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.