that we used to help us create our own piece of writing. 

We use our 5 senses to describe just like we do when we visualize while reading. Students are doing a great job at labelling and describing their Christmas tree pictures with many details. We have been working on a rough draft the last few days. It was great to see that students created their own writing checklist at their desk while writing about their trees!! Excellent job friends. Good writers use a look for checklist to make sure they are on the right track. Next week we will continue to write about our Christmas trees. We will also add to our padlet thinking of Christmas trees. Here is what we have so far: http://padlet.com/wall/christmastrees

Advent Liturgy Preparations

This morning students worked with the grade 3 class to prepare for the Advent liturgy this Friday. We practiced the liturgy readings as well as the songs in the gym. We will be singing 3 songs in total! 

We also worked on the theme of Peace for the 2nd week of Advent. We wondered what the word peace means and how we can show peace during the season of Advent as we wait for the birth of Jesus. We pair-shared some ideas and created a list. Next, we used a Christmas ornament to write and draw about our peace plan for Advent. The whole school is participating in this activity in preparation for the liturgy this Friday. 

Just a reminder that our Advent Liturgy will take place this Friday morning at 9:30 in our gym. Please join us if you can! The students cannot wait to be the choir and the readers for this liturgy.

Advent Liturgy and Raz Reading

This Friday morning at 9:30 our class along with the grade 3's will be participating in the Advent Liturgy. The Liturgy will take place in our gym. Our classes have worked hard all week to prepare for the mass. Some students will be saying a reading. If you can join us please do!

It is great to see students are logging into Raz Kids reading at home! A reminder that students are encouraged to read the Raz books instead of listening to the story. This will allow students to practice reading on their own and help to build their vocabulary. Don't forget to complete the quiz at the end. Just 15-20 minutes of homework a night is recommended. Thank you for your ongoing support of your child's learning!

Create a pattern

We continue to work with identifying patterns in numbers. Today students worked on creating their own patterns. We practised creating our own patterns using different objects. Students are creating patterns, extending a repeated pattern, identifying the pattern core, the pattern rule and the changing attributes. Ask your child to explain some of the pattern rules in the pictures below!

Advent in our Room

Today students helped to design our prayer table for the start of Advent. We talked about each symbol and the significance to the story of Advent. We started to read an Advent story and learned about why its so important to wait and prepare for the birth of Jesus. Ask your child about the symbols we added to our prayer table today.

We wrote about what Advent means to us and talked about what we can do as we wait for Jesus to be born on Christmas day. The students shared many great ideas on how they can show peace, hope, kindness and be helpful to others. Ask your child what they will do to prepare for Jesus throughout the season of Advent! We are sharing our thoughts and recording a video. The video will be shown at our school's Advent Liturgy this Friday at 9:30 in the gym. Please join us to see our class as we participate in the mass.

New Word Wall Words

Below are our 5 new word wall words. These words will help us as we work on our final animals assignment this week. We will be describing an animal of our choice and writing about it. Students can use these 5 words to help make sentences for homework. Ask your child which animal they chose and how they can describe their animal using these words!

Patterning in Math

In Math we continue to work on recognizing patterns. We are familiar with patterning vocabulary and are using different questions to determine what the pattern rule, the pattern core and the changing attributes are.