Terry Fox Run and Reading Programs!

The Terry Fox Run was amazing. Our class ran 84 laps! Ms. Hennick will let us know on Monday our grand total for the school for laps and money raised. 

Hello teachers – please add the following message onto your blogs today, or early next week:

We are a  Calgary Reads School and we are looking for VOLUNTEERS!

Calgary Reads offers several school-based reading and tutoring programs for young children. And we need your help. Each program relies on volunteers to make them successful. Visit www.CalgaryReads.com for more information about how to get involved.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Next week is Student-centered Conferences. This is an opportunity for you to tell me a little bit about your child. Forms will be coming home for you to fill out ahead of time with any concerns, goals, interesting things that you feel I should know about your child. Please use the link below to log in and sign up for a time so we can meet.

https://myconferences.cbe.ab.ca/Booking.aspx

I can't wait to meet everyone!


REMINDER: Tomorrow is the Terry Fox Run. Please remember to wear Royal Oak Blue for the run! 

Terry Fox Run, Artifact Sharing, Reading Strategies and more!

Reminder: Friday is the Terry Fox Run at our School. It will start promptly at 11 pm. If you would like to come and run with your child please meet us on the field around 10:50 pm. 

http://www.terryfox.org/terrys-story/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1QOtPDAAeY

Reminder: Book Orders are due Friday September 14th, 2018. 

Yesterday your child brought home this letter. Please read it with them and brainstorm something that they can bring in to share with us next week. If you have any further questions about this please email me at imlagrana@cbe.ab.ca

September 11, 2018

Dear Families,

Our inquiry this year focuses on the question, “How do our stories connect?”. Through this question we will be looking closely at ourselves, our families, our heritage, cultures and traditions, other distinct communities in Canada and the natural world around us.  To begin our investigation, we are exploring families; their culture, heritage and artifacts that they pass from generation to generation. What stories do these artifacts tell?  Why have they been saved.  What is the significance to your families’ stories?  Why is this artifact special?

To explore this topic, I am asking every student to share a special family artifact or a photograph of an artifact with the class. Please support your child in finding something to bring into the class and completing the questions below. Hopefully this will be a wonderful learning opportunity for your child to learn more about your family and what’s special to you. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Today I am sharing something that is special to my family.

I am sharing ____________________________________

This is special to my family because (please include where this artifact is from, who it was handed down to, where it came from, what meaning does it carry for your family and why it was saved) 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you,

Mrs. Lagrana and Ms. Quesnel

Next week, after we have collected all of the artifacts, student's will begin sharing. Today we brainstormed a checklist of specifications for their presentation. This will be your child's first public speaking engagement of grade 2. They can practice at home in order to feel more comfortable and prepared for talking in front of their peers. 

Learning Commons
Today we had Learning Commons orientation. We got to learn about signing out new books and preview all of the different books our Royal Oak Learning Commons has to offer. I will be bringing home 2 new books today. They can be returned anytime next week. We will go weekly to the Learning Commons. 

Literacy

This week we have been reviewing some reading strategies for helping us to sound out tricky words. We have been practicing these strategies as we build our independent reading stamina. 

You can practice these strategies at home with your child when they are reading and come to a word that they are having trouble sounding out. 

Terry Fox Run!

Reminder: Tonight from 4:30-5:30 PM is our Volunteer Orientation Night. It is also our first School Council Fundraising Meeting from 6:30-8:30 pm. We hope to see you there! Also if you are having any problems logging into PowerSchool that can be addressed as well.

Terry Fox Run – Friday, September 14

On Friday, September 14^th, Royal Oak School and William D. Pratt School will be participating in the Terry Fox Run.  Students will gather on the field between the two schools to take part in the annual 30-minute run, which is scheduled to begin at 11:00am.  Students attending morning Kindergarten are welcome to attend, if they are accompanied by a supervising adult.

 On this day please ensure that your child is appropriately dressed for the weather (including running shoes).  If the weather is poor, students will walk inside the school during their PE class time.

 We are asking that each child donate a “Toonie for Terry” for the Terry Fox Foundation. Classroom teachers will be collecting the money all week leading up to the run. 

 All parents/guardians who are interested in joining their child/children in this event are more than welcome.

 We do require a fair number of volunteers for this event to ensure its success.  If you have security clearance and if you are able to volunteer during the run time, kindly contact our school Volunteer Coordinator at 

rosvolunteers@gmail.com.

 Thank you for your support.

Being a Historian

Today we looked at artifacts that have historical and cultural importance to Mrs. Lagrana 

We completed an I See I Think I Wonder journaling organizer in our visual sketch books:

We sketched like a scientist and an artist. We added labels and fine details of what we saw into our drawings. We talked about How to Journal like Leonardo da Vinci. Here are some ideas for how to add more details into our sketches to journal like an expert:

Tomorrow Ms. Quesnel will share her artifact with us and we will practice journaling in more detail.

Math

Today in math we figured out how many letters are in our name and represented this understanding with numerals, tally marks and ten frames. 

We then collected this data for the class using a chart and tally marks to figure out how many people had how many letters in their name.

We then made a classroom graph to highlight this data and to show how we can put data into a bar graph to represent numbers.

Classroom Rules:

Today we finished discussing and finalizing our Classroom Rules. We made a promise to follow these rules to the best of our ability and signed and fingerprinted them for a classroom poster display. This way if we forget or need to remind ourselves they are always on the wall and we can work together to keep our Classroom Promise to each other. 

Week 1 Done!

Yay we made it through a busy, exciting and fun first week of school!

Reminder: Book orders are coming home in your child's Home Communication Folder and they are due back by next Friday September 14th, 2018. Ordering online is the easiest method but you can also still send in orders with cheque. Please DO NOT send in any cash (CHEQUES ONLY) if you are sending in a paper order for me to complete.

Reminder: If you have not done so already please send in any forms that went home this week from our school opening package, milk program, volunteering or bus info.

We have been listening to a story called Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2pCR8YHszM

We talked about all of the feelings that we felt and that Chrysanthemum felt both at the beginning, the middle and the end of the story. Ask me about these feelings and why she was feeling this way.

LITERACY

Today we practiced building our reading STAMINA and reading for 5 minutes. We came up with our classroom rules for when we are reading to ourselves. 

We made a reading graph and filled out for 5 minutes today. Tomorrow we will try 7 minutes. 

Sketching an Artifact

We practiced using our Visual Sketch Books to sketch an Artifact

We had to pay attention to all of the details that we could observe

We had to take our time and not rush

We had to think about one wonder or question that we had about the artifact that we were observing

We looked at a few different techniques for helping us to sketch and add details and depth to our sketches. 

Practicing these sketching techniques will help our Artifacts achieve more depth and appear more realistic. Practice your favourite ones at home!

Can you think of one of these techniques that would help you to sketch these:

Welcome to Grade 2!

REMINDERS: Please ensure you are checking your child's HOME COMMUNICATION FOLDER. If there is nothing to send home it will remain at school. Often there are multiple notices, forms and documents to send home and this protective plastic cover can help things arrive more safely! 

Yesterday was our first day back at school after a long, relaxing summer break. Everyone was full of emotions and excited to begin grade 2.

We read a book called First Day Jitter by Julie Danneberg. 

We did our first writing activity in our writing journals about how we felt about coming to school for the first day. What feelings we were having and why. Ask me what I wrote? 

In math we have been working on a cover page for our Math Books. It is called Math About Me:

We have to think of numbers that mean something to us. We can then show what these numbers mean with pictures as well as being challenged to show a representation of the number. Some of us even began practicing writing equations for our special numbers. Ask me what numbers are important or mean something to me. 

Today we got to practice working with STEM bins to create and explore. 

STEM stands for SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING and MATHEMATICS. 

Throughout the year we will be working with STEM bins to create, explore, invent, and build with a variety of materials. We will be given challenges and  opportunities to reflect, make changes and re-create to see what new ways we can think of.

LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!

Today is the last day of school for the 2017-2018 School Year. Report Cards are being sent home today, so please check your child's backpack. 



The first day back at school for the 2018-2019 school year is Tuesday, September 4th, 2018. 




RAZ-KIDS

I have updated ALL students RAZ-KIDS reading levels and sent home their userid and password in order for them to be able to continue to practice building their literacy skills by using this fun and interactive reading program all summer. 

https://www.kidsa-z.com/main/Login

If you are looking for a fun reading program to keep your child interested and engaged in reading all summer long the Calgary Public Library has a great reading program you can participate in:

https://calgarylibrary.ca/news/make-it-a-library-summer/

HAVE AN AMAZING SUMMER!!