October 12th

October Pride Assembly

Our class will be sharing a movie we made about difference makers, and the importance of making a difference at the October Pride Assembly. The assembly will take place on Friday, October 26th, at 9:20 am in the gym. Families are welcome to attend!

Food Drive

The "We Scare Hunger" Food Drive is in full swing. Thank you to families that have sent in non-perishable food, or household items. So far our class has brought in about 12 items! The food drive will continue until the end of the month. Thank you for your support!

Dance-A-Thon

Our first ever Dance-A-Thon will be on October 31st! This year we will have 2 big fundraisers (The Dance-A-Thon, and Hansen Palooza in June). Thank you for supporting our school!

Library

Library book exchange is on Monday next week. Please remind your child to bring their books to school.

Request

Next week we will be doing some design challenges in science! We need small boxes (empty Kleenex, cereal boxes, etc.) and toilet and paper towel rolls (empty) to support our construction. If possible, please send these items in with your child asap. Thank you!

Poetry

Below is our poem of the week, "Autumn Wind". This week students in Grade 2 and 3 both examined this poem. We discussed strategies for determining the meaning of new and different words, as well as the different connections and visualizations that we can make while reading. The Grade 3 students learned about personification, a type of figurative language. Personification is when the writer gives human actions, or sounds to something that is not human. In this example the poet has given the human action of running to the wind.

Science

Our learning wall is growing! Here you can see that the Grade 2s have explored 4 of the 6 simple machines, and the Grade 3s have learned about 4 different forces in our everyday lives. Next week we will continue to explore a few more examples of simple machines (the screw, and wheel and axle) and natural forces (e.g., wind). 

Below see some pictures from our experiments today. The Grade 3 students were challenged to form a ball of clay into a shape that could float. From here we discussed the meaning of buoyancy and pondered how boats float. The Grade 2 students learned about the wedge by conducting a simple experiment using clay and their pencil. They were able to see how the pointy side of their pencil acted as a wedge to slice through the clay.

Math

In math this week we worked on sorting by two, and three attributes using a double, and triple Venn Diagram. Here are some examples of the grade 2s sorting gingerbread children by two attributes. The Grade 3s were working to sort shapes onto a triple Venn Diagram but we didn't get any pictures this time. The bottom picture shows a challenging sort where students had to determine the sorting rule. We had fun with a few challenging sorts like this throughout the week. On Monday students will sort objects of their choice by determining their own sorting rules using two, or three attributes on a double, or triple Venn Diagram. After that we will begin learning about place value. 

Visual Arts

Ms. Caughey sees our class twice a week for visual arts. This week she instructed the students to create some beautiful pieces incorporating leaves, pastels, and a variety of lines.