Hello
Parents and Students,
It
was an absolute PLEASURE to meet so many of you at the OPEN HOUSE on Thursday evening! We hope you enjoyed viewing our turkey
display case. Turkeys will go home next week in time for Thanksgiving. For those of you who were UNABLE to attend
Open House, please look in your child’s agenda next MONDAY FOR YOUR CHILD’S STAR OF THE WEEK DATE OF PRESENTATION.
We
had a lot of fun on Monday singing Happy Birthday to our
lovely Ms. Holtby.
The children enjoyed black forest cake in the afternoon, after a hard day
of work in Grades 1/2.
We continued to work on understanding repeating patterns in math (Math outcome P2.1) at the
beginning of the week. Is your child
able to repeat a pattern element? Is
your child able to represent a repeated pattern? Is he/she able to extend a pattern and
compare a repeated pattern? Finally, is
he/she able to repeat a pattern? Mid-week, Grade 2s worked on the new term; increasing patterns and extending them. This was a more challenging concept for some
of the children, which we will continue to review and reinforce. See
photos from this week’s emails to guide you along.
On
Tuesday, we began a ‘phonics strip’
activity where we scrambled the letters (l, p, a, t, n) to create two, three,
four, and five letter words.
For
French we created ‘shields’
about ourselves, sharing our favourite colours, ages, and family information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2hXa8dbK3o
Vowel bat song… check it out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhj9SqrIZqI
French numbers to 20
We
had an incredible, green zone walk to the George Bothwell Library
on Wednesday afternoon, where we carefully crossed busy Albert Street and safely
made it to the Southland Mall. There, we
sang a Greek ‘hello’ song to Ms. Selimos’ dad who was in the food court. His heart melted. Next, we went to the George Bothwell library
where librarian, Jane Grigg read books to us. She put on a few puppet shows and
even showed us two movies. She played
the ukulele, as we sang with her. Her
instruments were very cool and we each played an instrument and danced to books
and songs. We watched the video; That’s
Not My Hat. Ms. Selimos even surprised
us with a treat; a Safeway cookie, from the bakery, before we walked back to
school. On Thursday, we wrote sentences
in our journals about our experience.
On
Thursday, Grade 2s “wrapped up” UNIT 1 of Math Makes Sense and patterning. The math word of the week was “Increasing
Patterns”. A few of the boys and girls
had difficulty with “extending of patterns,” so we reviewed the concept. We also had fun acting out one of the
lessons. QUESTION: How many drumsticks would 10 drummers
have? See photos. We skip counted by twos, looking at the
patterns and numbers involved. The
children became drummers and then transferred their understanding by drawing it
on paper, showing the pattern of twos in different ways. Next, Grade 2s will begin a new math unit on NUMBERS TO 100.
The
first few lessons will be challenging for some of the Gr. 2 students. In this unit the children will be expected to
be able to SKIP COUNT by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s FORWARD and BACKWARD.
Examples as follows: Count
backward by 10s from 90 to 30.
ANSWER: 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40,
30. Count backward by 5s from 60 to
35. Count forward by 2s from 82 to 94.
Print off a 100 chart from my math website and play counting games with your
child. See math photos for ideas. Is your child able to count forward by
5s starting at 35 and ending at 85? Is
your child able to count backwards by 10s starting at 90 and ending at
30? Is your child able to start at 1 and count by 2s? Work on even and odd
numbers with your child as well. Even
numbers end in 0, 2, 4, 6, 8. Odd numbers
end in 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. In the following
weeks, coins will be introduced (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters) and skip
counting using money.
This
week the Grade 1s began a new math unit on NUMBERS TO 2O
with Ms. Holtby. Grade Ones need to be
able to read the number words and to
create sets to 20. Is your child able to read the word ‘two’ or the word
‘five’? Work on this vocabulary with them. Also, watch for reversals of
numerals, which is normal at this Grade 1 stage, but do correct them. Grade 1 parents, this coming week’s homework
page will numbers and words.
Your
child wrote his/her second spelling test on
Monday. They did great! We WILL get “picky” in Grade Two re: using lower case letters when writing the
test. Capitals will be reinforced when
referring to people, places, or things.
Ex: Cat needs to be written as
“cat”. Thank you parents for signing the
spelling test notebooks and returning them the next day.
PWIM = Picture Word Inductive Model. The PWIM poster this month is of a classroom. This week’s PWIM
lesson focused on creating our PWIM words
and next week we will play some PWIM sorting games based on this concept.
Thursday
entailed an afternoon of language arts/social studies dedicated to Canadian hero, Terry Fox. We explored Wikipedia on the data
projector/computer and discussed Terry Fox.
We listened to a song Elton John has
dedicated to him and watched some real life videos of his life. The children worked on a simple worksheet about Terry, which they will
share with you in their Term I report card portfolio. At the end of the day on Thursday, we went on
a school wide walk around the Grant Road bowl and neighborhood to remember
Terry Fox. Share the following links
with your child:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Fox
encyclopedia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjgTlCTluPA
beautiful documentary
Thank you for your monetary donations
all week.
Mr.
Jeff Cappo visited our classroom for 15 minutes on Monday morning. He is the Cultural Liaison for Aboriginal
Education for our Regina Public School Board. He attended a Residential School as a child
and shared about his experience. Residential schools existed from 1874 to 1999. On Friday morning at 7:30 a.m., staff were
invited to participate in a Peace Pipe ceremony at Grant Road School and at
9:30 a.m. our Grant Road students and staff will participate in a Flag Raising
ceremony later this a.m.
Please watch the
following powerful video/book with your child at home
and discuss: When
I Was Eight, a picture book about residential schools. The children
are familiar with this book as it was read to them by Ms. Holtby in our Social
Studies class.
When I Was Eight children’s story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSBrkJn3NeI
When I Was Eight children’s story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSBrkJn3NeI
Through
the story Amik Loves School, the Grade 1 and 2s became aware of the
history and impact of residential schools in Canada. We had a class
discussion about residential schools and did some drama activities based on
Amik, the main character. We also read, Kookum’s
Red Shoes by P. Eyvindson. The children then brainstormed about things that
they would not want taken away from them.
Children had an opportunity to come up and share their ideas using the
data projector.
So great to see so many children wearing
orange on Friday, the 28th for Orange Shirt Day; throughout many regions of the country in
recognition of the harm done to generations of children by the Indian
Residential Schools and as an affirmation of our commitment to ensure that
every child matters. As we continue on our reconciliation journey, it is
important to participate and develop awareness of the history and impact of
residential schools in Canada. The orange shirt is symbolic of every
residential school student’s loss of identity and self-worth and becomes a
symbol of defiance against that undermining of children’s self-esteem, and of
our commitment to anti-racism and anti-bullying in general. Ms. Holtby did a writing activity with the
children this week. They created their own t-shirts with things that are
important to them. They discussed how the children who were taken away from
their families felt, and something they learned about Indian Residential
Schools. Protocol of the ‘First Nations talking circle’ consists of
acknowledging the Treaty 4 territory, to sit on Mother Earth if possible, to
pass the talking stick in a clockwise direction, to listen respectfully to the
person holding the talking stick (speaker), and to value his/her opinion and to
speak from the heart.
Next
week, I will share GRANT ROAD pictures
from later this Friday morning with the ENTIRE
SCHOOL during the Treaty Four Flag raising.
Have
a wonderful weekend everyone!
Ms.
Selimos, Ms. Holtby, Ms. Daniels
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