Guided Reading begins!

Today we started our guided reading groups! Hurray! Some of us are in the first group with Mrs. Armour at 8:45-9:05, and some of us work at our quiet centres (Literacy games, making bookmarks or word work on iPads), the second group is from 9:10-9:30. Some of us will go to read with Mrs. Hamby or Mrs. Boyer and some of us stay and read with Mrs. Armour. We are all excited to get reading together.

After guided reading it is straight to Gym. We are working on our quiet walking line. It is hard sometimes when we are excited to get to the gym, but we need to be good examples to the Kindergarteners who have gym right before us and are watching us!

It was Library day! Most of us remembered our books this week so we were able to sign out 2 books - we always like reading our new books! All morning we are reading and getting our home reading books exchanged too, so there is a lot going on.

A couple weeks ago we all tried guessing how many marbles were in a small jar and a large jar. Yesterday we discussed estimating and making a "good guess" and we counted the marbles in the small jar. There were 25. Five or six of us came close - Samantha had the best estimate at 21!
Today we talked about a "referent" something that we already know to help us with estimating something we don't know. We used our small jar of 25 as our referent to help us estimate the number of marbles in the large jar. A lot of us guessed 50 because it looked like the small jar was about half the size - but then when we counted, we found out there was about 100 marbles! We decided it was because the large jar was wider. Good mathematical thinking!

We also did our painting for our Primary Colour page. The first colours that make all the other colours are...ask us!

We did a desk clean to get ready for conferences. We hope you are excited to come and see some of our learning. Thanks to all the parents who have already signed up!

Parent/Teacher Conferences are on Thursday 4-8pm and Friday 9-12pm. See you then!

Monday

This morning we came into the Clubhouse and had to find our desks. We are now in 6 groups of 3. Ask us what colour group we are now in and if we can tell you if it is a PRIMARY or SECONDARY colour! We worked on Journal pictures before Gym and journal stories after recess. We are all trying hard to sound out our words and think of more details to make our stories more interesting.

After Gym, we all had white boards or sentence strips and markers and Mrs. Armour wrote seven letters on the board a, c, c, h, r, s, t. Then we put the letters together to make new words...14 of them starting with "at" and ending with "chart". Ask us if we remember what the "Wonder Word" was using ALL the letters. How many words can you make with those seven letters. We are going to try and do this a few times a week to help us learn how letter and sounds go together. We will try and get the "Wonder Word" before Mrs. Armour tells us at the end!

After lunch we had just started working on our Nose Hill posters when there was a fire drill! We did very well and Mrs. Polski said we were even faster than last time. It was a bit chilly, but we were glad it was quite nice outside.

We are starting Guided Reading groups tomorrow! So, our mornings will be busy getting our home reading books into the bucket, and getting to guided reading groups or centres. There will 3 centres that we will each get a turn going to during the week. We will need to look on the board to see where our name is, and figure out where we should be. It might take a few days to remember where to go, but Mrs. Hamby, Mrs. Boyer, and Mrs. Armour will help us and soon we will have it all figured out!

REMINDER: LIBRARY tomorrow. Please remind us to bring back our books.

Please remind us to read our Home Reading books one more time and then put them in our backpacks. Home Reading will be Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Parent/Teacher Conferences on Thursday 4-8pm and Friday 9-12pm. Please book online. 

Remembrance Day - We will remember.

Snowflakes, In Flander's Fields poem (rhyming words) and thinking about Peace

Wednesday

Green group (Birday, Ingmar, Malik, Max and Georgia) is helping with the Blog this week. We are all trying to give two ideas. Please remind us to be thinking of something musical we can bring in and share with the class (an instrument or a song).

We did a lot of cutting this morning to make a mountain of snowflakes - sometimes it is tricky to remember how to fold the paper and cut the right areas but we are getting more creative and independent in making small and large snowflakes to decorate our Clubhouse!

We played tag games in gym and voted on revenge tag (everyone is it and if you both tag at the same time, you play "rock, paper, scissors" to see who sits down) and "T" tag - this is played with 2 teams and if you get caught, you have to stand like a "T" until someone runs under your arms to free you. Some people are really good at tagging, so we have to run hard or in a pattern to get away.

We worked to find all the rhyming words in the poem In Flander's Fields. We worked together so the grade ones could practice printing, while the grade twos found all the rhyming words and highlighted them. Ask us if we remember any of the words that rhymed.

We started writing our own clues for our Guess Who game. The grade 2's are writing 8 clues and the grade 1's are writing 4 - unless they want a challenge and then they can write up to 8 if they want.

It was a MUSIC day today, so we practiced standing on the risers and singing Waltzing Matilda with just the words on the screen. Ask us if we can sing it and explain some of the "Australian" words like coolibah tree, matilda, billabong and jumbuck!

We are working on some POPPY ART for the Remembrance Day assembly. We were inspired by the artist W. Kandinsky so we used black paper for the background and made gradually increasing circles of different shades of red. If you google "Kandinsky circles" you will see our inspiration. You will see our art work up in the gym on Friday.

REMINDER: Home reading books coming home tonight! Please read with us and then send back our book and bag, so we can exchange them tomorrow. Some grade twos will have their books for longer.

Library was switched just for this week and we have it tomorrow - THURSDAY. If you forgot your book, please bring it back in the morning so you can check out some new ones.

Remembrance Day Assembly Friday at 10:45AM. Thank you for reminding us to dress nicely and act respectfully. We are so excited to share our song with you!

Retakes for anyone wanting them first thing Friday morning.

Have a great evening!

Smartie Math and Sharing

Tuesday

This morning the grade ones finished printing "L" and the grade twos worked on printing "In Flander's Fields". We didn't have Library today because there was a special group that was using it. Mrs. Kidd told us we could come on Thursday at 10, so we will be able to change our books. We always enjoy reading, so we still used this time today to read to each other or by ourselves.

After recess, we worked on our Nose Hill posters. We are trying to add extra details and make sure everyone in our group gets a chance to give ideas on what we need to make it better. Then we went in to meet with Room 1/2 to play a "Guess Who?" game. Mrs. Hamby, Mrs. Boyer and Mrs. Armour had all written clues and we took turns reading the clues and then guessing which teacher the clues were about. Some of us thought for sure we knew who it was, but it was tricky when we heard all the clues. We found out how much our teachers have in common. 

We are excited about writing our own clues and having our friends guess which clues are about us. We will try and think of clues that might be about more than one of us, so it will be harder to guess. (Hint: less about what we LOOK like, and more about what we LIKE to do)

We also started on a "PEACE" page in our art journal. We are thinking about what Peace LOOKs, FEELs, SMELLs, TASTEs and SOUNDs like. 

We watched a short video about what a graph is all about and how we can best represent our "data". Ask us about our Smartie Challenge graph.

Samantha shared her Xylophone today- we thought it sounded Peaceful. Birdy shared her favorite song - we ran out of time, so we just listened to it while we got ready for home. 

GREEN group is helping this week. Ingmar, Georgia, Malik and Max will be sharing. Max brought in his favorite book we are looking forward to reading it!

REMINDER: Remembrance Day assembly on FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10th at 10:45. We will be singing "Waltzing Matilda" and have been practicing in class and Mr. O'Reilly. Please remind us this is a solemn assembly and we need to be quiet and respectful. We should be dressed in nice clothes like we would wear if we were going to a nice restaurant or church. (Do not need to be fancy.)

Picture Retakes are also on Friday first thing so we have another reason to dress up:)

Home Reading program is starting Wednesday. Watch for book bags coming home in the next couple of days. If anyone can volunteer T/W/TH mornings, please email Mrs. Armour and she will send more information. THANK YOU!