March 1st, 2024

Hello families,

This week we continued learning about animals in the winter, focusing on adaptations as well as signs of animal and human activity. It was great to see students applying their learned knowledge during our field trip on Thursday. There is nothing better than learning from nature! Thank you to our AMAZING volunteers for making the trip such a memorable experience for the kids. We couldn't do it without you!

We studied Snowshoe Hares, Chickadees and Red Squirrels!

In literacy we continued with our weekly Words Their Way sort and the UFLI program. We began learning about long vowels, and "magic E" within VCE (vowel-consonant-E) patterns. Students took to their writing books to create four simple (Grade 1) or juicy (Grade 2) sentences containing words that follow the rule.

Here were the Words Their Way Sort levels for this week!

We also started My Father's Dragon and read chapters 1-4. Students followed along as I read, answering comprehension questions and drawing a picture for each chapter.

The March guest reader calendar was sent home this week. Thank you for helping your child practice their book at home. It is so great to see them reading fluently and confidently in front of their peers!

Words of the Week

than

first

water

been

call

who

its

now

Spicy

night

answer

different

In math we continued with addition on open number lines. I am so impressed with the decomposing skills I am seeing! We will be doing a math check in next week for students to demonstrate their understanding of adding using: base tens, 100s charts, and number lines.

In gym we learned some cooperative science games including "Lifecycles Tag" and a simple version of "Prey vs Predator". We will continue with a little bit of basketball review into next week before moving on to our next sport!

On Wednesday we honoured pink shirt day with a whole school assembly hosted by room 13 and their big buddies!

In Art/Wellness we began an interdisciplinary artist study of Picasso. As a class we discussed how to interpret art, what meaning might be behind the artist's choices, and questions we might have if we could ask him. Students then took their perspective inwards to think about their own qualities and how they may want to represent themselves in a Picasso inspired self portrait. Stay tuned next week for the completed art!

Here are some books we read this week.

Home Reading Program

The Grade 1/2 team is continuing with the Home Reading program this year. This is an optional program that is best for readers who would benefit from extra practice at home. Each week students would take home two short levelled reading books to practice at home with you. They would then exchange them at school once they have read them several times throughout the week. Students will have some choice in the books they choose to take home. Please let me know if you would like your child to take part in this program and I will send a package home.