NEW Language Resources!

I have just posted a number of great phonics and language online activities and games on the 'Important Resources' page.

Please go and check them out with your child and let me know if you have any questions. These games and activities are meant to help build some of the most important foundational skills students need to become better, more efficient readers. Some are better suited to readers just beginning to gain independence, some are good for readers who struggle with specific aspects of language, and some are just fun and help to cement prior knowledge.

Have fun playing these games with your child!

Science and Technology Update for Grade 2

From the pen of Mdme. Brusse:

 

In Science and Technology, Grade 2's are currently concluding the strand: UNDERSTANDING MATTER AND ENERGY: Properties of Liquids and Solids.

We have covered in great detail the topic of personal safety and the safety of others through studying safety labels and behaviours which ensure safety while working on experiments. Furthermore, we have examined states of matter: solids, liquids and gases, and performed a number of experiments to investigate the concepts of mixing, dissolving, absorbing, melting, separating and other interactions liquids and solids.

Our final part will be to examine floating and sinking through an in-class project.

 

Our assessment was through oral questioning, multiple choice testing and designing. Students work will be sent home for review at the end of the unit.

 

November Newsletter

Hello Everyone

Here is the November Newsletter. I apologize for its tardiness.

Learning Place Value through Base Ten Blocks

Students have been learning a lot about place value through their practice using math manipulatives. 'Manipulative' is just a fancy word for a tool to help a student learn experientially about concepts that are often abstract. In our classroom, we've been learning a lot about addition and the values of tens and ones. Base ten blocks have helped us explore these concepts in tactile ways. This is something that is both challenging and fun. Students have been making numbers in different ways and noticing patterns and groupings that will help to solidify or cement their knowledge of math concepts.

Here are some really creative examples of different ways students have explored making 25:

25 using 1's blocks

25 using a 10's rod and three groups of five 1's

25 using five groups of 1's

25 using groups of two 1's with one block left over

These are important building blocks for looking at grouping numbers and learning to do mental math using friendly numbers such as 1, 2, 5, 10, and 25. Please challenge your child to do simple addition at the grocery store, dinner table, and with the fingers on their own hands! I have also included a link on the 'Important Resources' page to an online tool for exploring base ten blocks.

The Music Man Comes to Visit!

Last week, students in our class were treated to a very memorable experience. Tinh's father Scott, also know as the Music Man in our class, shared with students his passion for music, creativity and fun. He explained to students that music is about rhythm, and rhythm is about patterns. We have been learning a great deal about patterns in math, but it's always helpful to see how patterns are everywhere. We even spent some time writing new verses to the popular standard, 'Down By the Bay', in which students were challenged to find patterns in language through rhyming words, also called phonograms.

Scott teaching students about the importance of patterns in music

Students just had to dance when the Music Man pulled out his electric guitar!

We have continued with this work and will be exploring rhyming through poems for the next couple of weeks. Students will learn about some common word families and will start creating their own dictionaries of words they are learning. It is time to expand our vocabulary and our minds!

Please take the time to encourage your child to find rhyming words at the dinner table, before going to sleep, or on your way to school. These practices help growing minds to put letters together into recognizable chunks, something research has shown to help new readers progress more quickly.