January 29, 2015

Wow, what an incredibly busy week we've had in room 2!

Literacy

This week we've been working on creating a treasure map with a script to describe how to get to our loot! Student's stained the paper with tea to give it an old-world look to it. We're still using a word processor to type out our writing, but should be done by next week. 

Our student teacher, Mrs. Donnelly, even had some fun using the iPad to create some fun photo's of our students!

Our Treasure Maps

Our writing descriptions for our maps

Our pirate photos

Science/Social Studies

We've been working hard on our geographical thinking and about what goes into our community. We've created a big map and 'zoned' it for what we feel is an important part of a community. 

Our students will then be working on painting and affixing structures to our map.

Our map of our community with streets

Buildings that will go on our map!

Math

Student's have been continuing working around addition skills and how addition and subtraction are related.

January 23, 2015

Literacy

This week in Literacy we've continued our normal weekly activities, including word work, guided reading, literacy based centers. We're now looking at how we can use technology in storytelling. Student's have been creating a stop motion animation movie based on Rosie's Walk from last week. They've been working hard on the skills and competencies to create their movies. This has been a great opportunity to see the future Steven Spielberg's of the future will be! 

We're still very much in the process of this and won't be finished until next week - stay tuned! :)

Math

Grade 1's have been looking at how we can use pictures and counters to tell a "math story" in addition and how we write our number sentence (e.g.: 4 + 3 = 7) to represent adding. 

Grade 2's have been looking at how we can use inverse relationships in adding and subtract. For example:

 9 + 8 = 17                 17 - 8 = 9
 8 + 9 = 17                 17 - 9 = 8

Using adding skills to play Race to 100.

Science/Social

We're doing some work that fit together between our new unit in Science of Building Things and mapping skills in Social Studies.

Student's are creating a 3D map of a community. We've come up with items to use to represent our buildings and tested their durability and easiness to work with. Our class has come to a consensus that milk cartons are great to build with, but not so great to paint on. To solve this problem, students have suggested we paper mache over the cartons. We've been busy doing a lot of preparation for this. Stay tuned!

Paper Mache to build our houses for our maps.

January 19, 2015 - Special Post

We are looking for donations of 500 mL, 1 L and 2 L milk cartons (please note, no plastic jugs, thank you).

Thanks Kindly :)

Mr. Careclakis

January 16, 2015

Literacy

This week we used the book Rosie's walk to create a map of the farmyard. Using this map, we've worked in small groups to create a new story, using descriptors like over, under, through, around, across, etc. Student's decorated a big map of the farmyard with the characters for a project we're going to be working on next week... stay tuned!

Math

This week we've been looking at addition and the skills we use in solving addition sentences. We've looked at following: finding solutions in our head (either by picturing it, or having committed a known fact to memory), using our fingers to count on from a number, using a number line or using a 100-square help us with adding.

Science

This week in Science, we've wrapped up our unit on Magnetism with some centre work. Our next focus in Science will be on Building Things and we'll be doing some Science work within Social Studies... stay tuned!

Social Studies

This week we've continued to look at mapping skills. Student's used a schematic of Rosemont School to label and create symbols (with a key) to create a map of our school.

Friday January 9, 2015

Happy New Year to everyone!

What a chilly reception mother nature has given us on our first week back to school :-) We've enjoyed some indoor recesses this week to battle the weather!

Literacy

This week we've examined the circle story structure using books such as Goodnight Already by Jory John, I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen and Don't Slam the Door! by Dori Chaconas. 

The circle story is a story full of actions and reactions, that upon resolution begins the story cycle over again. Student's really enjoyed listening to these stories and examining the action, reaction aspects of the stories. 

We used the book, Don't Slam the Door! to plan our own circle story. Students really mastered the concepts of actions and reactions, but like in life, we had some challenges tying our ideas together. We're going to come back to the circle story concept in a few weeks, examining a simpler structure to follow.

Numeracy

This week in math, we've been looking at concepts of one and two more/less than a number and 10 more/less than a number. We've also examined concepts of place value, learning about the units and tens place (note: I call it the units, rather than the one's place value). Students have been playing some dice games around creating the largest number using place values and their dice.

Science

In Science this week, we've been looking at magnets strength. We did some station experiments using different types of magnets and how many paper clips they could pick up. We asked some important questions too, like why magnets have such different abilities to pick up the paper clips. Students came up with some great ideas on why, such as size, shape and age of the magnet.

Social Studies

This week in Social we've been looking at maps, mapping skills and their uses. We've created a map of our classroom to get us involved in a personalized map in our learning community.

P.E.

This week we've had our first of 6 Zumba classes. We'll have Zumba each Thursday until February 19th. Please ensure that children are dressed ready to move and sweat :)