End of (school) Days

Wow! What an amazing learning journey. It has been my pleasure to teach each and everyone of the students in this grade 2 class. I have enjoyed it so much. Thank you for all of your help and support this year. It has also been pretty cool to enter into our deep learning journey with the other grade 2 classes. Here is a short video of our last field trip at the Summer Solstice Festival during National Aboriginal Day.

Today students will be bringing home some artwork. They will also be bringing home 2 different sets of pictures. One is a picture that was taken on the first day of grade 2 way back in September. The other is a set of pictures on a 12x12 piece of cardstock that shows what our students look like now. They have come a long way in their transformation from students who have just finished grade 1 to capable and confident youngsters who are ready for grade 3. It has been an awesome metamorphosis. I feel sad to see them go but am happy that they have completed this amazing transformation.

Multiplying our Knowledge

The past 2 weeks we have been learning the basics of multiplication and division. We learned how multiplication is making a number of equal groups. We explored different ways to make those equal groups through various centers and worksheets. We learned that division is breaking up a number into equal groups. We explored division through centers as well.

We are busy this week finishing up our animal reports for Science and our Narrative folktale for Language. We are also completing our Fully Alive Family Life unit which concludes with a simple explanation of how a baby is born.

Next Tuesday is our last field trip of the year to Major's Hill Park to take part in the Aboriginal Summer solstice festival. This will also wrap up our Deep Learning adventure where we explored and connected with an Inuit community and collaborated on projects such as the photo book. At the festival we will explore arts and crafts activities as well as dances and singing. We will also get to see First Nations people in their regalia as the perform different ceremonies. It will be an excellent culmination. Thank you as well to all of the parent volunteers who have signed up so far to help supervise.

We have also been observing the life cycle of a butterfly in action. we received them as caterpillars, watched as they turned into chrysalides and the observed in amazement as they became butterflies.


Forming a Chrysalid


How's it hanging


Multiply beside a butterfly


Snowman Multiplication and Division


Multiplication Array

Animal adaptations

This week we concluded our exploration of fractions. We covered up shapes by trying to use the smallest number of pieces possible. We explored fraction relationships using fraction blocks and discovered different ways to make a pattern block hexagon.

In language we used the 5 finger method for summarizing a folktale. (Somebody...wanted...but...so...then). We also learned what  a folktale is and how it often tries to teach a lesson about the natural world. We practised our summarizing with the First Nation story from Canada's West Coast "How the Raven Stole the Sun." We also looked at how to illustrate a book using that story. 

In Science we learned more about animal adaptations and characteristics.  We made animals out of available materials and described their adaptations. We also learned about classification of animals into the major animal groups mammal, reptile, fish, insect, amphibian, and bird. We took an in depth look at mammals and will be exploring more of the animals next week. Below are some videos of students describing their animal's adaptations.