Foxes and Bats and Lizards and Star Wars and...oh my!

We started our exciting day with Guided reading groups and Poetry centres. We are playing Poetry bingo to remind us to try creating, copying and performing at least 3 times! Ask me what my favorite poetry centre is and which one is hardest for me.

Mrs. Armour read a Dr. Seuss story called, What was I scared Of? It was about pale, green pants...! Ask me what it was about.

For Math, we made a Smartie graph in our group. Ask me about it.

For Word Work, we brainstormed Halloween words for our Bingo in the afternoon. We had to write 15 words (plus one "free" square). Ask me how many times I won bingo?

After lunch we had a costume parade! We played Bingo! We had Music!

Have a safe night everyone. Remember to brush your teeth tonight:) Take some calming time to READ...See you tomorrow!

                                    LIBRARY DAY TOMORROW! It's the beginning of November!

Monday

Today we started right in with our journal pictures or guided reading groups. Ask me when I go to guided reading - once we have another week of practice, I think we will all be in the right place at the right time!

Blue group is helping with blog, doorbell, door holding, calendar, lunch bin and key card this week. Thanks blue group!

Green group is helping with the home reading bins, floor and shelves.

Red group is cleaning desks this week.

Turquoise group is organizing pencil boxes and responsible for taking in the library bin on Thursday.

Ask me what my job is this week to help keep the Clubhouse tidy.

Mrs. Armour read a book today called, Julius; The Baby of the World by Kenvin Henkes. Ask me what it was about and what secret writing project we did....shhhhh.

In Math, we worked on a graph about temperature. The numbers on the side went up by 4's! So we counted by 4's using cubes. Ask me how far I can get counting by 4's? Try using tally marks, lego or stuffies to count by 4's to practice. (Note: we actually only have to learn how to count by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10's - but this is a fun challenge).
This week we will be thinking up our own graph titles and categories and deciding which numbers for the side - will we count up by 1's, 2's, 5's? Then we will ask our friends if they can understand our graph. This will show how much we understand - when we make our own graphs!

Mrs. Armour read us some bug poems and then we shared 3 facts about our arthropods with as many different friends as we could before it was time for volleyball.

Volleyball outside - ask me to show you how to "SET to the sky!" and "BUMP below"

In Music, we are learning the song, Big Yellow Taxi, by Joni Mitchell for the CBC contest. Playing it at home and school will help me learn it well.

TOMORROW IS TREAT DAY! Bring a quarter (how many cents is that?) if you would like to by a treat at recess.

RUN CLUB will now be "weather permitting" so if it's not pouring rain, super cold or snowy....we will run on Wednesdays at 12:05-12-30 then eat together.

Conferences this week are ONLY FOR MRS. BOYER's ROOM 2 class as she will be going on Maternity Leave in a couple weeks. All other conferences are at the end of November (22/23). Sorry for any confusion.

And then just like that - the week is over...!

It was a bit of an exciting, crazy week with Home Reading and Guided Reading starting and Mrs. Armour being away Tuesday and Wednesday!

Here are a few highlights...

Ask me to read my new home reading book a few times this weekend.

Ask me about the book I read in guided reading.

Ask me about the Hot Dog graph today and how we learned to interpret it. What information did we learn? Did it help when Mrs. Armour used the cubes and counted by 10's?

Ask me if I finished writing the good copy of the story of my name.

Ask me if I know the difference between COMPLETE METAMORPHOSIS and INCOMPLETE Metamorphosis and if I know which one my arthropod does? Check out this website to find out more.

www.bugfacts.net

Unfortunately Saakokoto had to reschedule, so we are looking forward to his visit at a future date!

Have a great weekend. Read! Get outside!

Wednesday, October 31st is guess what? You can be thinking about your costumes - please keep your masks at home - face paint is okay.

Monday - Home Reading Begins!

Today we had new groups because we are starting guided reading groups and centres tomorrow! We started with journals because it's Monday! Ask me what I wrote about!

After recess we met with Room 1 and 2 to discuss our new routines with

HOME READING -watch for our bag coming home today! Please help me read through my book once or twice with you or my brother or sister or stuffie or pet:) and then remind me to put it back in my backpack so I can read it with the volunteer and switch each day! If I have a chapter book - I wait to exchange it when I'm finished...after I take my coat and shoes off each morning, the next thing I do is put my home reading in the bin.

GUIDED READING GROUPS - all of us are grouped together in a "best fit" group for us. Some of us will be going to read with Ms. Boyer, Mrs. Hamby, Mr. O'Reilly or Mrs. Wilkins or some of us will stay and read with Mrs. Armour. Some of us will go to guided reading every day and some of us will go 2 days a week. Ask me if I remember who I am reading with! Mrs. Armour will have reminder cards on the board in case we forget!

As soon as we finish our morning routine (backpack hung up, indoor shoes on, home reading in bin, chair down) Group 1 will start guided reading. If we are not in group 1 we will start POETRY CENTRES (copying poems, creating poems, reading/performing poems). When Group 1 returns, Group 2 will have their turn for Guided Reading and Group 1 will do centres.

Remind me Mrs. Armour will let me know where to be if I forget!

Thanks Green group for helping with Blog and being classroom helpers this week.

From our helpers - "Gym was fun today. We were outside and played volleyball."
We had music today. We played with instruments. It was fun! One of the instruments was a triangle. We practiced our CBC project. Ask me what I am playing!"

Looking ahead - We are excited to have SaaKokoto visit Dr. Coffin on Thursday!
                         - PD Day on Friday - no school for students.

Live, Laugh, Love Leaves...Fresh Air Friday

We did leaf projects today.

Did you know the maple tree needs to have space between them and next plant.

Did you know the smoke tree and so thin and fine that when you are far away it looks like smoke.

We made leaf animals with leaves from Barrett park and Whispering Woods.

We decorated with the leaves - I made a cat!

Did you know Dinosaurs ate fan leaves.

We made leaf crafts - I made a turtle.

I like how we made animals out of leaves. I made a kitten.

I made a family of slugs with leaves and I like how we collected in Whispering Woods.

I did an ultra supreme taco monster!

Today we made leaf pictures - I made an alien.

I made a slug with leaves

I made a dog, a cat and a turtle.

I made an alien with leaves.

I wish we could do this for a year!

With leaves, I made a person painting!

I made an elephant in a pond!

We went outside to collect leaves and I created a woodpecker.

Thursday - update

A little catch up from our week -

Centres

• we have seen lots of great creative bookmarks coming to life from scrap pieces of paper!
• we have had fun playing literacy games together - playing with sounds, creating silly sentences, and stories from pictures - COME PLAY SOME TONIGHT 6-7pm
• "we are poets and we know it!" we had a poetry celebration today to practice sharing our created or copied poems with clear, loud-enough voices. COME MAKE AN ACROSTIC POEM TONIGHT.

Math

• finishing up transferring our fun lunch survey information to graph form
• writing information we found out about our graph "what we notice"
• we sometimes come to the carpet using poems like 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 being even is just great...ask me if I can finish this one for you!

Writing

• we created "bead names" to go under our portraits
• we wrote our "name stories"

Printing

• we all practiced together printing the whole alphabet but we used 3 groups (main floor, upstairs and basement letters) to help us remember how to print them on a line. Continuing to practice drawing circles, squares and "X"on scrap paper helps warm up our fingers and our brains to do our best letters!

Science

• we have been working hard as entomologists drawing bug diagrams, life cycles and are now finding facts about habitat, predator/prey and interesting features about our arthropods.

Gym

• it's been so nice outside - we have been practicing our soccer skills in the field

Visitors - we have been enjoying our student teachers from University of Calgary here to observe how classrooms work at Dr. Coffin! Today we had 2 different visitors - we really liked them and made them some bookmarks! 

It was Library today - ask me which books I checked out!

Tonight is Literacy Night - see you in Room 1/2 between 6-7pm

Tuesday, October 16th

 Today we started with Centres - Ask me which one I was at...poems? literacy games? bookmarks?

We had 3 special guests today from University of Calgary - they are learning to be master teachers and are spending the week at Dr. Coffin observing all our different classrooms. They were a big help when we were working on our Name Cards with beads - what a careful, tricky job to put all the beads around our letters - it's very good fine motor practice that will help us be better printers! It was fun!

We had some more time to work on our Fun Lunch graphs - ask me where the Title, Numbers, and Categories go on the "big C" graph.

Fun Lunch was fun:) thanks to our volunteer moms who helped - we couldn't have it without you! We enjoyed our pizza, sandwiches, apple juice, milk (chocolate/white) and cookies. 

We worked on the LIFE CYCLE of our arthropod today...ask me if I found a good picture of all the stages for my bug. We will have time to work on it this week and also keep researching for "interesting facts" and "diet/habitat/predators" for our project.

REMINDER - TOMORROW IS PICTURE DAY:) It might be a good idea to put in a change of clothes if we are wearing something fancy - our pictures will probably be before lunch. 

Thursday night is Literacy Night - 6-7pm - 

Come visit and see what we do with words in our grade 1/2 classroom!

Monday - Super instrument Video to watch

Mondays are our busy day but we watched this to end our day and we all
enjoyed it and wanted to share it with you!
FUN LUNCH tomorrow (Tuesday)
PICTURE DAY (Wednesday)
Library (Thursday)
LITERACY NIGHT (Thursday 6-7pm)

Fresh Air Friday - for the birds! (PICTURES NOW ADDED)

We did centres again this morning - so now all of us have tried all 3 centres and will have a turn at each of them next week. Ask me which is my favorite!

With the early snow, we thought about how most of the bird's food (bugs, berries, seeds...) might have been covered and so we discussed about creating "natural bird feeders" from what is all around us!

We read "Welcome Brown Bird" by Mary Lyn Ray about a Thrush migrating and two boys that wait for him.
At the end of the day, we read "Pie in the Sky" by Lois Ehlert - Ask me about what kind of pie they were waiting for.

Here is a website to explore which birds winter in Calgary and might enjoy our bird feeders!

http://www.birdscalgary.com/birding-resources/winter-birds/

Enjoy our pictures of gathering, creating and then hanging our bird feeders. Ask me what I used on my bird feeder!

Have a wonderful weekend. Watch for bugs and birds! Enjoy the beautiful weather outside!

Looking Ahead...
Tuesday is Fun Lunch
Wednesday is PICTURE DAY! 
It also looks great weather wise - we will most likely have Run Club - so IF your child wants to run thanks for putting in a change of clothes - it is hard to run in fancy shoes:)
Thursday is Literacy Night - 6:00-7:00PM - come and see how your child engages in literacy at Dr. E.W. Coffin and get their Home reading all set up in the Library.

Thursday, October 11th

This morning after centres we had a special visit by a real author - Alice Kuipers! She told us about how she much she loves reading and writing and how long it takes to write just one story. She has written a lot of books and some of them are picture books - she read from her newest one called Polly Diamond and the Magic Book - here is her website if you want more details. 

Ask me about what I remember about the author visit.

http://www.alicekuipers.com/polly-diamond-and-the-magic-book/

This afternoon we changed our "quiet desk books" for next week's reading and then we went to Library - it's always fun to look for new books or check out our favorites.a

After library we worked on adding details to our "macro diagram" of our arthropod - ask me what realistic colours I used on my bug!

Thanks to Green group this week for helping with door holding, calendar, door bell lunch bin and library books!

Mrs. Armour will be reading some books all about NAMES because we will be working on our "name stories" and "bead names" next week. 

Today she read an old funny story called, Tikki Tikki Tembo retold by Arlene Mosel - 

Ask me about the 2 boys and their names.

Mrs. Armour gave us all little doodle books so we ended the day by watching a little video of how you can create pictures out of names and numbers.

Reminder to order Fun Lunch by midnight tonight if you want to have Subway on 

Tuesday, October 16th.

Fresh Air Friday tomorrow - the weather report sounds quite nice but remember it will still be chilly in the morning and we will be done at 12:15pm. 

Wednesday

Today we started new centres! Poetry, Literacy Games and Bookmark making...

Ask me which one I was at today.

Grade 1's practiced Dd and Gg during printing today. We thought dog, Doug, dig were all good words to practice because they all have "d" and "g" in them. 

Grade 2's are reading and filling out their "literacy job" books - 

ask me if I was a word wizard, connector, summarizer, illustrator or questioner today.

For Math, we had clip boards and our surveys and went into the school to ask some of the grade 3/4's and 5/6's which was their favorite choice for Fun Lunch! Ask me which choice got the most tallies!

We will add up our tallies and using this information to let our Fun Lunch volunteers know what we found out to help them use our information.

For science, we started our "macro diagrams" for our choice arthropod - we will be labeling and adding realistic colour for our research project. 

Ask me if I can remember which parts I need to label.

TOMORROW IS LIBRARY (please remind me to put my books in my backpack)

Tomorrow we have a guest author coming to speak and read her book in the Learning Commons!

Friday is the cut off date for ordering this month's Fun Lunch - 

which is Subway on Tuesday, October 16th

if you would like to volunteer let either of our Fun Lunch Coordinators know

flor_mam@hotmail.com

laurajill30@yahoo.com