April 13, 2015 week with Ms. Selimos

Greetings Parents and Students,

I hope everyone enjoyed the Spring Break.  Please remember to send a water bottle to school for your child.  I have many thirsty children, especially after recess breaks.

We began the week with an awesome trip to the ROYAL SASKATCHEWAN MUSEUM on Monday afternoon.  We followed up on Tuesday with a language arts writing project.  Each child created a brochure including information about the following:  bus ride, First Nations Gallery, legend (Bee Stinger), toys and games and the Paleo Pit.  Expectations for this writing lesson included:  factual sentences with capitals and periods, illustrations including First Nations and animal content, and drawings to support their sentences.  Legible printing was reinforced. We used walking dictionaries and inventive spelling.

Mathematically, we reviewed 2-D shapes (triangle, square, rectangle, circle) this week.  Vocabulary included:  corners (vertices, straight/curved lines).  We played some riddle games, used geo-boards and elastics to create shapes,  and mid-week,  we made models of shapes using straws and play dough.

We have engaged in concrete math activities this week for our geometry unit.  The kids loved using the solids (cones, cylinders, spheres, rectangular prisms, cubes) to create structures.  They were introduced to geo-boards and elastics, in order to create shapes (2-D) before the break.  On Monday we made shapes (triangles, squares, rectangles) using straws and play dough.  New vocabulary included:  corners=vertices, line segment, sides, curved lines, length and width. 

Ask your child questions about the solids/objects poster.  Example:  How many vertices does a cone have?  Does it stack?  What shape it its face? Which object has exactly 6 faces that look the same? Cube…  The Grade 2s will be making our own solids using clay on Friday.  We will display them in the egg cartons.

Another language arts focus this week was:  rhyming, after reading the story, THE HUNGRY THING.  They had a blast creating their own HUNGRY THING MONSTER.  We also studied adjectives for Writing Traits, which carried into THE HUNGRY THING story. 

We received MAIL this week.  We finished our Urdu lessons before the break and received a Certificate of Achievement Award from Saskatchewan Organization for Heritage Languages (SOHL).

For French, we enjoyed creating Garfield cartoons about Garfield’s favourite hobby, eating!  The children practiced reading their cartoon strips to each other.

Sabah will be our Star of the Week on April 20^th.   We are looking forward to her presentation. 

Have a great rest of the week everyone!

Ms. Selimos