Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from room one!

Enjoy your Halloween, be safe!

The excitement is bubbling over!

We might be tired...

Thank You for Treats

A very big thank you to the parents from room one that supported our treat day by sending in treats this morning.  Thank you also to the parents that volunteered by coming to help set up and sell the treats at recess time.  We will be using the money to help pay for the food of our classroom pet crayfish.

This morning after guided reading we worked on our good copy for the Story of Our Name.  The grade twos began working on typing up their story using Google docs.  The grade ones will be printing their good copy.

After recess we had printing and word work time.  The grade twos worked on some bug body part vocabulary by working on a word search.

In math today, we worked as a group to interpret a graph and answer some questions together.  We noticed that we are getting better at answering what the question is asking.  We are reading the questions more carefully.  We noticed that we are also getting better at looking at the information on the graph and what it is telling us.

Tomorrow is Halloween.  The students have been invited to dress up in the afternoon.  If you are sending in your child's costume they will have a chance to put it on at 1:00 with help from their teacher or classmates.  If you will be taking your child home at lunch please let the lunch room supervisor know.

Treat Day Tomorrow

A reminder that Room 1 is providing the treats for our treat day tomorrow .  Please send your treats in with your child in the morning before recess.  Remember that if you would like your child to have treats at recess please send 25 cents. 

In volleyball this week we will have the nets set up and we will be playing different games using the nets and the volleyballs.  

Today we made a secret surprise for Mrs. Boyer's baby.  We are very excited about it.  Please ask me what the surprise is.

In math today we got together with a partner and we had to try and answer questions about the graph together.  We had to both agree on the answer before we could write it down.  Tomorrow we will all share our ideas together as a class.

This afternoon we had finish up for journals, computers and also library.  Your child is bringing home a card today that has their computer log in information so that they can access Raz kids and also Mathletics from home.  These cards can be kept at home as your child also has one at school.

On Wednesday all kids that want to wear costumes are invited to wear them for the afternoon. If you would like to send in treats on that day please make sure that they are nut free.

A Big Thank You!

Our first week of home reading is over.  We are well on our way!  A big thank you to all those parents that have already signed up to volunteer and those that were in this week.  Please remember to check the Signup Genius for dates that you may be able to volunteer.  The kids were really good about remembering to bring their books back each day. Thank you for your time in listening to you child read and encouraging them along the way.  It is very exciting and rewarding to see their growth throughout the year.

Reminders
Tomorrow is a PD day so there will be no classes for students.
This is also a reminder that we are hosting the treat day on October 30th.  Please send the treats with your child that morning so that they are ready to go for recess time.  Each family is encouraged to donate a dozen wrapped snacks or small items such as holiday pencils, erasers, etc.
Thank you in advance for your support.  The students have decided that they would like to use the money earned on treat day to help buy food for our class pet donated by Adeline's and Joachim's family.  It is two crayfish.  Everyone is very excited to have these in our classroom.

Life Cycles, Story of My Name, Graph interpretation

Today was our second day of Guided reading and home reading.
This afternoon in our bug research we worked on finishing our diagrams and life cycles.  Some of us made a sloppy copy of the life cycle first and then we put it onto our best copy.  We watched a video about bugs.
Did you know...
All bugs have exoskeletons.
The butterfly chrysalis starts out as a really light color and the gets darker.
All bugs can breathe but they don't have lungs instead they have tubes and sacs.
Bugs use their back legs to taste.
A bugs eyes are called compound eyes.
Bugs do not have back bones, they do not have to stand up straight.
Insects have three body parts, ahead, thorax and abdomen.
Lady bugs are a type of beetle.

This morning when we worked on the story of my name we had to begin our writing.
We had to write; what our name is, what it means and why our parents chose our name for us.
The grade ones could choose whether or not they wanted to add more than what their name is and the meaning of their name. The grade twos had to write all that they knew about their name.

This morning in math we worked on learning and practicing the skills we needed to use when we are interpreting a graph. You have to count carefully.  Make sure that you are answering the question that is being asked.  If you were not sue what the question is asking you have to ask a grown up. The grade ones worked with Mrs. Hamby at the carpet. When we were done we got to play some graphing games on the iPad or on the computer.

We are very excited because Sakokoto is coming to visit us tomorrow.  He will be spending 30 minutes with each class.  We will begin the day with a welcome back in the learning commons.

Story of My Name, Measurement and Research

This morning we started our guided reading groups.  Some went with Mr. O'Reilly, Mrs. Boyer, Mrs. Hamby, Mrs. Armour and also Mrs. Wilkens (afternoon).  The kids that were not with a guided reading group were working on the poetry centers.  We also had home reading today. Some of us forgot our books but we will try to remember to bring them tomorrow.  If we did bring our book we read to a volunteer and then chose a new book.

In math today we did the second part of our leaf challenge.  We had to try to find the tallest, shortest, widest and narrowest leaf from our leaf collection that we did yesterday.  We used rulers to measure in cm.  The widest leaf was 14 cm.  The narrowest leaf was 1 cm.  The shortest leaf was 1 cm and the tallest was 16 cm.

In writing today Mrs. Hamby read the book called, The Name Jar.  It was about a girl from Korea and she was shy about her Korean name.  We went into little groups and we shared what we each knew about our name, the story of our own name.  We ended with a sharing circle.  Tomorrow we will begin the writing about our name.

This afternoon in our arthropod research we watched a video of a butterfly life cycle and a praying mantis life cycle.  We learned that Metamorphosis is the word that means, the stages a bug goes through from an egg to becoming an adult. Some go through three stages and some go through 4 stages.  Some of us are still working on our diagrams and some have moved on to Life Cycles.

In music today we got our instrument assigned to us and we practiced a song.  We got to use percussion instruments, xylophone and singing.  We practiced all these with our "Yellow Taxi" song for the music project.

Home Reading and Guided Reading

Today your child is bringing home their home reading book.  There is a purple letter in the bag for parents to read and also another page that shares strategies for you to try and use together in the reading journey.  We also use these same strategies in guided reading.

Please take the time to listen to your child read their home reading book allowing them to try first on their own and encouraging them to try some of the strategies provided on the bookmark that is in the bag.  Once they have practiced the book with you, please encourage them to try and practice a few more times on their own or reading to a sibling, pet, dolls, stuffs or anything or anyone else they want to read to.  Please continue to encourage them and provide only as much support as you feel necessary for them to maintain their enthusiasm and feel successful in their reading efforts.

When they bring the book back each day they will have an opportunity to read the book to a home reading volunteer and then they will a choose a new book to bring home.  

If you would like to volunteer for home reading you can sign up on "Sign-up Genius".  The success of this program largely depends on our volunteers and we are so thankful that we have parents and some community members that come to help us out.

We will also begin our guided reading groups tomorrow.  We spent some time explaining the process to the grade one and two classes today.  We are all very excited for this reading journey to begin and that it continues to be an important part of their lives.

Leaf Collection and Leaf Art

Today we made leaf art.  We made pictures of animals using leaves.  Can you guess some of our animals?








First we went and collected leaves at Barrett Park and in the Whispering Woods.  We talked about varying shapes sizes and colors, making sure that we picked up leaves that still felt flexible.

Barrett Park

Choosing carefully ...

After we gathered all the leaves we went back to the school and we looked at some pictures of leaf art for inspiration.  Some of us used those ideas and some of us had our own ideas of what we wanted to make.

We hope you enjoy looking at our leaf art! We sure enjoyed making it.  To quote Hank from our classroom he said, "It was such a creative day!"

Literacy Night

Reminder*

Tonight from 6:00 - 7:00 is our Literacy Night.  Please come and let your child show you how literacy looks in their classroom.  There will be a variety of stations that you can rotate through together.  Hope to see you tonight.

Tomorrow for Fresh Air Friday we will be doing a leaf study through a variety of activities and stations.

Reminder

Reminder*
Tomorrow night is from 6:00 - 7:00 we will be having our literacy evening.  You and your child can attend together to see what we do in the classroom to build your child's literacy knowledge in our reading and writing program.

Today was our picture day.

When we were in the classroom we worked very hard on the various projects that we have already started.  We worked onIt was a very busy day!

An Exciting Tuesday!

Reminder*  Tomorrow is Picture Day !

Today was such an exciting fun lunch day!  We had pizza or subs from subway.  It was delicious!  We had fun eating all together.  Thank you to all the parent volunteers that came to help so that we could enjoy having fun lunches.

We started our morning with centers today.  After centers we had a story at the carpet called "Mustafa",  by Marie Loise Gay.  It was about a boy who moved with his family to a safer land, country.  We started working on or name tags to go with our portraits and name project.

In math today we worked on our fun lunch surveys and graphs.  Some of us worked on graphs and some of us finished our surveys.

After lunch we worked on our Arthropod diagrams.  Mrs. Hamby read a book called "My Map Book".  A diagram is like making a map for your arthropod.

In music, we played a game called still waters, to calm us down.  We learned about what instrument group we would be in, during the performance for CBC.  The song is The Big Yellow Taxi.

In gym we worked on overhand and underhand throws and catches to get us ready for Newcomb ball and the nets being up next week.

The Usual Monday

Reminder*  Tomorrow is Fun Lunch.  Thank you in advance if you are volunteering tomorrow to help with our fun lunch.

We started off our day by working on our journal pictures.  We had till 9:20 to finish our pictures.  Many of us are getting more detailed at drawing our pictures because we are using a picture rubric to help us set a goal.  We met at the carpet for a story called "The Great Paper Caper" by Oliver Jeffers.  We also read Pierce's story called "The Book Of Chester".  It is a story he wrote about his cat.
We brainstormed words an centers starters on a chart to help us with our writing today.  We had until recess to write in our journals.

In math today we began a show what you know in graphing and surveying.  We are using our fun lunch survey information to create a graph.  We are trying to make our graph independently.  Before we started working, we made a checklist to remind ourselves of what needed to be included when making our graphs.
1. Title can also be our survey question
2. Numbers up the side.
3. Choices across the bottom.
4. Your own name
5.  Colored towers to show information.

In the afternoon we went on the computers and we investigated the life cycle of our Arthropod.  Anisha learned that the life cycle of a butterfly is egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and then a butterfly.  The stick bug is egg, nymph, to the adult stick bug.
We also had library before gym.
Today in gym we started working on some volley ball skills.  This is our next unit in gym.

Natural Bird Feeders

There was a lot of excitement in the room today as we created our natural bird feeders.  We talked about our early snowfall and the lack of insects around for the birds to eat.  We talked about why it was important to use things from nature that the birds would recognize and when they were  done they would return back to the earth rather than becoming a piece of litter.




After that we went outside to gather twigs, berries and other natural objects to include in our feeders.  We had some supplies like bird seed, pinecones, crab apples, mountain ash berries and grasses.  We used raffia, grasses and string as fasteners.



After we gathered all the supplies Mrs. Hamby demonstrated how to create the feeder and attach things to it.  We spent about 45 minutes working on them.  Once we were all finished we went outside and hung them in the trees in Whispering Woods for the birds to enjoy.

This would be a great family project for some of the birds that visit your back yards!

Author Visit - Alice Kuipers

Reminder:

Tomorrow we will be spending our Fresh Air Friday creating something to help the birds get through our early winter. 

Our Author visit today inspired us to be readers and writers.  She told us that we should follow our passions.  She has always been passionate about reading and writing.  When she was young she promised herself that she would read and write everyday.  She wrote her first book when she was eleven after she was inspired by a teacher and encouraged to do it.  By the time she was twenty eight she was able to be a writer full time.

She spoke about the process of observing and gathering ideas through inspiration.  Then she would story board her ideas for a story.  This would be followed by writing many drafts.  Many of the stories she has written have never made it to a final copy.  Once the publisher and illustrator get involved, then the process changes once again to become more of a team collaboration.

Mrs. Kidd introduced Alice Kuipers. She lives in Saskatoon but grew up in London, England.

This is one of her favorite books.  She read to us from the book.  She read the part where she turns her sister into a banana.

She talked  to us about the process of writing.  Here she is telling us about the sloppy copy to finished draft.  One of her published books had over 190 drafts.

Mrs. Kuipers is here in Calgary for Word Fest.