Literacy Homework over Break, Magnetic Inventions and Ornament Fun!!

Literacy

This week will be our last week of practicing Reading Like a NewsReporter using the article that we printed out from www.teachingkidsnews.ca


We have improved our fluency so many ways:

This week and over the break our Challenge is to improve or Fluency by:

Reading Voraciously
Reading Smoothly

Over the holidays have your child continue practicing their article and reading and re-reading it until practice makes perfect! Please have them when ready pick out a few props and do their reading as fluently as possible while you video tape it and upload it to IRIS. After the break we will all watch each other's Reading Like a Newsreporter and practice one more time with new articles of choice in the New Year! 
Have fun with it! Use a green screen or props or music to make your News come to life!!
Also have your child READ READ READ and discover new genres or types of text they are interested in to inspire a love of reading. 

Magnetic Inventions

This week we have been investigating different types of magnets and looking at the Poles of a magnet:

We also looked at the force of Repulsion in more detail when we talked about car races and making a car move! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxZKLUAzQ7g

We also took a look at some real life uses for magnets and talked about how some inventions use the force of attraction and some use the force of repulsion and some use both:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oac3B1iJy7w
https://sciencing.com/5-uses-magnets-kids-12016642.html

After break when we return to school we will be designing our own magnetic invention:

We will be thinking about creating something that will use repelling or attracting to solve a problem or do a specific job. 

Ornament FUN!

Today we made ornaments to bring home for the holidays. If you celebrate christmas they can go on your tree and if not they also look beautiful hanging in a window and catching the light. 

Magnetism, Number Line Self-Assessment, Google Slides Feedback/Marks...

Magnetism

This week we have been investigating Magnets and learning about Magnetism. We explored magnets centres where we were challenged to complete a task invovling magnets.

We brainstormed all of the things that we already knew, and now after doing some exploring we brainstormed What we want to know now...

Important Vocabulary

We made predictions about what would be and would not be magnetic and then tested these objects out.

Ask me about some materials that are magnetic and others that are not?

We learned that NOT all metals are magnetic. Ask me which ones I know are?

We learned that with magnets opposites attract and like repels!

We also explored that when 2 magnets attract they pull towards each other, but when they repel they push apart.

We explored what part of a magnet is the strongest and came to the conclusion that the POLES are very strong compared to other parts of the magnet.

We talked about magnetic fields and next week are going to do an experiment that will let us see this invisible magnetic field for ourselves!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgWiBYuPpjw

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/magnetism/

We are also exploring things in the read world that use magnets to do a job. Next week we will be coming up with some ideas around a magnetic invention of our own that uses either the force of attraction or the force of repelling to do a specific job!

Number Line Self Assessment

Yesterday we practiced double-digit addition questions using the open number line and gave ourselves a mini-self assessment.
Green means I understand it and can show you and feel good about using this strategy

Yellow means I missed some parts such as labeling my jumps, skips, and hops or adding up what I got to after each move, or I made a careless error but I can fix it, I understand where I went wrong, and I am confident to show where I made the mistakes and how to fix them.

Red means I would like some help because I am not sure of all of the steps or of where my mistake is or of how to solve these problems properly.

Ask me how I am felt about the assessment and what my next steps are?

Practice skip counting from Random starting points this winter break. It helps you so much with being able to move quickly and efficiently on an open number line and it ALSO helps with being able to determine and extend number GROWING patterns.

If this is still tricky practice it using a 100s chart. It is a very useful tool for learning the patterns of skips counting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9NMa10UNt4
PRACTICE!!

Google Slides

Most groups have shared their Google Slides Insect Research presentation with the class. They have reieved two wishes and a star constructive feedback about their presentation and two comments from me on the last slide of their presentation. One comment addresses the content and overall mark for the slideshow and the other comment has an overall mark with feedback for their presentation. Please visit this with your child and make sure they have seen their feedback/mark.

Welcome Elfie Sparkles, Expanding my Vocabulary, Growing Patterns, and Magnets!!

Yesterday we had our first visit from an Elf. It appeared in our classroom hallway and had a note challenging Room 73 & Room 74 to some Random Acts of Kindness! 

It said that its Magic would not start until we named it! So Mrs. Lagrana's class came up with many ideas and voted on one. Ms. Reynolds class came up with the other one and so finally our Elf was named:

Elfie Sprinkles

Today we were challenged to think of all the people that make Royal Oak school such a wonderful place. We decided to start with our wonderful office staff and go from there. 


Literacy

This week we are continuing to pratice our News Reporter Articles. We are Expanding our Vocabulary by: Noticing New and Interesting Words and 

After looking for words that we did not know what they meant we got to use online dictionaries and a website www.wordhippo.com to help us figure out the meaning of new words.

We also did a Vocabulary 4-Square with some of the new words we found in order to help us fully understand these new words:

Math

Growing Patterns! 

This week we are working on recognizing, building, and extending growing patterns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRdqLeZck7g

Magnets

Today we began magnets centres. We started by doing a KWL chart to see what we already knew about magnets and what we wanted to learn about them...

We then started exploring 10 different magnets centres that will introduce us to important concepts, vocabulary and magnetic experiements. 

Ask me which centre I explored today?

Reminders, Spirit Week, Word Work, Writing, and Math Games!...

Report Cards

We will be moving to online report cards this year.  This will help us save much needed money for other uses within the school.  At the end of the day on December 17^th, PowerSchool will allow parents to log in and see their child’s report card for this first term (see directions below).  Your child’s report card can be printed or saved for later viewing.  For those that feel they need a hard copy, please contact the office for this request.    

How to Access Digital Report Cards

§ Sign into your My CBE/PowerSchool at My CBE/PowerSchool Account

§ Click on your child’s name at top of page

§ Click on “Grades and Attendance”

§ Click on “Report Card”

§ Click on “Report Card – open”

§ Save to pdf or print for your records

The last week of School December 16-19 we will be having a SPIRIT WEEK: 

Word Work:

In word work time we have been exploring the short vowel sounds and making words using these sounds. We have also been noticing all of the sight words that do not follow this pattern and we call them JAIL WORDS!

Here is a fun short vowel word game that helps with practicing these sounds:

https://www.learninggamesforkids.com/spelling_games/short-vowel-games/all-short-vowels/short-vowel-game.html

https://www.learninggamesforkids.com/spelling_games/short-vowel-games/all-short-vowels/short-or-not-all-vowels.html

Writing

After learning lots about the Prairies and life in the past we read the book: If Your Not from the Prairies by David Bouchard

We brainstormed all of the landmarks and characteristics specific to prairie communities.

We then started writing using descriptive words to enhance our writing using model sentence starters following the "If your not from the Prairies"" pattern from the book. 

Next week we will do some art and write or final peices about the prairies. 

Math

Today we played a math game to help develop and solidify our adding and using doubles to add more efficiently:

Ask me if I can explain how to play!!

Reading Like a Newsreporter, Word Work, and Repeating Patterns!

Reminder:

Tomorrow is our Field trip to ATP to view "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe". Please ensure your child is at school on time so we can board the busses in a timely manner. 

Literacy

This week in Literacy we have been practicing Reading Like a Newsreporter! We watched a video about how to present like a newscaster!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mIEwXWUQs4

We made sure that we had printed of one of the articles that we were interested in from the www.teachingkidsnews.ca website. 

This week we are practicing Reading with Expression:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dnJ74xtJTQ

Parent Pipeline:

I can use the punctuation to Help me Read with Expression. 

Your child will continue practicing this all week and the Literacy Homework will have a pre-printed article for them to practice with you at home. They can also practice with their home reading books making note of punctuation using sticky notes if you have them. 

Word Work

This week we have been practicing making words using the SHORT Vowel sounds and rules:

We focused specifically on shot a and the sounds it makes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KUiov8_uEo

We then had to use our Literacy books to find words that used the short a sound OR words that BROKE the rules and belonged in Jail!!

We used letter tiles and made as many words as we could think of that followed the short a word family:

Math

Patterns

This week we are working on recognizing, building, and extending a repeating pattern:

Today we worked in partners to create patterns. We were challenged to use 3 or more attributes!

Tomorrow we will turn this pattern into a body/movement pattern.

PRATT Events, Reading Like a Newsreporter!!

Pratt is having their annual GSA Family Movie Night. This is the third year we've been offering this. We have a craft sale and info fair set up in our gathering space and we are inviting families to come and enjoy a movie with us. We encourage everyone to come. There will be a bake sale as well. Here is the information you need. Let your Principal know and share it with your staff and community. Thank you so much! Darren.

On Wednesday December 11 come join the GSA for a craft night, bake sale and special  screening of “Frozen” at 6pm!

If you would you like to rent a table to sell a craft or something else, please contact Daniel Weeks daweeks@cbe.ab.ca  for $20/ table($10/table for students). Please contact us ASAP to reserve a spot.

Doors open at 6pm, movie at 7pm. Bring your own blanket, pillow, and comfy PJ’s if you’d like. BYOC (bring your own cup) punch will he served!

Literacy

READING LIKE A NEWSREPORTER!!

We will be practicing reading like News Reporters in order to build, improve and work on our reading FLUENCY.

Please look at this kids news website and have your child pick an article that they are interested in. Please print it out for them and send it to school for Monday, as we will be pracising these articles all week. Each week please bring in a new article so we can add it onto our Grade Two Breaking News Board. 

If you are unable to print the article for Monday please email me the link: imlagrana@cbe.ab.ca and I can do it with them. 

Teaching Kids News
https://teachingkidsnews.com/category/politics/

Cause and Effect, Number Line Equations, Google Slides

Reminder: Tomorrow is our Dance Play performance in the gym. We will get to share some of the creative movements we have been learning during this years Dance Residency. If you would like to come and see the Grade 2's Dance our time is from 11:05-12:00 pm in the gym. 


Literacy

Cause and Effect Continued

This week we have continued looking at Cause and Effect in Literacy. 

We read If you Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Numeroff and looked at all of the cuase and effect relationships in the story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy1mncjIsTQ

We used graphic organizers and paid attention to key words in order to use our levelled literacy books within our literacy groups to identify these relationships.

Number Line Equations

This week we have continued to use the open number line to solve double digit addition problems. 

We can use the number line to solve the same problem many ways. 

We can build both numbers in order to add them together and find a total
We can start with one of the two addends and then jump, skip, and hop to add in the second addend to find a total
We can start with the biggest number and then jump, skip, and hop to add the smaller addend to the larger one. 

Google Slides

We are almost done our Google Slides insect presentations. 

Next week we will be presenting to the class and practising speaking in front of a group. 

This is our Checklist for knowing our slides are complete: