Thursday Oct 29, 2020

 Happy Happy Happy Thursday October 29, 2020!

Reminders: 

No school tomorrow (Oct 30)!

No School November 11 (Remembrance Day)

Picture retakes November 12 (I have the pictures ready to send home Monday!)

Parent teacher interviews November 19 (3:30-7:30) & November 20 (8:00-1:00)

Today in room 5:

Today we were dressed up in costume! It was great to see the students dressed up and having fun doing activities!

We began our day with some quiet working time to finish work while I worked with a student. After this the students went to the gym to do phys ed with Mr Sadowsky and play kickball.

Upon returning to class we went through our morning calendar focusing on the date, number of days in school (the number 38), the weather and we even had time to do rhyming words with our wow words. 

During snack we ready a spooky story before heading outside to play on the compound.

Upon returning inside we did our October writing sample in which the students used a picture on the board to do their own free writing. We talked about some rules of writing such as:

Periods at the end of a sentence

Capitals at the start of a sentence

Use finger spaces

Try your best to sound out words

Connect your sentences to the picture

I also modeled a writing sample for the students before starting. Students then worked completely independently without help with spelling or sounding out of words. I told them, I do not care about spelling correctly...sound out the words the best you can so I can see how your brain is hearing the words! Students rose to this challenge and wrote for a solid 25 minutes. I read through all of their work and asked for clarification of their words. I will share these writing samples alongside the growth from September in our PTC's.

In the afternoon we worked together to find out how many seeds were in our pumpkin! We estimated how many seeds were in the pumpkin on Tuesday and today we counted small groups of seeds on our own. In the end our pumpkin held 305 seeds! The closest estimation was 200 seeds!

We finished off our day with making Inchies Art. Students used paper, pencil crayons, and pastels to create four different small pictures. Some of these pictures were orange pumpkins on black paper, skeletons on white paper, and ghosts on black paper. Students did not have to make it about halloween though. They were free to create four pieces based off their interests as well.

I am happy to say it was a fantastic day!

Have a great evening and a safe and happy Halloween!

Mr Lancee

Tuesday October 27 2020

 Happy Tuesday October 27, 2020!

Reminders:

No school Friday October 30th

Dress up day October 29th- Students must still wear face masks, no full halloween masks, no weapons.

Starting today I will be running a Scholastic reading club! I will send home flyers so that you can order books online :) The class code is...

Class Code: RC139987

Also... if we can read over 500 minutes as a class this week I will let the students choose my costume for Thursday! So make sure you read every night and I could be dressed as a dinosaur, a grey cat, a pink hippo or many more!

Happy reading everyone!!!

Mr Lancee

Monday October 26, 2020

Happy Monday October 26, 2020 

Reminders:

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students) Students can also just wear black and orange if they do not have a costume.

Just a reminder, Google classroom is now live for the grade 2's! I sent out the emails for the students log ins yesterday afternoon. If you are having trouble logging in please email me :) My blog will be updates on what we do in class and reminders of what is happening in the month. If you are sick you can log onto the google classroom to keep yourself up to date on work!

Today in room 5:

We began our day with some catch up time and silent reading while I read with students! This carried us up to gym time, in which the students went off to the gym with Mr Sadowsky. Mr Sadowsky is doing cricket style kickball all week in the gym while teachers are leading soccer.

Upon returning to class we had our morning calendar and counted the number of days we have been in October and the days until Halloween! We practiced days of the week, months of the year and looked at how many days we have been in school. Students were given their new wow words for the week:

we

in

like

it 

up

Each day we will look at these words, practice sounding them out and learn some language rules that go along with them.

Everyone in room 5 banded together and brainstormed a new page for the book the school is creating. This book takes inspiration from the "If you give a mouse a cookie" series. 

If you give a mouse a cookie

The book the school is creating is called, If you Give a Beluga Some Bacon".

It was our task to create the page for our book today. Students were each given a sheet of paper to create the art for the page. We will vote on the drawing we want to use later this week.

After LA students had lunch before returning to class for science.

In Science we began learning about a new small crawling flying creature. 

This creature is...... Spiders! Today we watched a video on spiders and did a realistic drawing of a black widow. We will label the spiders body parts tomorrow! A link to the video we use to do the drawing can be found below :)

Spider Video

Today's math block was a short one but we focused on representing the number 7 and numbers with 7 such as 27! 

How can you represent the number 27??

After recess we finished up our afternoon by looking at a map of Calgary. I taught the students how to use a compass rose to help us work with maps. 

We then used the compass rose to navigate our way around a map of Beddington Heights! Students used different colored markers to label the map with the school, field, roads, and the path we walked for our Walk for Wenjack! Using google maps we explored Beddington Heights, Calgary, and followed highway 2 all the way to Edmonton! Tomorrow we will look at landmarks and how they can help find our way in Calgary!

Thats all for today!

Have a great day everyone :)

Mr Lancee

Friday October 23, 2020

Happy Friday October 23, 2020?

Reminders:

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students) Students can also just wear black and orange if they do not have a costume.

With the changing weather and for safety reasons we are no longer up on the field. We are now right next to Mr Beecheys class just outside the grade 2 doors. Send your child to the new spot from the fence and I will send them back to you from the same new spot! I will be outside helping parents find their children each day :)

Today in room 5:

We began our day with some catch up time to give students time to finish their Walking for Wenjack labels, writing, and art. As students finished they were able to read their book boxes.

A quick note about reading... it is essential that you are reading with your children every night. Modeling good reading, practicing sounding out words and getting students engaged in books through fun stories is the building blocks of making students life long readers. If you do not have books at home please use raz kids or email me and I can help you find some other options for reading. We are tracking our reading at home each day and our goal for next week is to get over 1000 minutes read at home! We can do it together :)

After our morning calendar we had a combination of math and printing. We began by practicing writing the letter 6/six. This was only the first part though... Next, everyone chose a number with a six in it such as 66/sixty-six. I had each of the students choose a number and they had to print the number/words then represent their number in four ways. The ability to represent a number in multiple ways is an excellent for way students to show their understanding of numbers.

Unsure of how to represent numbers?

How to represent numbers

At home, get a large piece of paper and represent 1 or 2 these numbers in at least four different ways! Bring the paper in Monday to show the class!

16

30

42

55

After math we had snack before going on our walk for Wenjack. As a class we walked 106 km's!

After gym we had buddies with our grade 5/6 buddies in Mr Mueller's class. We tried something new today! With our covid restrictions we cannot mix cohorts. So we had students connect with the grade 5 students through the ipads using google meet. The grade 5/6's read through the ipads to the grade 2's! We will try this again soon and have the grade 2's share their books as well!

We finished off our morning with Mathletics on ipads completing assignments on counting to 100, skip counting, and patterns! Please complete some math assignments over the weekend to practice!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Mr Lancee

Wednesday October 21 2020

Happy Wednesday October 21, 2020!

Reminders:

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students) Students can also just wear black and orange if they do not have a costume.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

Starting Friday our pick up and drop off spot will be moved!

With the changing weather and for safety reasons we are no longer up on the field. We are now right next to Mr Beecheys class just outside the grade 2 doors. Please the map for the new spot. Send your child to the new spot from the fence and I will send them back to you from the same new spot! I will be outside helping parents find their children each day :)

Today in room 5:

We began our day with our usual catch up and reading time. As I see students interests in books grow, so do I see their ability to read for extended periods. This is a perfect time for me to do some one to one reading with students!

After morning catch and reading we moved into our morning routine. We did the usual calendar and calendar number hunts, days of the week, months of the year, weather, number of the day/days in school with student involvement.

Mr Weins then joined us after calendar for music class.

After snack we had a special guest today! Our Librarian came to our room have a short ten minute dance party before heading out for recess. Students loved being to have a dance break before heading out for time on the playground. Ms P. has promised to return and read us a story next time :)

After recess, students worked on creating finished copies of their "When I think about home" writing. I went through their writing yesterday and edited their work for spelling and periods. They then had to rewrite their work on finished copy paper. This editing process helps students to understand that work can always be improved. We do not simply write something and then we are done. We must write,  edit, then rewrite! The writing will be displayed with their art they created for "When I think about home" writing.

Im the afternoon students did a quick check using blank hundreds charts. This helps me to see if there understanding of the numbers from 1-100 has grown! After gym and our 1.7 km walk for Chanie we used filled in hundreds charts to practice skip counting using 2, 5, and 10. Students first colored the 10's, then the 5's. We looked at patterns within these two columns and discussed it a as a class. We finished off the math lesson by coloring in the 2's!

We finished off our with some work for our DL board. Students were busy coloring their art and making name tags to display for the school. We enjoyed listening to music and having quiet chats while doing so. Twas a chilly but wonderful day!

Keep up the great work grade 2's!

Mr Lancee

Monday October 19, 2020

Happy Monday October 19, 2020!

Reminders:

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students)

Important note:

Tomorrow I will be test running using google classroom with all of the students. Once this is done you will be able to log onto our classroom anytime you are away to complete work and stay up to date with out class. I am hoping ton have everything up and running Wednesday evening :) I will be sending home logins and instructions once we are good to go!

This week we are raising awareness for Chanie Wenjack and the Secret Path week. 

WHAT IS SECRET PATH WEEK?

Secret Path Week is a national movement commemorating the legacies of Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack, and takes place annually from October 17-22. This is a meaningful week as October 17th and 22nd respectively mark the dates that Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack joined the spirit world.

We call on all Canadians to use Secret Path Week to answer Gord Downie’s call to action, to “Do Something” by creating a reconciliACTION and furthering the conversation about the history of Residential Schools.

-https://downiewenjack.ca/our-work/secret-path-week/

To show our schools wishes to raise awareness for Chanie Wenjack we are doing a community walk to and totaling our distance walked. We are doing the walk to support Chanie Wenjack and the fact that, "On October 22, 1966 near Kenora, Ontario, Chanie Wenjack died when he walking home to the family he was taken from over 400 miles away."

-https://www.cbc.ca/arts/secretpath/gord-downie-s-secret-path-airs-on-cbc-october-23-1.3802197

Today we walked 1.43 km in the cold. As a school we will total our distance walked in hope of walking the distance with Chanie Wenjack.

Below is a resource for more information.

The Secret Path

Keep in mind their are parts of this page that are inappropriate for the grade 2's. Please preview first before going through with your children. 

Today we went through parts of the secret path book. I did not show them all of the pages.

We will be creating a documentation of learning board around The Secret Path Week.

This week in room 5:

LA:

Wow words

• We have begun wow words! These are 5 words we focus on each week. We talk about the words, sound them out, do word work activities, and use them within sentences. These words will also be posted on the word wall and in their dictionaries so they can be used when writing independently.
• This weeks words are: me, I, to, can, my

Writing

• Today the grade 2's learned about Chanie Wenjack.  We did a writing piece about their homes and how when they think about them it brings on positive feelings.
• When I think about my home I feel ____. I feel _____ because __________________________.
• This personal connection to being thankful and grateful for the things we have and our homes we live in was our way of remembering and raising awareness for Secret Path Week.

Reading

• We will be doing Razkids this week! This is a great resource to use at home! I will send home log ins tomorrow!
• Please make sure you are filling in the reading tracker at home! I am totaling up the minutes for our class :)

Math

• This week is all about skip counting!! We are practicing skip counting in our morning routine, songs, and on hundreds charts in math.
• We will be connecting the skill of counting by 2, 5, 10 to 100 in our growing patterns work as well :)

Science

• This week we will be focusing on bee's diet and wrapping up bees by focusing on interesting facts! Next week we will start a new small crawling flying creature!

Social

• This week we are learning about mapping and how to read maps. We will be look at maps both through our community walks and how to actually read a map in class!

Art

• Our art this week will be a self portrait of us thinking about, When I think about my home I feel...
• We are going to use grey to show our faces and bright colors to show our emotions within our thoughts!

Wednesday October 14 2020

 Happy Wednesday October 14, 2020!

Reminders:

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students)

Tomorrow is picture day! (October 15th) Please come dressed nicely!

One quick announcement today:

I sent home a folder for students to keep track of their daily reading!

On this sheet please track the date, title of book, time read and number of pages read. I will keep track of these in class as well! We are unfortunately not sending home books this year, but Razkids still counts!

Happy reading!

Mr Lancee

Tuesday October 13, 2020

Happy Tuesday October 13, 2020!

Reminders:

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students)

Thursday October 15th Picture day

Welcome to our official brand new amazing grade 2 blog!

This week in room 5:

Language Arts:

• We created a social studies/LA writing page today titled D...for differences. Within this writing piece we focused on what makes us all different. We connected it to how we all are part of the same classroom! Like leaves on a tree we are all a little different...but the tree trunk is classroom that we are all a part of! Together we created the art piece below! If you missed this project...it can be found below!

• We will be reading every day at least twice! We will be going over reading strategies and focusing on how we use our letter sounds to begin decoding words. 
• This week we will do another star student to learn about one of our classmates.
• Students will also be doing a monthly writing sample to show progress throughout the year.
• We will be doing printing around the letter G!

Math:

• Increasing patterns! Students will be practicing how to show increasing patterns using color and pictures this week. Some practice below!
• We will be reviewing repeating patterns in our morning meetings
• Printing practice with the number 6 and different ways to represent this number. 
• Can you make the next three pictures for the growing patterns below?

Social

• This was mentioned earlier relating to the writing on D for differences. This is in part a piece of social studies carrying over from learning all about me.
• We will be using maps to explore Calgary and starting to look at landmarks.
• Map of Calgary Can you find our school? Your home? Nose Hill?
  

Science

• Habitats of insects, specifically focusing on bees!

Health

• Telling vs tattling (Size of the problem) When should you come to the teacher for help?

Printable sheets:

Insect Habitats Sheet

Star Student Sheet (Picture of self or someone in your family goes on front with their name)

Writing goes on back! 3 things you learned about the star!

Friday Oct 9, 2020

 Happy Friday Oct 9, 2020

I want to start off by saying thank you to everyone for a great first month (and a bit) of school! To my 1's, you are all amazing and I want you to have a great time in your new classroom with your new teacher! To my 2's, our learning adventure continues and I am excited to see how we will all grow throughout the year! 

Reminders:

Friday October 9th No school (PD day)

Monday October 12th No school (Holiday)

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students)

Thursday October 15th Picture day

Ms Young or Ms Byrne will support you in joining their blogs as needed!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Wednesday Oct. 7 2020

Happy Wednesday October 7 2020!

Reminders:

Monday October 9th No school (PD day)

Friday October 12th No school (Holiday)

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students)

Thursday October 15th Picture day

An important message:

A school messenger was sent out yesterday informing parents that we will be doing class reorganizing due to gaining another teacher for the grade 1/2 team. In the best interest of the students, we have decided to go with two grade one classes, and two grade two classes. If your child is in grade two they will remain in my class. If your child is in grade one they will be moving into either Ms. Byrne or Ms Young's class. I am both feeling both happy and sad as the grade ones are a wonderful group of students and I will miss being able to teach them this year. That being said, both of the grade one teachers are wonderful teachers and will do a fantastic job teaching your children! Teachers will contact you over the next few days to introduce themselves, talk about pick up/drop times, and any other important need to know info. Classes will remain the same tomorrow. New classes start Tuesday!

Today in room 5:

We began our day with some catch up time before heading off to gym. In gym the students played kickball on the field. This new game was tricky for most as many had never played it before. Think baseball but with kicks! They eventually got the trick of the game and had a blast!

After our morning calendar routine we had snack before heading to the compound for recess.  

Upon returning inside we began tracing our footprints to create Grateful Turkeys! The turkeys are created by the students to show what they grateful for. Each student brainstormed 5 ideas to show what they care about most. We continued this in the afternoon by having them trace their hands 5 times to make the feathers and write the grateful ideas on. We finished our day with some time on ipads (if they were finished) doing mathletics and razkids. 

With how busy we were this week, we will bump some things to next week! Tomorrow will be another busy day then we start our 4 day weekend!

Have a great day everyone! 

Feel free to email me with any questions :)

Mr Lancee

Monday October 5, 2020

Happy Monday Oct 5 2020!

Reminders:

Monday October 9th No school (PD day)

Friday October 12th No school (Holiday)

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students)

Thursday October 15th Picture day

This week in room 5:

Language arts: 

- Reading: 

    -Students will be doing daily reading to self by exploring different books related to their interests.

    -We will also be logging into Razkids and log ins will be provided for continued reading at home.

    -Students will be practicing how to find words that start with letters we have practiced. Students will         also be using reading strategies such as looking at pictures to help read unfamiliar words. 

-Writing:

    -Students will be printing and practicing using Letter V and K. We will seek out words that start with            these letters and practice using them within a sentence! Practice sheets can be found at the bottom of             this blog post!

    -We will also be doing our star student writing towards the end of the week!

    -Students will also be reflecting on who and what they are grateful for. We do this style of writing to           give thanks to those people we care most about! Students brainstormed who and what they are                     grateful for as a class today. We will be writing these in our journals tomorrow and creating a                     grateful turkey art to send home over the weekend when it is finished!

-Math:

        -This week in math we are focusing on sorting. Students were sorting pictures of things in the real             world by one attribute (shape). Students sorted pictures of donuts, cookies, signs etc. into shapes such         as rectangle, square, and circles. We will continue this throughout the week and also sort by two                 attributes such as, color and shape.

        -Students are also developing their number sense and printing by practicing writing the numbers 6 &           7. We will explore these numbers and where they can also be found on hundreds chart. 

Social:

        -This week we will be learning about differences! All of us have differences that make us unique. We want to celebrate them and talk about them as a class. We will be making a group art project project to show how we are all different but still similar!

Science:

        -This week we will continue to explore small crawling flying creatures specifically focusing on the bee. It is a busy week but we are hoping to be able to look at bee habitats! 

        -Students showed great interest in learning about volcanoes today. We discussed V words and this came up right away! As promised, here is a cool video on volcanoes! Video

Health

    -This week we are talking about the difference between telling vs tattling! 

Have a great evening everyone!

Mr Lancee

Sorting game

Make sure you log into mathletics for even more activities!

Friday Oct 2, 2020

Happy Friday Oct 2 2020!

Reminders:

Monday October 9th No school (PD day)

Friday October 12th No school (Holiday)

Friday October 30th No school (PD day)

Thursday October 29th dress up in costumes day. (This is optional for all students)

Congratulations to the five winners of the pillars of care in room 5!

Care for place, learning, others, self and wellness went to five students who did an excellent job of showing the pillars of care this month! 5 new winners will be chosen next month for the October pillars of care. 

Today in room 5:

Students began their day with some catch up time to finish their number 5 printing and what does a bee look like writing. In pushing for more independence in the room I am now asking students to pull out their own work each morning. I am still there to support students with finishing work but students are learning to prioritize their mornings. 

We moved into our morning calendar routine which resulted in an excellent number talk! We talked about why numbers repeat when we count. We counted and looked at a hundreds chart in which we looked for patterns such as the numbers 1-9 repeating but with a tens word (twenty, thirty, forty) in front. What patterns do you see in a hundreds chart?

After gym outside playing Minecraft themed tag games we had snack. During snack we watched a part of the Magic School Bus- Bees in a bee hive episode. We are currently focusing on bees in our small crawling flying creatures research and this episode was another way to gain some knowledge on these insects. 

We then moved into math and some time doing mathletics on ipads. I sent home the logins last week for students to use at home to practice different math skills. 

We wrapped up our morning by doing a guided drawing on how to draw a realistic bee. 

link to bee drawing

This drawing activity was a wonderful hands on way for students to learn about bee anatomy and learn some new insect terms such as:

-antenna 

-abdomen

-thorax

The guided drawing also helped students to practice their art skills! Bees transformed from....

to......

Students did a wonderful job with this project! We will be coloring the bees Monday :)

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Mr Lancee

 

Thursday Oct 1 2020

 Happy Thursday October 1st everyone!

Reminders:

Today was the Terry Fox Run! Students did an excellent job running around the soccer field in their gym class as a way to raise awareness for Terry Fox, cancer research and those who have been effected by cancer. We watched read the book: Terry Fox and Me and discussed why Terry Fox is such an important part of our history. 

We visited https://terryfox.org/ to learn more about the Terry Fox Run and why we do it in schools. Check out the links above to learn more :)

October 9th No school (PD day)

October 12th No school (Holiday)

October 30th No school (PD day)

Have a great day everyone!

Mr Lancee