It begins...

This week we begin our first week of Advent, a time of preparation for the coming of Jesus. We prepare for the celebration of Christmas. The theme for the first week of Advent is hope. The things our class hoped for was for happiness for our family and friends. We also discussed how we can make that happen through our actions. 

In Math we continue to explore patterns through our patterns centers. We are learning to recognize the difference between a growing/shrinking pattern and a repeating pattern. 

an ABA pattern in a snack!

Hundreds chart patterns

Is it a growing or a shrinking pattern? 

What happens to the numbers in the chart when you add another row?

A growing triangle and trapezoid pattern.

Hexagon and triangle growing pattern. 

In Language we continue to write about Peace using our five senses. We asked question such as what is world peace and how big is peace and answered them using our give senses to help us find descriptive words. 

Last week was also Stand up to Bullying Week at St Anne's.  We took part in a school wide stand up to bullying while reciting the St. Anne Lions Pledge. Our class also prepared and performed some skits for drama class on how to use our WITS. Here is a link to a video of some of the students performing the skit. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y4JcNh6JjE

In science we continue to design our amusement park using simple machines. A few students had a chance to explain their brainstorming ideas using the document camera and LCD projector. Here is a link to one of the presentations. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=luIgxB5XWd4

On a final note scholastic book order forms have been sent out. Please return the forms as soon as possible to ensure Christmas delivery. 

News story on St.Anne

View the link to see a story featuring some students from St. Anne. Very exciting to be featured through our deep learning initiatives.

http://globalnews.ca/video/3064823/canadian-war-museum-teaching-the-past-to-the-future

A poppy is to Remember

This week we read A Poppy is to Remember as an inspiration for our perspective drawing. We focussed on making objects bigger in the front of the picture and objects smaller in the background of the picture. 

We will also be starting our patterning unit next week in Math. Please try to follow along with the  homework calendar as that will directly support what we are doing in the class. 

We will continue our descriptive writing with a major writing piece on What is a Peace in light of Remembrance Day. 

We also had our Scientist in the schools visit is past week. Students enjoyed getting a hands on experience of how simple machines work. 

Great Spirit and Remembering week.

Thank you to all students who made this a great Spirit Week in support of the United Way. The students had a great time dressing up and our class raised almost $40. 

Crazy Hat and hair day!

Next Friday is also Remembrance Day.  We encourage all parents to attend especially those who serve or have served in the military to attend. 

We also read "A poppy is to Remember" and will be focussing our art project this week using the poppy as inspiration. 

This week we Will conclude our study of simple machines and will also conclude our 2D geometry unit. 

Students will also be exploring the concepts we taught in geometry through geometry centers. 

Symetrical shapes

Create your own symmetrical shape together. 

Create a shape with tangrams.

Geometric properties with geoboards

Cover over a shape with smaller shapes

Spirit Week and Math Monsters

This week we continue to work on our descriptive writing. We began by drawing our house in as much detail as possible. We will then begin to describe our house based on our drawing and using descriptive words.

In Math we continue to name and sort different 2D shapes. We are beginning to sort shapes by geometric properties such as number or vertices(corners) and number of sides. In order to help develop our understanding of shapes we are creating monsters made of specific 2D shapes just in time for Halloween.

In Science we continue to develop and understanding of simple machines and where to find them in everyday life. Next week we will have Scientists in Schools come to visit us to demonstrate simple machines and movement. We will need volunteers for November 3rd and November 9th. Scientists in Schools will be conducting a half day session with each of the grade 2 classes. Since there are 5 grade 2 classes our class will be split up during those days to attend the workshops with one of the other grade 2 classes.

Finally next week is also Spirit Week in support of United Way. Please bring in a donation of whatever you can to support the United Way. A suggestion would be to bring in a dollar for everyday your child is planning on participating in the Spirit Week activities. The Spirit Week activities are as follows.

Monday October 31: Orange and Black Day
Tuesday November 1: PJ day. Students are encouraged to bring a stuffy to be used for a descriptive writing activity. (they can bring their stuffy even if they are not participating in the PJ day).
Wednesday November 2: Crazy Hat or Hair day
Thursday November 3: Favorite Movie or Book Character Day
Friday November 4: Sports Day

We hope to see participation from everybody to support the United Way.

School visitor and canned food drive

Today we had a special guest come to the school to share with the whole school his explorations of the Canadian Arctic.  John Dunn shared photos, videos and stories of his travels under the midnight sun. We followed up with a class discussion of the simple machines he used to help him in his travels.

(photo retrieved from arcticlight.com)

This Monday as a reward for reaching 600 Dojo points as a class, students will have some time to explore the peace garden.

A reminder that photo day is tomorrow and that students are not to wear green tops as we will use a green screen for the background and the green colour on the shirt will show whatever background is chosen.

Next week is our annual food drive for the Kanata Food Cupboard. We will run the drive just like last year. We ask students to bring in non-perishable food items starting next Monday. Items will be collected and totalled each day and a winner will be announced at the end of the Food Drive. Let's show the school what our class can do!

Descriptive writing and 2D geometry

This week we begin new units in Math and Language as well as continue our study of simple machines in science. In religion we continue to explore what it means to belong to a community. 

Our Math lessons began this week with a look at all the 2D shapes we know through various exploration activities. We will explore and learn to classify shapes based on the number of sides and vertices. We will also learn how to identify a quadrilateral. 

In language we began our descriptive writing by describing everything that we can see in a picture in as much detail as possible. We also worked with word wall words and listed out adjectives. Continuing from our work on sentences we will be adding adjectives to our sentences to make them more descriptive. 

This week in Science we will continue to design and start to build our simple machines as well as learn about all the different types of simple machines.