Monday 30 October 2017

The month of October has flown by! The students have been working on many different things here in Grade 2:

Language - We continue to introduce new Word Wall Words each Monday and practice them daily.  Students are asked to spell them on independently on Fridays. 

A big focus for the Grade 2's right now is sentence writing.  Our lessons have covered sentence structure, asking vs. telling sentences, and as always, we are working on using  proper capitalization and punctuation.  If this is an area of need for your child, please have them practice at home with your help.

Math - We have completed our Numbers unit and have begun learning about 2-D Geometry.  The students have been exploring shapes with different numbers of sides and vertices.  If your child has difficulty counting by 2's, 5's or 10's, please spend some extra time practicing with them at home.  

Science - Simple Machines cont'd - The children are getting very good at naming simple machines, and recognizing that they exist to make work easier for us! 

A few reminders:

Please check your child's agenda every day.  There is often important reminders and sometimes homework that needs to be returned and completed.  WWW books need to be signed on the weekend and returned on Mondays.

The children will be getting a large amount of treats tomorrow evening.  Please try and save these treats for them to eat at home rather than in their lunches.  Excessive amounts of sugar do not help children focus at school and make it difficult for them do their best learning.

From October 30 - November 3, St. Anne is having a Spirit Week in Support of United Way. This year instead of bringing in a donation every day, we are asking for one donation of School Cash Online for the whole week.

Give what you can! 

Monday - Sports Day 
Tuesday - Black and Orange Day (costume day for the Kinders) 
Wednesday - PJ Day 
Thursday - Crazy Hat or Hair Day 
Friday - Favourite Movie or Book Character Day


Progress Reports are going home this Thursday, November 2nd.  Interviews will be scheduled for next Thursday, November 9th. 

Our Remembrance Day Liturgy will be held at 1:00 pm on Friday, November 10.

Tuesday 10 October 2017

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We are well into the month of October and the students have been working extremely hard here in Grade 2.  We have almost completed our Recount writing unit, and have been studying how to construct complete sentences which begin with an uppercase letter and end with punctuation.  The students are working on writing more complex sentences that end with question marks and exclamation marks, rather than simply using periods. 

We introduced our first set of Grade 2 Word Wall Words today.  Up until now, we have been reviewing the WWW from last year and determining which ones we still need to learn.  Each week, the children will copy their new words into their agenda (under the list section).  Part of the students' homework responsibility is to practice spelling these words often with you at home during the week in order to help them learn the spelling.  We will practice them in class in a different way from Monday - Thursday, and on Friday the students will have a quiz to see if they are able to spell them correctly. 

In Math, we are completing our Numeration unit.  We have been using the 200 chart to discover the patterns we see when we count by 2's, 5's, 10's and 25's.  They have been excited to learn that the patterns continue the same when counting from 100 to 200 and on.  This week we will continue to learn what it means to estimate, and focus on the concepts of more/less.

We are well into our Science unit on Simple Machines.  The students have learned the six different types of Simple Machines (inclined plane, wedge, wheel and axle, pulley, lever and screw) and have been busy discovering their uses and constructing them in class.  The children loved presenting their objects to the class today and I loved seeing them so enthusiastic! There are still a few to get through tomorrow.  If your child has not brought in an object to share with the class, please remind them to do so tomorrow.

A few housekeeping details:

Monday is our library day so please try and return books on this day.  The children are welcome to keep a book out for a second week if they are not done; they can simply return it on the following Monday.  This week we missed our library day due to the holiday, so please just return the books by Monday, October 16th.

The October homework calendar was sent home last week.  This calendar contains suggestions for activities you can do at home with your child.  The activities do not need to be returned to school.  A new calendar will be sent home at the beginning of each month. 

Last week, I sent home the student logins and passwords for Dreambox, Raz Kids and the students' gmail accounts.  Please send me a note if any of these are not working and I will investigate.

Please follow me on Twitter @liannelogan10 to see pictures of the in-the-moment activities happening in our class!