2D Weekly News
Week ending December 4th
We are thankful
Apologies that I did not manage to get a newsletter out last week.
First thing is, I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to our homeroom Mom and all the other Moms that helped with our Thanksgiving celebration. We had a lovely shared meal with turkey sandwiches, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, pumpkin and banana cake, and cupcakes. We all had turns giving thanks to something we are thankful for. It was very special celebration for the class. We made a thankful turkey using our own handprints. They look lovely and are posted up outside our classroom. I will be sending them home on Sunday for you to keep.
We are now on countdown until the winter break. I can't believe we have already completed the first trimester. I trust you received your childs report card on Thursday. It was a pleasure writing these reports and am proud of all their successes in trimester 1. If you would like to meet to discuss anything in the report, please email and we can set up a time.
Have a restful and enjoyable weekend.
Kindly,
Penny
INTERNATIONAL WEEK December 8 - 11th
The opening ceremonies will take place on Monday afternoon in the high school gym. The whole school, K-12, comes together for this amazing ceremony. On Monday it is international dress day, so please send your child dressed in their national dress or something that represents their country. On Tuesday they are to wear a sports jersey from their home country. Wednesday is Qatar colors day, and Thursday they wear their international week T-shirt. If you pre ordered a T-shirt it will be coming home early this week. The shirts will be on sale during the week also.
Please talk with your child over the weekend about the country they come from as they will all have the chance to share about their country. The class is a very confident bunch who really love to share with their peers, so I know they will really enjoy being able to do so about their home country.
We have the international buffet on Wednesday and on Monday we will be visiting a Qatari tent set up at ASD by the Arab Mothers Association.
Its going to be a fantastic week and next weeks newsletter will be full of pictures of our week!
Number Sense & Place Value - Straws, straws, straws!!
In the math numeracy unit we are looking at developing our number sense with numbers up to 1000. The children have been using straws to bundle 1's 10's and 100's and to count up and down between 90 and 1000. Lots of practice at home with counting over the "tough ones" ie 199, 200, 201etc, will help them greatly.
They are breaking apart 3 digit numbers and are able to explain and show the value of each digit. The class have been doing lots of problem solving and starting to be able to show fact families of bigger numbers. They have been using benchmarks number to help them count up and solve problems.
For example going from 124 to 300
124 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 300
The underlined number is the benchmark number.
To help them figure out the problems, they are drawing bundles of 1, 10, 100. Some of them are able to solve without drawing the bundles
They then see that they counted up 6 in ones, then 70 in tens, then 100 in hundreds. The next step is then to add 6 +70+200. This is a strategy to solve addition and subtraction problems.
Reading & Writers Workshop
We are one week into our new reading and writing units. These short 4 week units are designed to tie together the work threaded across the first few months of school. Students will reflect upon their reading strategies and develop themselves as reading thinkers. They will learn to think critically about texts, make connections, predictions, determine importance, and ask questions that lead to a deeper understanding of the characters and text. They are working on developing their summarizing skills, pulling out their favorite parts of self selected independent books and looking into the authors message. They are then using what they have done in reading by using their story maps and graphic organizers to help them plan and write a book review. We have watched an oral book review on a book they all love called "The Snowy Day" We also have been reading book reviews written by children and been identifying what makes a good book review. The book reviews unit will help the children learn to write about books they love in ways that will persuade others to get out there and read them.
New Science Unit - Weather & Seasons
Students will understand..
Weather is the state of the air (temperature, wind, clouds and precipitation).
We have different tools that help us to describe and measure weather.
Weather affects our lives.
We can have weather changes for different seasons.
The essential questions we will be investigating through the unit are....
What is weather?
How can weather be described and measured?
How does weather affect me?
How does the weather change with the seasons?
We had a class lab activity looking at exploring what air can do to different objects and learning that air is a gas that can move and push on things. They made predictions about what objects will move and how far they will move.
A note from our librarian Mrs. Catherine
Grade 2 have been introduced in library lessons to thousands of digitally-enhanced books through our program called MyOn.
Students can log on at www.myon.com with their user name.
This begins with 25 followed by their initial and then their family name eg Harry Potter would be 25hpotter and the password for all students is 123456.
There is a library of more than 7,000 books with multimedia supports including the means to listen to the books through headphones. With fiction and nonfiction books in a variety of formats—picture books, graphic novels, chapter books, Spanish and bilingual titles and titles for struggling and reluctant readers- there is something for everyone!
Students can also create lists of books based on their individual interests and at their level as there is an initial reading test to determine their reading level. Why not explore this great resource with your children today?
If you would like to know more and be shown how to use MyON, then please drop by the library or email.
Catherine Gellatly
LOWER ES Librarian