Calgary Reads Volunteers Wanted!!

We are looking for VOLUNTEERS for our Wee Reads Program! Volunteers with a current valid police check are invited to a training session on Tuesday October 1st from 2:30 - 3:30pm in the Royal Oak School Learning Commons. Please RSVP to the school resource teacher, Sarah Power, at sapower@cbe.ab.ca 

Orange Shirt Day and Special Book Launching!

Dear Parents,

On Monday, September 30^th Royal Oak School will be acknowledging Orange Shirt Day. 

Orange Shirt Day is as an affirmation of our commitment to ensure that everyone around us matters.  It developed out of Phyllis' story of having her shiny new orange shirt taken away on her first day of school at a Residential School, and presents an opportunity for all staff and students to discuss her story.

To learn more about Phyllis’ story, please visit the Orange Shirt Day website at http://www.orangeshirtday.org/phyllis-story.html

We want to ensure that every child matters as we celebrate Orange Shirt Day.  We are encouraging students and staff to wear an orange shirt on September 30^th.

Sincerely,

Royal Oak School

Author Book PROMO

Last year Royal Oak school had author Pamela McDowell in to talk about her engaging books for young readers. She is launching her newest book and as many of our students bought the other books in this popular series last year we are posting to all who are interested to come and help her launch her newest edition "Cougar Frenzy". 

Literacy, Masloppy Math and Entomology and Writing Stretchy Sentences!

Reminder:

Tomorrow we will be participating in the Terry Fox Run. There will be an assembly at 10:00 AM and we will start the run at 11:00 am. Please bring in a toonie for Terry so we can help support finding a cure for cancer research. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BzyHYZgMz8


Literacy

This week we have added 2 new accuracy strategies to help us decode text:

Skippy the Frog:

We practiced reading and using sticky notes to capture any words that we used these strategies to figure out. Here are some ideas for practicing these strategies at home when we are reading:

This week we will also be practicing a COMPREHENSION strategy that is so important to practice to ensure that we are understanding what we are reading:

When we read a page of text we need to STOP and CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING!!

We will be practicing these Reading Strategies all Week.

Masloppy Math

This week in math we read the book The Masloppy Family by Catherine Fosnot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FSJRmbyMj8

We then had to try to take inventory of some of the materials in our classroom. We had to think of different ways that we could organize the materials in order to figure out a total. Ask me how I organized my materials? Today we continued working with organizing but looked at ways we could do so more efficiently. We used ziploc bags, elastic bands and sticky notes to help us organize our materials in order to count them more efficiently and accurately.

Ask me how I am organizing my materials and how my organizing will help me to efficiently and accuratley figure out a total? 

If I have more than 100 items is sorting by colour an efficient way to add up my total? What would a more effiecient strategy be so that I can count quickly, accuratley and be efficient in my math work? 

Entomology

We continue to look at insects and bugs through the lens of an ENTOMOLOGIST. Today we brainstormed some new questions we had after investigating bugs/insects and made a new list of wonders. We were posed the question: Are Bugs/Insects Important? Why? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-y6PLtY5s

Writing

We worked this week on writing more detailed sentences. We used the 5W's (who, what, where, when and why) to help us enhance our sentences:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6g4bxJBjcU

We then practiced doing this ourselved using the 5W's as a guide:

My Napping House, Entomology and Hill Investigations and James and the Giant

Reminder: Tomorrow there is no school due to Conferences. We look forward to seeing you tonight from 4:30 pm-8:30 pm or tomorrow between 8:00 am and 12:00 pm to discuss how your child learns best and learn a little more info about your child.

Reminder: Book orders were due today. If you are still planning on placing an order please do so by tomorrow so that I can submit the current orders over the weekend. 

Math

Today we read The Napping House by Audrey Wood.

We were challenged to figure out how many feet were napping in the story?

We worked together by drawing, labelling, adding numerals and writing an equation to find a final answer for this problem. 

Students were then asked "How many napping feet are their in your house?". They drew, labeled, used numbers, equations and strategies of our choice to figure out our answer. 

Science

What is an Entomologist?

We made predictions about what kind of a job this would be? We sketched our ideas. Then we watched this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxlLHv9Pbwg

We then added what we had learned about entomologists and what they do to our sketches.

Today we walked to the top of the hill and used bug boxes and magnifying glasses to look for signs of insects. We even caught a few so that we could observe them and then release them back into the wild.

We then came back to the classroom and sketched and labelled what we remembered observing as well as any thinking or wonders we had about the insects:

Next week we are hoping to go to the Wetlands and compare what other kinds of insects we can observe there. 

Novel Study

Today we previewed the Novel that we will begin reading next week. We will be reading James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl 

We did a book preview and read the back and inside cover to see if this book sounded interesting and exciting!

Literacy, Writing a Sentence, Safety Week!

Reminder: This upcoming Thursday evening from 4:30 pm - 8:30 pm and Friday from 8:00 am-12:00 pm is our school student conferences. Please make sure to book a time slot if you have not done so already, they are filling up fast! 


Literacy

This week we will be learning two more important reading strategies to help us sound out words more accuratley when we are decoding text. 

Lips the Fish

Chunky Monkey

We practiced using these strategies during reading and marking places where we had done so with sticky notes to share with our peers later. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU_54bA2wmM

Parent Pipeline

Writing Simple Sentences:

This week we are looking at What is a Sentence? How do we know? What parts make up a sentence? We will be identifying parts of a sentence and writing our own.

We then practiced writing our own. We will continue working on identifying and writing complete sentences and soon strething our sentences so that they become more interesting!

Safety Week!

Yesterday we had our first practice Fire Drill of the year. We were out of the building in 1 minute and 50 seconds. We practiced the 3 S's of a Fire Drill: Safe, Silent and Serious.

Today we had a practice lockdown. We praticed where to sit in the room and how to be quiet and patient for the whole time. 

Tomorrow we will practice our Evacuation walk to William D Pratt.

Thursday we will be talking about road safety and pedestrian cross walk procedures. 

It is important to practice these skills so that we are prepared in any situation. 

Math Number Explosions, I am Collage covers and Printing Practice!

Reminder: Student Conferences are next week Thursday September 19th from 4:30-8:00 pm and on Friday September 20th from 8:00 am-12:00 pm. Please make sure to book in your conference. To book please log into My CBE/Power School and go to my School Conferences. 


Reminders:

Our first Scholastic Book orders came home today. If you are interested in purchasing some books for your child please do so online. If you are unable to place an online order you may still send in the order forms to me with Cheque only. I cannot take cash for book orders. 


Math

This week we in math we have been practicing breaking whole numbers up into their number bonds or parts.

We practiced doing this ourselves using blocks and number bond models:

Knowing our number bonds and how to break up numbers really helps us when we move onto addition. 

Today we practiced with some double-digit numbers. We were also challenged to explode out the sneaky 5's or 10's first as seeing these important numbers can help us add more efficiently!

https://www.abcya.com/games/fuzz_bugs_number_bonds

Collage Covers

Today we finished creating our all about me collage. We had to choose pictures from magazines that meant something to us or that we liked. We covered our paper with these pictures. We will  then brainstorm words that describe us to add to our collage: 

I AM:

Friendly
Patient
Funny
Athletic
Dancer
Sister
Brother
Daughter
Son
Happy


This will then be laminated and be the front cover to our Visual Sketch Books which we will use all year to document our learning journey in Grade 2! 

Printing Practice

This week we practiced printing two simple sentences on Grass, Ground and Sky paper to help us see where our letters should be sitting on the lines. 

We will contine practicing this method to ensure that our upper case and lower case letters are being formed correctly, used appropriatley and that we remember to use finger spaces between each word. 
This will not only make our printing neat and oraganized, but it will help us read our writing back when we are sharing and allow others to read our writing more easily.