Mrs. Di Teodoro's Grade 2 Website: web.dsbn.edu.on.ca

We are looking forward to a quiet week in Grade 2!

Our word wall words are: clapping, try, tries, camped and growl. We do not have a bonus word this week.

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Just a quick reminder that students need to wear clothing appropriate for picking up litter on the playground tomorrow during the mayor's visit. I would recommend sending the students in rubber boots as our playground is very muddy after all the rain we have had over the last few days!

We very much appreciated having Mr. Fleming (Lauren's dad) come to the classroom to tell the Grade 2 class what his life was like when he lived in Iqaluit. We learned many new facts and are now able to make many more connections to life in an Arctic community!

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

As you know from our newsletter, we have a very busy week ahead of us! Today a sticker is going home in the organizers to ask families to send in any scrap materials, buttons, wrapping paper, beads etc., that you might have at home for Wednesday. We will be making decorations for our Multicultural evening on May 3. Please do not go out to buy anything for this, items from around the house are great.

Tuesday, April 24th: Canopies for Kids Assembly 9-9:30 a.m.

Wednesday, April 25th: Earth Week Clean City - the mayor of St. Catharines will be visiting Applewood to help us with our Earth Week celebrations.

Thursday, April 26th: Arts Day - Orchard Park Band is playing at the school in the morning and then in the afternoon, we will be walking to Ferndale to see their production of Wonderland. These activities are free but we are asking that each student bring a small donation towards Make Change for Children.

Since it is such a busy week, we will not be having word wall words this week.

Scholastic orders are due back to the school on Wednesday, April 25th.

If you are able to assist the students planting small trees on the morning of April 30th, please return the bottom of the pink newsletter to the school.

Monday, April 16th, 2012

Thank you to all the parents who have sent in supplies in the past couple weeks. The students really enjoy all the extras, especially fun pencils and items for our treasure box. Also, thank you for continuing to sent in cardboard paper towel tubes and treats for Cheese. I`m sure he appreciates them as well! Please continue to save your empty margarine containers. We still don`t have enough for one for each student for the project we are planning.

Here are a few photos of things we have been up to in the past few weeks!

Celebrating Easter in the classroom.

Using the scooter boards in Phys Ed.

Touching a frame from a bee hive.

Thank you Mr and Mrs Wright!

Monday, March 26, 2012

Our word wall words for this week are: first, second, third, spoil, study and our bonus word is studies. This week we will be focussing on words that "drop the 'y'" and then add an ending.

Just a quick reminder that Applewood's Parent Involvement Committee is holding a meeting tonight at 6:30 p.m.. New members welcome!

Please remember to save your empty margarine, sour cream (type) containers and send them into the school. We will need 18 so as many as you have would be appreciated!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Thank you for your patience! Our Grade 2 website was down (again) due to the size and amount of pictures I post, I imagine! Hopefully, we won't have any more glitches!

We are glad to be back to school and our regular routines!

Applewood's Parent Involvement Committee is selling chocolate bars to raise money for our students and school. A note will come home tomorrow asking for your signature in order to receive a box of chocolate bars for your family to sell. Thank you for supporting our P.I.C. and school!

***Please save your empty containers (margarine, sour cream etc size) as we will be completing a project that is related to our Features of Communities Around the World social Studies unit. In this unit, we will be comparing the arctic community of Iqaluit to a warm climate community in Zimbabwe. If you have any information or resources on these locations that you would like to share, please contact me through your child's organizer or send me an email.

David is our Rock Star of the Week this week and we look forward to learning more about Crystal next week!

Friday, March 2, 2012

Next week is a short week (Friday is a holiday and then we have March Break), so we will not be having any word work .

As usual we have been busy! This week we have been doing a lot of experimenting with technology which will culminate in our whole-school Techno Wizard special activity that is scheduled for the last two periods of today.

Happy March! We have been discussing the weather changes that we are to expect as the temperature begins to rise this month. Today we made pin-wheels to take outside to check the wind direction.

Our new student recognition is a big hit. Each child loves being the ROCK STAR OF THE WEEK. We enjoyed celebrating Teighan this week and look forward to hearing about Lauren next week.

Chloe's turn to be ROCK STAR OF THE WEEK!

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

I hope all our families enjoyed an extra day to spend together yesterday. We actually have a fairly quiet week in front of us. With the exception of the first of three trips to the Merritton arena for skating, we will be able to spend the rest of the week in the classroom. Today we began learning to multiply in math class using the great literacy connection of Bunches and Bunches of Bunnies. Getting a chance to do math AND use the SMART board made for happy students and a happy teacher!

Our new words for the week: use, used, really, finally, next and our bonus word is favourite.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day! We wish to send a sincere thank you to all the families that sent in treats and valentines today. As usual, we were very spoiled!

Here is a photo of a few of our bags, all ready to receive valentines.

We had the Carousel Players visit us to put on a production called Here to Hear. The troupe invited the students to email `Sparky`, if they wish. His email is info@carouselplayers.com

Due to the early release day on Friday, and a very busy week, we have decided not to have any new word wall words this week.

EARLY RELEASE PICK UP TIME ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17th is 11:55 a.m. See you then!

Thank you to the families who have already had Edward the Emu visit your house. The students are truly enjoying the story and sharing their ideas for further adventures for that silly bird. If Edward has not reached your house yet, don't worry, each family will get a turn over the next three weeks!

Hannah sharing our "homeFUN", not "homeWORK, book.

We had a wonderful and educational trip to the St John's outdoor center on Friday. We went on a hike, learned to write with ink and feathers, dressed up as pioneers, visited the pioneer school and learned about how the first settlers lived in our area. A special thank you to Chloe's dad for braving the cold to join us a chaperone.

Mr. Greenwood (the outdoor education teacher) leading our class over a bridge to see the mill on our hike.

After a long hike, cooking hot dogs and marshmallows over the open fire was a great way to warm up!

Some of our class working on slates in the pioneer school. We not only used the slates, chalk and feather quills, we also had to do Grade 3 level math!

We are studying MOVEMENT in science class. The challenge was to move the block across the carpet without touching it with our hands. The students were VERY creative. In the photo, Rajin demonstrates how he used straws to roll the block! Great thinking, Grade 2!

Great news! We reached our second class goal of the year. Our goal was:

By Friday, February 14, 2012, our Grade 2 class will be able to ask "deeper" level questions 75% of the time during our class Gallery Walks. We will know if we are choosing and asking ``deeper`level questions by using a math question rubric, active listening and tallying the number of questions asked`.

On our first ``try`` we scored 20%, on our second ``practice`` we scored 66%, on our third ``practice``, 75% and today we scored 88% on our `game`` question. I am so proud of your work, Grade 2!

Learning to think and ask good questions in math is a particular interest to me. Last year my math team and I wrote a paper outlining how we could teach our students to ask better questions during our Math Congresses, Banshos and Gallery Walks. Our work was recently published. If you are interested, you can see at our findings at:

We have had a number of parents inquire about borrowing skates for our upcoming skating. Unfortunately we have only a very few pair to lend out this year. I will post more information about this as it becomes available to me!

Monday, February 6, 2012

We are looking at another busy month. Here are a few of the things happening in February in Grade 2:

Feb 9- Report Cards go home, 100th Day of School Activities and Celebrations

Feb 10- Gr. 2 & 3 to St. Johns Outdoor Center all day

Feb 14- Carousel Players 1:45 (no cost to students) Valentine's Day celebration and activities

Feb 17- Early Release Day

Feb 20 - Family Day NO SCHOOL

Feb 23- Skating Merritton Arena 9:00 - 10:30

Feb 27 - PIC Meeting 6:30 - 8:00 p.m.- all families are invited to attend

Our word wall words for the week are: shouted, thorn, wishes, point, view and our bonus word is hundred.

With report cards going home this week, we will officially be starting our second term of Grade 2. Now that each child has had a chance to be Star of the Week, we will be starting a new celebration of each student, now called Grade 2 ROCK STAR OF THE WEEK. The week before it is your child's turn to be the star, you will receive a note outlining the activites for your child's week. Thank you for your cooperation in this activity, as it really does make each child feel special and celebrated. Names will be randomly drawn each week.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Check out our new Feejit counter! Now we can track who checks out our site from around the world!

We have just started using the computer program BITSTRIPS. To check out our class gallery, follow this link: bs4s.me/g/CVSD, on www.bitstripsforschools.com, to check out our avatars. Our class code is bernate1, if your child would like to use the program at home.

A couple students have mentioned that their parents were wondering which day of our ten cycle we are on. If you ever lose track you can always check the calender on the DSBN website at http://www.dsbn.org/uploadedFiles/DSBN_Calendars/DSBNcalendar11-12E.pdf

We are going to try something new with our word wall work this week. Students will still be given 5 words (plus a bonus word) each week but we are going to try just having the students write the words in their organizers instead of bringing home the black word work folders each week. Students are still responsible for learning the words by Friday of each week, but we will not be completing the five sentences as we have in the past. My hope is that we have moved beyond needing to do this, but if students are getting a significant number of words incorrect, we will reinstate the sentences. Our word work words of the week are: push, pull, wheel, axle,caught and our bonus word is movement.

Tuesday, January 16, 2012

I just logged in to update for the week and I found that last week's message isn't here (except for the date)! My apologies!

In any case, I am glad to hear all our families had a safe and fun-filled holiday. Happy New Year! We are glad to be back and into our regular routines.

Please remember that FRIDAY, JANUARY 20th is a P.A. for our students. The teachers will be in meetings and there is NO SCHOOL for the children.

Since the weather seems ever-changing this January, please be sure that your child has extra pants and socks in their backpack or in a bag to leave on their hook in the classroom. The freezing and thawing of our playground makes our yard and playground VERY muddy and wet. We wish to avoid having students sit in wet clothing or calling home for a dry outfit!

We were certainly lucky to come back to school after the holidays to such beautiful weather! Our boys took advantage of the sunshine and played a little hockey outside the classroom door. A week later our playground doesn't look like this anymore. It is now covered in snow!

We have only been back for a week, but we are already back in the swing of things! We are completing our Traditions and Celebrations unit by learning about Chinese New Year and then we will be beginning a science unit entitled Movement, which has many hands on experiments which I'm sure our students will love.

We have just finished a cycle of our Guided Reading Groups in our Literacy time and we have begun to learn about two-dimensional shapes in Geometry. We are also learning about how to ask good questions in math.

We continue to run a token economy in the classroom and usually have class auction on Fridays. The students are getting better at counting their money and some have had to make tough decisions on how they are going to spend their hard-earned Bernate Bucks!

Teighan and Chloe are good at saving up their Bernate Bucks!

Friday, December 23, 2011

We are in the computer lab right now and the students have asked me to put a couple websites on our page so they can access them from home tonight and tomorrow.

Happy Holidays from Mrs D.T., Bernate & Cheese!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Our last week of school before 2012 has come upon us quickly!

We will not be having our regular word work this week, instead we have a week of word games such as Word Wall Snakes and Ladders, WORDO, word cheers and LUCKY / UNLUCKY planned to help us review all the words and spelling patterns we have learned since September.

Last week we had a great time celebrating Las Posadas in the classroom and the children are still talking about how much fun it was to try our hand at breaking open the pinatas and find a few little treats inside. We need to say a huge thank you to our custodians Miss Anne and Miss Cindy for all their extra support as we seem to have gotten as much paper mache on the desks, floor and walls as we did on our art. We loved coming back in from the cold to have hot chocolate and the cookies we decorated. Thank you to Teighan's mom for volunteering to spend the afternoon getting our classroom ready and making the hot chocolate and sitting with groups of students while they decorated their cookies. Also, thank you to the families who went in cookie decorating materials. It was a great success!

We also spent quite a bit of time rehearsing our song for the Holly Jolly Follies concert and I'm sure that you will agree that it was time well spent. Ms McKenzie (our music teacher) uses these practices as a part of her music mark for report cards. I was very proud of our students and thought that our children looked and sounded fantastic. Great job, Grade 2!

Although it is the last week before the holidays, we still have curriculum work to do as well. In our Literacy block we are continuing to work on learning to write letters. Christmas is a great time of year to practice these skills at home as I know grandmas and aunts and uncles (and even Santa) enjoys receiving a thank you note for an extra special gift!

In math we are reviewing money and although we are always practicing our counting skills during our weekly auctions, we are also working on some problem solving questions this week in class. This time of year is also a great time to use these skills at home and while out shopping.

As a part of our study of Traditions and Celebrations in Social Studies, we will be learning about the symbols associated with Christmas. On Friday afternoon we will be having a little celebration in the classroom and students are invited to wear red and green clothing on this day.

This week I will be sending home all the clothing the students have in their baskets at school. The holidays are a great time for parents to check that your child's indoor shoes still fit and take advantage of the after-holiday sales if your child's feet have grown since September.

Also, another thank you to the families who sent in "extras" for the classroom. Treasure box items, treats and brown paper towel rolls for Cheese, special markers, hand wipes and sanitizer and especially Kleenex boxes are VERY much appreciated.

If I don't get to speak to you each personally before the holidays, I wish all our families a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year!

Here are a few photos of some of the great activities we participated in last week in the classroom:

Singing "Season of Joy" at the concert.

Using our plans to finally paint our pinatas.

Cookie decorating station

Our finished pinatas

Our plans for cookie decorating were certainly elaborate and creative. Eric designed a cookie ninja!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Due to all the time we need to rehearse for our concert on Thursday, we will not be having any www words this week. Hannah is the Star of the Week this week, and Lucas is the Star next week.

Just a reminder that Thursday afternoon and evening are our performances of Holly Jolly Follies! Hope to see all the families there!

On Friday we will be having Cookies and Hot Chocolate day in Grade 2. We will be decorating cookies in the afternoon and will gratefully accept any sprinkles or candy donations that we could use to decorate our gingerbread men. Thank you!

Here are just a few of the many things that have happened in our busy Grade 2 classroom this week:

Today we started making paper mache pinatas as a part of our study of Las Posadas in Social Studies.

A sea of green on Grinch Day. Photos of our critical challenge to be posted soon!

Hard at work in Grade 2.

We made our own dreidels to play with during our study of Hanukkah.067.jpg

Working on our Animals that Hibernate mural. It is now finished and hanging in the gym for our families to enjoy during the Holly Jolly Follies concert.

Saying good-bye to Bernate (our stuffed groundhog class mascot), as she hibernates until Feb 2.

An example of the wonderful work our students did on the computers creating projects on Animals that Hibernate using Smart Ideas 5. The end result was very impressive and all the projects are hanging in our classroom. Pop by and see them next time you are in the school!

Monday, December 5, 2011

Our word wall words for this week are: write, always, bug, cold, every and our bonus word is Hanukkah.

YAY! The "Updates and News" page is back! Thank you Mr. Pink and Mr. Honsinger for your help!

I can't believe that today we flipped the calendar to December! Our last month of 2011 promises to be as busy as the last few. Here are a few December Happenings in our Grade 2 class that you will need to know about:

November 28 - Dec 1 (Grades 2G & 2D) Week long study of the celebration of Kwanzaa. If you have any artifacts or information about Kwanzaa traditions, please let us know!

Dental Screening (no cost to families)

Hibernation Day! (Grades 1D, 1/2G & 2D) Students can wear pajamas to school & bring their favourite stuffed animal!

December 5-8 (Grades 2G & 2D) Week long investigation of Hanukkah. If you have any artifacts or information about Hanukkah traditions, please let us know!

December 9: Green Grinch Day. Students can wear green clothing and we will be completing a critical challenge involving the The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Dr Suess!

December 12 - 14: (Grades 2G & 2D) Study of the celebration of Las Posadas. If you have any artifacts or information about Las Posadas traditions, please let us know!

December 15: Holly Jolly Follies Holiday concert. Grade 2 students will be singing "Seasons of Joy" and just need to wear festive clothing to the concert (no particular colours or costumes this year).

December 16: (Grades 1D, 1/2G & 2D) Cookies and Hot Chocolate Day. We will be making and decorating treats!

December 19 -23 (Grades 2G & 2D) Week long investigation of Christmas. If you have any artifacts or information about Christmas traditions, please let us know!

A huge thank you to all the families who have sent in supplies in the past few weeks. We have had a number of families donate kleenex boxes and items for our class treasure box. Today a family even sent in food for Cheese. Thank you all!

Please remember to label all your child's clothing with his /her name. After the children left today, I found 3 winter hats and 3 mismatched mittens scattered around the classroom!

Our trip to Woodend was a great success. We had a great time and learned a lot about the local plants, trees and leaves that grow in the area. I was very pleased to hear that after we left, the Woodend teacher called Mrs Lawerence to compliment our class on their great behaviour. Great job, Grade 2! As always, I am very proud of you all! Also, a huge thank you to the moms who were brave enough to volunteer to join us on a chilly, very high energy day!

I took over sixty photos on the trip! Here are just a few of my favourite pictures. I have printed and posted a few more on the door of our classroom. Next time you are in the school, pop by for a look!

The students had a blast jumping in the enormous leaf pile raked by Mr B.

Mr B. pointed out many interesting plants, trees and animal tracks along the path on our hike.

Working together to read the map correctly to find locations during our orienteering activity.

Watching the leaves fall back down.

Sunday, November 21, 2011

We are looking forward to our trip to Woodend Conservation Area on Tuesday. Just a reminder that we will be outside for most of the day so we will need to dress appropriately for the weather. Right now the forecast for Tuesday is 9 degrees with a mix of sun and rain so students should wear boots, rain pants, warm hats and gloves. We will be having hot chocolate and a hot dog barbecue on site but students need to bring water bottles and snacks. We will be leaving Applewood at 9:00 a.m. and returning to the school before the end of the school day. We are looking forward to a great day of fun and educational outdoor activities that connect to both our Physical Education and Science curriculums! A huge thank you to all the parents who have volunteered to join us.

We have a busy week coming up that will include assemblies where our students will learn about Autism, proper handwashing procedures and the PALS play program. Also, Mr. Diorio, our itinerant instructional coach will be with us in the classroom and computer lab for three mornings this week to help us with our in-class research projects on animals that hibernate. Due to all this activity, we will not be having our weekly Word Wall words this week or dictation on Friday.

I look forward to seeing many of our families on Wednesday night for Parent Teacher Interview night. Please bring your child's progress report to the meeting and remember that the students are welcome if they would like to join us to discuss his or her progress. After all, we are all partners in our children's education!

We are once again in need of tissues. We seem to go through them very quickly, but we have had a few weeks with lots of children with coughs and colds. We would be very appreciative if each family could send in a box for all the children to use in the classroom. Thank you!

Here are a few photos of what we have been up to the last few weeks:

Here is our first attempt at using the instructional strategy of using a Grafitti Board in the classroom. To introduce a new topic, I put up a picture and the students wrote their ideas about and made connections to what they thought image might be. Not bad for a first try! Do you know what it is a picture of? If not, ask your child!

To further our study of a variety of Traditions and Celebrations, we made rangolis from coloured Rice Crispies to learn more about how children celebrate Diwali.

We always love to get a chance to burn off some of our energy during Physical Education class. We have been lucky to have some guest teachers in from Brock University in to help out Ms Hoekstra.

We all take turns sharing our writing during Author's Chair. In this photo, it is Johnnie's turn to answer questions about his writing and accept compliments and suggestions.

Chloe and Hannah holding some of classroom books about Remembrance Day.

The students worked hard to complete a wreath for our class to present during the Remembrance Day assembly.

Lest we forget. The Grade 2 wreath made of red poppies and fluffy white peace doves.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Great news! We reached our fall literacy goal of:

By November 15, 2011, 75% of the Grade 2 students will communicate a recount of a personal experience using student conferences, teacher observation and written, oral or pictorial tasks.

We have also started a new unit of learning in social studies. For the next five weeks we will be investigating various winter celebrations around from around the world as a part of our Traditions and Celebrations curriculum strand. We will be learning about Eid, Diwali, Hannukah, Las Posadas, Christmas and Chinese New Year. If you celebrate any of these special times in your family and would like to send in artifacts or information, we would be grateful. Please email me to let me know what your family would like to share.

We are sorry to have to say good-bye to Ms Munshi (Ms M), our student teacher as she heads back to Lakehead University to continue her studies.

As usual our days have been packed with fun and learning! Here are a few things that we have been up to in the last few days

We worked hard on our pumpkin carving activity day. We read a non-fiction text about pumpkin carving, weighed our pumpkins, ordered them by weight and discovered whether or not pumpkins float. We made plans for our ideas of how to carve our pumpkins, and in the photo you can see the boys beginning to carve the pumpkin. We were glad that Mrs Gardiner's class could join us for this fun activity!

Next we spent time estimating and then counting how many seeds our pumpkins had. The seeds from the one that Danielle (our fantastic classroom volunteer) is counting had 297!

Finally we wrote a recount of our activity. If you look at the shelf in the back of the photo, you can see some of our finished jack-o-lanterns.

Here is the rubric that we created as a class to use for our recount writing in Grade 2.

This is a picture from our Student Success bulletin board in our classroom. We have been trying a new strategy called A Wish and a Star in order to have students self identify what they have done well in their writing and what they need to work on in order to "bump up" their work.

As always, Applewood is a great place to be on Hallowe'en. We had beautiful weather for our neighbourhood walk. Thank you to all the families who sent in treats and goodies for our classroom celebration!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

We had an interesting day today. A "real, live" ninja dropped by our classroom to help us practice asking Level 3 or 4 questions on our Q chart. I have never seen my boys so eager to write questions!

Monday, October 23, 2011

What a busy week we had last week! We set our first class goal of the year as:

By November 15, 2011, 75% of the Grade 2 students will communicate a recount of a personal experience using student conferences, teacher observation and written, oral or pictorial tasks.

After gathering our baseline data, the students wrote a recount of our day filled with fun fall activities.

Here are a few photos from our "Going on a Leaf Hunt Day":

First, we started our day with a text connection.

Then we went on a leaf hunt ourselves. Good thing we had some Grade 6 students volunteer to be our runners. It was so windy! We felt lucky that any Grade 2 students didn't blow away!

Next we shared all the interesting things that we had found.

Finally we painted pictures of the fall trees. They turned out beautifully. I want to put them up in the classroom for a few weeks and then I will send them home so the students can show off the finished products.

Oh yeah, and we had fall treats too!

Our trip to the safety village was great too! The students were very well behaved, had fun and learned a lot about bus, road and fire safety.

Officer John is trying to sneak up on Dylan to demonstrate how easy it is to be distracted while driving.

I was pretty impressed by the driving skills of my second graders!

We learned about all about the dangers of playing with matches and how to react quickly in case a fire breaks out in our homes. I will be sending the red safety bags home on Monday and am reminding each family how important it is to have an EDITH (exit strategy in case of danger in the home).

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Just a reminder that we will be traveling to the Safety Village by bus on Friday. We are looking forward to a great trip - and hopefully great weather! However, if it is a rainy day, we will still be attending so please make sure that your child is dressed appropriately! Thank you to all the parents who volunteered for this trip. Since we were allowed only a limited number, I hope that the parents who weren't able to attend this time, will volunteer again next time. Your help is sincerely appreciated!

Friday is also Sub Day. The students participating in the Safety Village trip on Friday will be having our lunch before we leave for the trip. We have arranged for the subs for the Grade 1/2 and Grade 2 classes to be delivered early. Students do need to bring a water bottle and snack on the trip. All students going on the trip need to stay and eat lunch at school on Friday, please.

Also, thank you to David's mom for volunteering in the classroom and to all the families who have sent in supplies from our "wish list". All the extras are fun for the students and our class gerbil certainly loves all the paper towel roles that have been sent in for him.

Keep your eye out in the St Catharines Standard for some Grade 2 art work! We have been learning about and experimenting with different types of lines during our visual art classes. As part of this unit of study we read "A Story Line", a book created by students who all fill in an unfinished line drawing with their own ideas. We tried it too! We chose a design from Ron Lindsay's weekly art feature and each student completed a design and we submitted them to the Standard. We will have to watch and wait to see if any of our students' work is chosen to be published!

As a part of our study of lines, we have also been printmaking. Here is Avery rolling her design. She thought it looked like fall trees when she had finished. Wonderful work, Avery!

In the photo above, two students are trying the TRIBES activity of 2 on a Crayon where two students listen to a piece of music and try to draw a picture with both of them holding the crayon WITHOUT talking. It's much harder than it sounds. All the students did a great job and we all learned some important things about working together.

This week we have been using our school ipads in science class to help us learn new information about insects as a part of our Growth and Changes in Animals unit. The students watched videos and explored sites and apps about animal life cycles. As you can see from the photo, the students were very engaged as they listened to Mr Dilorio (our school's instructional coach) explain their task for the period.

The boys enjoy watching a video about honeybees on an ipad.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Wow, the weather sure has turned since my last entry. We have been lucky to have had such beautiful weather for our long weekend!

We are lucky to have a student teacher with us for the next four weeks. An extra set of hands is always more than welcome in our busy classroom! Ms. Munshi (aka Ms M.) is part of the faculty of education at Lakehead University and we are glad that she has joined our Grade 2 classroom!

My class was filled with turkeys the day before Thanksgiving (and some pretty cute kids too)!

We have been trying "jigsaw" learning in science - different small groups all learn about a small part of a subject and then share their discoveries with the rest of the class, fitting all the small pieces together to create an overall "picture" of the material. I was very impressed with how hard all the groups worked to contribute their own piece. Great job, as usual, Grade 2!

This week we started our first round of guided reading groups. I change the groups often and find that this is a great way for me to be able to offer individual and small group instruction in reading! This round the texts in all the groups related to our science theme of the Growth and Changes in Animals.

Monday, October 3, 2011

I can't believe that we are already in to our second month. I guess time does fly when we are having fun!

Tuesday evening will be our first Wendy's fundraiser. Hope to see you there!

Please remember that Friday, October 7th is a P.A. day which means lots of meetings for teachers and NO SCHOOL for the students. As well, there will not be school on Monday, October 10th as we celebrate Thanksgiving with our families.

We have a rainy, cold weekend and tomorrow's forecast doesn't look much better. Please be sure that your child is dressed appropriately. Our classroom is often chilly so dressing your child in layers is always a good idea. Students need to have a pair of "indoor" shoes to wear in the classroom and a either boots or shoes to wear on our sometimes muddy playground and field.

Alex is our Star of the Week for this week!

As you know, each morning we spend some of our 100 minute Literacy Block on our weekly word work. On Thursdays we play a variety of word games including word cheers, Lucky / Unlucky and Words and Ladders. In the photo above, the students are spelling the word and doing a karate kick along with each letter during word cheers. Who said learning to spell couldn't be fun?