Classroom Learning Update!

Hello Everyone,
I can't believe we only have 2 months left of the school year, like they say time sure flies when you're having fun! We have been working really hard on growing our Grade Two brains! If you have not looked on your child's FreshGrade portfolio please do so as we update weekly with things that we're learning about.

In Language Arts

We have learned all of our sound friends, but are going back to review our blend sounds (more then one vowel letter) so when we write or read these words we can accurately decode them. We have been focusing on improving our writing skills by exploring various writing themes and focusing on the editing phase of writing. Everyday we practice adding details to our writing by stretching our sentences and we have really become illustrative writers! We have also started a research project where students are able to choose what they would like to learn more about and then we will present the information using Google Slides or on a poster. There will be more information about this towards the end of the month as the class would like to invite parents in to see their amazing work! In reading we have been focusing on more comprehension strategies to help us grow our reading brains, ask you child about the book reviews we complete weekly. In the upcoming months we will continue to focus on improving our writing skills in different styles of writing, work on completing research projects effectively and we will continue to grow our reading skills by looking at different literacy concepts. Please continue to read nightly and work on Word Work sentences with your child. The City of Fort Saskatchewan Public Library is offering free library cards to residents, if you haven't already signed up for this please do so it's a great opportunity!

In Math
Over the past couple months we have been focusing on building a solid foundational understanding of how to add and subtract numbers. We focused on a couple main strategies; make a ten, add on, use doubles, think addition for subtraction and fact families. We practiced using these strategies when we completed our Banana Split Math tasks, we have successfully completed all of our Banana split math levels!! Every morning we work on basic math concepts when we complete our morning meeting- showing numbers different ways, greater than/ less than,  calendar concepts, even/ odd numbers, number order and graphing. We completed our Numbers to 100 assessment and demonstrated our understanding of these concepts. In the upcoming months we will be focusing on adding and subtracting numbers to 100. The main strategy we will be using is algorithm, but we will discuss other strategies too. In June we will also begin our graphing and 2D, 3D objects unit. Every Thursday we use our problem solving skills to solve math problems usually relating to what we've been learning that week. In April we explored a Canadian numeracy website that
helps them build math skills called Prodigy. During our Math Daily this is a very popular choice, if you would like more information about this program and how your child can use it at home please email me. Even though we have completed our Banana Split Math questions it is important to continue to practice these basic facts frequently, as the more fluent your child is with them the greater chance for success when they will be learning more complex math concepts.


In Science and Social
In Science we have just completed our hot and cold unit. We practiced reading a thermometer and discussed ways that we can make temperature warm, cool or consistent. Every morning we like to look at the temperature in the communities we study in Social to see what their temperature is compared to Fort Saskatchewan's. We also learned some different temperatures around us- our body temperature, room temperature, temperature to boil/ freeze water, the temperature of the sun, etc. We have one final unit to learn about which is the small, crawling and flying unit. Last Friday we had a very interesting presentation on this topic and we are very excited to learn more! In Social Studies we have learned a lot about Iqaluit and Meteghan communities we will be learning about our final community Saskatoon in the upcoming months. In June we will be having a field trip to the Fort Saskatchewan Museum which will share more information about these three communities!

May Calendar

Select the picture below and you will be able to view our classroom calendar for May! 

April Calendar

Click the link below to access the April Classroom Calendar 

March

Click the image below to access the class calendar for March!

This year in Grade 2 we have ...

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and winter break! I can't wait to get back to school with the kiddos and get back into the swing of Grade 2 things. I wanted to provide you with an overview of all the things we've already covered and some of the things we will be doing in the future.

Literacy
We have been working hard on reviewing our sound friends, we have reviewed the majority of the letters and have started to work on the various letter blends. By having a solid understanding of the various sound friends this will benefit our reading and writing skills. When reviewing our sound friends we read the sound friend story, work on building our reading comprehension, complete the sound friend song and puzzle, drawing and labeling helping us build our sentence writing and make various words that entail different sounds. When reading or writing with your child if they come across an unfamiliar word remind them to use their sound friends to help them decode what the word is. We also strengthen our writing skills by doing our weekly word work sentences and write in our classroom journals throughout the week, it's amazing to see the growth over the last few months. Ask your child what the writing criteria is and ask them about a goal for their writing.  We have also become very independent with Daily 5 and have learned about read to self, read to someone, work on writing, word work and listen to reading. These various tasks help build our reading and writing skills and give opportunities for me to pull small groups and complete guided reading which continues to help build students reading skills. Before break we were starting to learn different ways to become a better reader by looking at different CAFE (comprehension, accuracy, fluency and expression) strategies. We discussed that being an effective reader is more than just knowing what the words say. Below is a picture of all the strategies we've discussed and practiced.

We have been working on our printing skills by using Handwriting Without Tears and I'm sure you've noticed an improvement in your child's printing too! In the upcoming months we will continue to build our reading and writing skills by continuing to get more CAFE strategies and explore different writing themes.

Numeracy

Every morning we practice our numeracy skills by completing our math morning meeting, we work knowing how to read and use a calendar, days of the week, months of the year, even/ odd, number sentences, show numbers in different ways and complete a number line. Each month we have completed a reflection and been given feedback on this task, as we become more fluent we will complete our Math Morning Meeting on a less frequent basis.  During the week in addition to learning our grade two units we also work on our graphing skills, problem solving skills (Train your brain Thursday) and our math basic facts (Fun Fact Friday). In October we completed our summative assessment for our measurement unit these were posted on FreshGrade and also sent home so you were able to see which concepts your child had success with and which ones they need to continue to work on. We also have been working on the pattern and numbers to 100 unit and have learned about repeating, increasing, sorting and equal and unequal numbers, even/ odd numbers, ways to represent numbers, ordinal numbers, skip counting and number sequence. We will be completing our summative assessment for this unit in the upcoming weeks. The next math unit we will be starting is adding and subtracting to 100, we will be focusing on this unit for the next few months. This upcoming week your child will bring home a note explaining about an incentive of how we will be learning and become more fluent with our basic addition and subtraction skills. It is imperative that students are fluent and confident with their adding and subtracting skills to the number 9, this is how we will build strategies to make them successful with adding and subtracting to 100. There are various strategies adding and subtracting strategies that your child will be taught to ensure that each one has a strategy that they feel confident and successful with.  In this unit we will grow our mental math brain by continuing to learn different ways to solve problems and practice by solving math problems.  We have also been working on Math Daily 4 (Math by myself, Math with someone, Math writing and Math technology)  which helps reinforce numeracy skills taught and enables me to be able to pull small groups and work on various math skills. 

Religion (Mr. Walker)

In religion class so far this year, we have already completed our first two units!  We began this year with our first unit by learning that we are blessed to be a part of a classroom community of faith.  We learned that we are a part of God’s family – a great big family of faith that includes the school, the family, and the church.  We learned the importance of prayer, and especially praying for others.  We learned this family even includes the saints – we have already been able to investigate the lives of many saints!  We continued with learning a bit about the Apostles’ creed in the section “What do we believe?”.  This led us into learning about who God is and why God created the world and each one of us. We also learned a bit about how we are called follow the example of Jesus.

Our second unit, which just ended, led us through the season of Advent – the time of preparation for Christmas. We learned more about the Church’s liturgical seasons.  We learned about the Christmas story and about how we can follow Mary’s example in saying yes to God, and how we can share the joy that Jesus brings.  This unit was supported by daily gatherings in the gym to learn more about advent through symbols, prayer, bible reading, and song. We have just begun our third unit during which we will learn more about the life of Jesus, and what he teaches us and how he heals and nourishes us.  This unit is during the liturgical season of Ordinary Time and will take us up until the seasons of Lent and Easter.

Social Studies 

So far this year in Social we began discussing the community in which we live in. We learned the name of the city we live in, what province we live in and what country we live in. We also looked up our home addresses on Google Maps to see where we live and to gain an understanding of why maps are important. We even practiced using our mapping skills and created our own map of our bedrooms. Ask your child what a compass rose is. In November we had a great presentation on Inuit people and their way of live. We were able to learn about their history and their current way of life. For our summative piece of this unit we completed a mind map of all the things we learned using both pictures and words. This month we will be having an Acadian presentation discussing Acadia people and their way of life. In the upcoming months we will continue to learn about our community, explore the prairie community and compare the four communities to see similarities and differences. We will end our Social units with a visit to the Fort Saskatchewan Museum in June to summarize the concepts we learned throughout the year. 

Science

In Science we have learned about how to be a scientist, what scientists do and the different steps we have to take to successfully complete an experiment.  Every morning we explore temperature by learning how to read a thermometer and record the daily temperature on our thermometer. In October we used this knowledge and had a pumpkin day filled with various experiments and exploration on pumpkins. In November we had a t-pet presentation on liquids where we got to explore liquids at different centers. We seen how there are three states of matter and we even made a liquid turn into a solid and enjoyed a sweet treat! In the upcoming months we will be learning more about boats and buoyancy, temperature, magnetism and small, crawling and flying things. In the remainder of the school months we will be having T-Pet presentations on boats and buoyancy, magnetism and small, crawling and flying things.

Health (Mrs. Earle)
We have been learning about how to show respect for others, how our body responds to stress and ways to minimize it, strategies for conflict resolution and how to recognize others strengths and talents.


DPA (Mrs. Earle)
We have worked on locomotor skills, such as running, dodging, hopping and skipping, receiving, retaining and sending objects and soccer lead up games. We have also been working on listening to directions, following following rules and routines and and how to move safely in our environment.

Some fun learning moments captured!