Thursday, May 29, 2014

Conserving Water

Our current focus in science is air and water in the environment. We have been talking about water in our environment over the past few weeks. Students previously explored the steps of the water cycle. We know a lot about condensation, evaporation and precipitation. Ask your child about it!

 This week students worked on a water activity. We explored the ways people use water in the environment. We talked about how we use water at home and focused on what it means to conserve water. We came up with many things we could do at home or at school to conserve (or save) water. We also explored why it is so important to conserve water and what we could do to make sure people know all about it!

 Students worked hard all week on creating posters about what we can do to conserve water. They wrote about what we people can do to conserve water and why it is important. Our goal was to teach people that we all need to do our part to make sure we take care of the water we have and conserve it so we don't waste it!

 We created a video using the 30 Hands iPad app to showcase all of our posters. Students did a wonderful job of demonstrating what we can do to conserve water and why it is so important to our environment. Enjoy! How else can we conserve water? Students used other tools to communicate what they've learned this week. Have a look at some of our creations:



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Friday, May 23, 2014

Probability

Our current focus in Math has turned to exploring probability. We are looking at data in different ways and analyzing how we can make a game fair to increase our chances. We are making predictions and guessing the outcomes to simple games using new math terms:
Ask your child about the math games we have explored this week. How can you use the new math terms to explain the outcome of a game? You can also ask your child to explain how to use the new math words to explain everyday events (for example: what is something that is impossible to happen?). 




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Literacy Center Writing

This week students have added many new ideas and learning goals to our Literacy Centers. We are having fun and exploring new ways to incorporate writing into our centers.


The boys are enjoying creating HOW TO books at the writing center. We created a new I CAN list with a goal of writing stories to explain something. Some other friends have started creating their own story books using a Narrative writing checklist. Some great writers are emerging in our room. A wonderful idea came from DL to add our completed books to our class library. Excellent idea! Some students are creating rough copies before creating a good copy into a book. We look forward to reading all books really soon.

Also at the Writing Center this week, students continue to write persuasive letters to people in our school. Some students are even getting replies from other teachers. It is really neat to see the fun persuasive ideas our students are coming up with! They are learning how to write good reasons, and how to be even more convincing as the replies come in. I have a few students working very hard to try to convince me to have a class party. I am hoping they can convince with really good reasons or facts!


Have a read at some of the persuasive letters I received this week so far. Students used AudioBoo to record their letter before delivering it to me in an envelope. I wonder if they can be persuasive enough!
listen to ‘HH & ab & md persuasiveing Mrs.ciampa’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘RC. EC. Persuasive Writing’ on Audioboo







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Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Division and Fractions!

Students continue to work on understanding how to multiply and divide numbers. We are problem solving and coming up with different ways to solve a problem. Students are learning strategies from their peers. Excellent peer-to-peer modelling of different strategies. 

 Together we are using skip counting, equal groups, array and number sentences to show our work.  
Some strategies we use to solve a math problem.
Students held a Talking circle to discuss different math problem solving strategies. We read a question as a class and decided the words we should use when explaining our math strategy (For instance, I think, I can, I use, I disagree with, etc).

 It was great to hear all of the different strategies. It was also nice to see that students were visualizing the shared strategies in their head while their friends were explaining the circle. Well done grade 2! 

 After our Talking Circle, students completed another question. They had to use pictures, numbers and words to solve their problem. Have a look at some of the ways we know how to solve a problem! Below is a sample math problem we solved as a class. Have your child explain what strategy they used to solve the math problem!
Can you name the strategies we used to solve the math problem?
Math Tweets!!




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Sunday, May 11, 2014

Open House Persuasive Success!

Our class experts waiting for their parents to arrive at our Open House!
A huge thank you to all of the families and students who were able to join us during our school's multicultural open house on Thursday May 8th! Particularly, to the families who came to our grade 2 classroom to visit our room. Students were so excited to show you all of the fun learning happening in our room. They were even more excited to learn that their open house persuasive writing letters worked!! Our letters were written to persuade you to join us and so many of our classmates arrived at school during the Open House elated that they were able to persuade you. The students came up with the persuasive reasons to get you to our classroom during our Open House. A huge thank you for your support and your presence on Thursday!


Throughout the classroom visit, our mandate was to have the student voice in our room be the guide. Students led parents around our classroom to show some of the great projects and assignments we have worked on over the past few months. Students used their persuasive reasons to show their families all of the exciting learning in our room.

It was lovely to see the pride by the students and the parent engagement as well. Our class is blooming with tech experts who showed their parents how to scan QR Codes, how to Tweet, how to record on the AudioBoo app, how to log into the Chromebooks and so much more! Students are leading much of the learning that takes place during our Literacy Centers, and our Open House evening highlighted some of the student-led inquiries within our room. For instance, the Teacher Center expert got to show her mom what we can do at the Teacher Center. The QR Code expert showed his mom how to scan a QR Code and how to add her thinking to our Padlet using the QR Code link. We also had some class tweeters and guest tweeters add to the fun too.

A future tech expert and tweeter taking videos in our classroom!
Thanks to our persuasive letters, we learned that our class won the challenge against Mrs. Swan's Class. Our class was the more persuasive class!! As a result,  Mrs. Swan's Class bought us a brand new book from the Book Fair. We have added the book to our class library. A HUGE thank you to Mrs. Swan and the grade 3's for the challenge, but most of all for the awesome new book for our classroom library.


Class and Guest Tweeters of the Open House:

We created a PADLET to have parents and students write what they liked about visiting our classroom. Have a look at what some families posted about us. And if you'd like to add another idea...please feel free!
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Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Friendly Reminder

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Persuasive Open House Letters!

Taking turns in our circle to read our letters.
Tomorrow is the day! All week long we have been preparing to persuade our families to come to our Open House on Thursday May 8th from 4:30-7:00! Tomorrow is the day and we hope that we have done enough to convince you. We have been challenged by Mrs. Swan's grade 3 class...so we want to be the class winners. We hope to see you in our room 202 tomorrow evening!

Our persuasive Open House letters are complete and we have sent them home to you today. Your child is very excited to read them to you! Students have also recorded their persuasive reading on the AudioBoo app. The more we use this app in our room, the more we can see that many MORE students in our room are becoming AudioBoo app experts. Very exciting! A Tech Expert means students are able to use the app on their own AND teach others how to use it too. We look forward to showing you how much we know tomorrow.
Persuasive talking circle with the Grade 3's
Students also got to read their persuasive letters to Mme. Paradis and Mrs. Swan's grade 3 class today too! We held a Talking Circle to share our letters with both classes. All of the students had really convincing arguments and reasons. Mme. was very impressed with how well we all wrote.

You can listen to all of our AudioBoo persuasive recordings below.

listen to ‘NN open house’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘AW open house’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘dl open house’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘ec’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘RC Open House’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘HH & AB &WN Persuasive writeing’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘PE open house’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘co opin house.’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘open house ao’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘AB open house’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘FF open house’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘KI open house’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘open house by HH’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘open house by WN’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘MD open house’ on Audioboo
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Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Talking Circle in French Class!

Using kind words en français in French class with Mme. Milic. What does a Talking Circle look and sound like? Students are doing a great job at waiting their turn and adding on to the thinking of others. Have a look at the link below to see our class participate in a Talking Circle!
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Monday, May 05, 2014

Multiplication

We are working hard in our new math unit focusing on multiplication. We have created a chart to help us to solve problems. Students are practicing to solve multiplication questions using these strategies. Please review them with your child!

 Today we started to work on showing our work in equal rows using an array. An array uses pictures grouped into equal rows. An array is a way to organize objects into rows of equal numbers. Students had to show an array that represents the number 12. Students also had to show their work and the number 12 in as many ways as they can.

 Students are also using other strategies like skip counting. Skip counting helps us to learn how to multiply numbers.









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Sunday, May 04, 2014

Can We Persuade You?

Student generated ideas to persuade families to come to Open House!
We continue to work on persuasive writing in our classroom. Students are learning how to persuade someone to do, think or believe something. We are brainstorming how we can do that in writing.
Last week, NN came up with a great writing idea during our Literacy Centers. When we consolidated, she told us that she was going to try to convince her mom to come to our Open House to see our classroom on Thursday May 8th after school. We all thought this was a perfect writing opportunity!
We are using the persuasive writing form to share how we might convince our families to visit our classroom during our Open House evening. We began with a brainstorm and wondered...what are the reasons why we want our families to come. Please have a read at our reasons above!
We are currently writing our rough draft. Students are coming up with creative reasons and are being very convincing so far.
After finishing the first part of our writing, students decided to record their convincing letters on AudioBoo so far. I have included some of our AudioBoo persuasive writing recordings. We will continue to write about why we think our families should attend our Open House this week. We will be writing our good copies.

Stay tuned for the final product!!






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Thursday, May 01, 2014

Persuasive Writing

Our new writing focus is now persuasive writing. Students read a story today called Click Clack Moo. We talked about who was trying to do the convincing. We also talked about whether we felt the characters were being polite or not! Persuading is like begging but in a polite way. We need to convince someone with facts and reasons.

At the Teacher Center, NN ended the centers with a potential persuasive writing topic....check it out:


listen to ‘we retell click,clack moo. dl cw’ on Audioboo
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