November 1st Update

Portfolios

Portfolios came home today. Inside you will find the recent Data Management Test and science project assessments. Please review, sign, and send the portfolio back to school. 

Math

In math this week we have been exploring place value. Students have been working on taking an inventory of supplies on our classroom. We have learned that group items into tens helps us count quickly and efficiently:

Today we created a chart with our results from our classroom inventory. Tomorrow we will begin to explore the place value pattern patterns in the chart:

Reading -Visualizing

We have been learning about the reading strategy of visualizing in our Reading Workshops each morning. While reading stories and poems together, we have been describing the mental pictures that we create in our brains. Visualizing is an important comprehension strategy that helps us to understand the text in a deeper way. Paying attention to the details in the text helps our visualizations to become more vivid. 

Here is a fun idea to practise visualizing at home!

Read a book together (have one person read and the other sketch their visualizations without looking at the pictures, then switch!)

Writing- Small Moments Stories

We continue to work on writing our personal narrative small moments stories. I am impressed each day with the enthusiasm and effort that the students bring during writing time. Right now we are focusing on bringing three big writing craft techniques into our stories:

-weaving setting details in and out of the story (focusing on what we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel)

-using strong actions words to describe how our character move

-making our characters talk (character dialogue)

Today our writers met with their writing partners to share their stories. One partner shared and the other provided feedback and vice versa. We will continue to revise our stories before publishing later this month!

Science Wrap Up

We are wrapping up our science unit this week with one final project. 

Grade Two students have chosen a simple machine they would like to explore further. Today they gathered research in books to answer these two questions:

-where can we find real life examples of your simple machine?

-how does your simple machine impact humans and the environment?

Grade Three students have chosen a natural force that they would like to explore further. Today they also gathered research to answer these two questions:

-how does your natural force impact humans and the environment?

-what can humans do to lessen the impact of the natural force?

Students will work tomorrow to create one google slide to showcase their findings. We will share our google slides on Friday and Monday. Later next week we will switch our focus from science to social studies.

VORC!

Here are some pictures from the VORC trip that the Grade Two students recently went on!

Making a home for a squirrel!

Searching for animal tracks...what could it be?

Lots of fun debating who left this track! Do you know?

Bear Den!

It's hard to see but there are actually mushrooms in this tree! They are not growing there- they were put there by a squirrel! Our guide taught us that squirrels will pick mushrooms and hide them in the trees to dry out. This will make a tasty snack in the winter.

It's hard to see but this is a hawk! We were lucky enough to see it for quite some time.