Thursday, June 17

As we are nearing the end of school, the students are enjoying their time outside. We have been doing games or free playground activities outside. They have done well remembering sunscreen, hats and water bottles.

This week we had the pleasure of viewing a Model T car from 96 years ago. This fit in perfectly with our Social Studies unit on communities in the past. We had previously looked at what life was like 100 years ago, including what it was like to be a student. The children really enjoyed seeing the antique car and were able to recall many details about it, even days later.

In Science, we have been doing our unit on the properties of liquids. We have enjoyed many experiments on the properties of different liquids (water, vinegar, oil, syrup), studied the shapes of drops for these same liquids and looked at surface tension (how many drops will stay on a nickel before the surface tension is broken?)

We tied orange ribbons to the school fence this week as an act of remembrance for the 215 children, whose bodies were discovered at a residential school in B.C. Our discussion of this important issue will be ongoing. Our focus was we tied the ribbons was on a positive message or promise. Several of the students promised to never forget these children.

In math, we have moved on to our study of 2D and 3D shapes. This week, we have created some highly decorated paper models of various 3D shapes so that we could begin the discussion of faces, edges, corners.

 Thursday, March 18

We are nearing the end of our quarantine period. The scheduled date for return to school is Monday, March 22. Keep in mind that during these unpredictable times, plans can change on short notice.

I have been impressed and pleased with the engagement of the class in the online classroom. Our attendance has been good, as has the amount of work being handed in each day.

For our writing, we focused on understanding beginning, middle and end of stories. We spent last week looking at the story 'The Mitten' to understand these story elements. This week, we have moved on to creating a class story,. We began with students submitting their ideas for a setting, then characters, and main events. Today, their task is to create the ending - solve the problem. In what seems out of order, tomorrow, we will create the beginning and the title. As I have explained to the students, you can only write an effective, engaging beginning if you know what is to come. The final step will be to give it a title. When we return to class next week, we will create the book with illustrations.

Students have progressed in their Math in the last 2 weeks as well, working on addition and subtraction.

We have done a unit on colour in Science - learning about primary and secondary colors, as well as the concepts of transparent, translucent and opaque. Students have submitted wonderful photos to share their work. Next week, we will be creating an amazing spring bulletin board based on these concepts.

We are all looking forward to being back at school next week before we head off again for Spring Break. Stay well everyone!

 February 26. 2021

It's been an eventful week! We wore our pink shirts on Wednesday as part of the national Pink Shirt campaign to end bullying. We talked and wrote about kindness. We talked about what we can do to keep each other feeling safe and respected. 

We also had a visit from the Alex dental bus this week. Several of our students were able to get a free exam and fluoride treatment.

We are coming to an end in our Boats and Buoyance Science unit, culminating in a boat building activity. The stludents have been applying their knowledge of density, buoyancy and waterproof materials to design and build coats. Next week, we will test them to see if they float, how much cargo they can carry and if they can be propelled through water. Should be fun!

Beginning, Monday, March 1, students in Ms. Christensen's class will be entering and exiting through a different set of doors. Hopefully, this will help to reduce crowding during pick up and drop off times. We will now be using the  northeast doors. These are the doors right where the portable is attached to the school. Wew encourage families to distance themselves on the compound to make everyone safer.

See you in March!

 Thursday, December 3

What an amazing week of warm weather it has been. To take advantage of that, we have been doing our Phys Ed outside - tag games, playground safety review and today we tried to create an obstacle course of our own on the playground equipment. The children had great fun and good exercise with that.

In our Social Studies, we have moved onto studying the Haida Gwaii first nations group of the Pacific Northwest. Students have enjoyed learning about a rainforest climate, enormous cedar trees (providing clothing, wood for totem poles, canoes and ceremonial masks, lodges). The animals of this area are interesting as well - eagle, raven, bear, orca, etc.

We are continuing work on numeracy, learning different ways of representing numbers. We have started to introduce addition.

We read and write daily. Our writing usually focuses on some aspect of our Social Studies work. 

2 reminders this week:

- no school for students tomorrow

- information regarding our online Scholastic book fair went home this week. A good opportunity to do some online sopping for books. 

 Friday, October 23

It has been an interesting week at school, suddenly having to deal with winter jackets, snow pants, boots, toques, mitts and scarves. The students have done a very good job keeping all of their things together, which is especially important this year as we cannot have a lost and found this year due to Covid. The other part of this challenge is that all of this outdoor clothing now needs to be stored at student desks rather than on hooks in the hallway. Students now have to accommodate backpacks plus their winter gear at their desks. Looking forward to warmer weather next week.

Next week, we will have parent teacher conferences on Thursday evening and Friday. Parents will receive information in the coming week about how that is going to work this year. 

Thursday, students will be allowed to come to school in their Halloween costumes, or if they choose, it can be pajama day for them. There are the usual precautions - no weapons, no violent themes. As we continue to wear medical masks in school, makeup is discouraged.

In our Social Studies, we have moved on from learning about ourselves, our community and our country to focusing on a community in  a different part of Canada. We are learning about Iqaluit, Nunavut. So far, we have learned about northern lights, the landscape and weather of the north, as well as some of the Arctic animals. Next week, we will begin to explore the question of how did Inuit people survive this harsh environment in the past?

In Math, we have moved on from patterns to exploring numeracy. Parents can help their children by practicing the following math skills:

Grade 1

Represent and describe numbers to 20, concretely, pictorially and symbolically.

Say the number sequence 0 to 100 by:

• 1s forward between any two given numbers
• 1s backward from 20 to 0
• 2s forward from 0 to 20
• 5s and 10s forward from 0 to 100.

Grade 2

Represent and describe numbers to 100, concretely, pictorially and symbolically.

Say the number sequence 0 to 100 by:

• 2s, 5s and 10s, forward and backward, using starting points that are multiples of 2, 5 and 10 respectively
• 10s, using starting points from 1 to 9
• 2s, starting from 1.

As usual, daily home reading is highly recommended.

Students have been enrolled in the online Google classroom this week, as well as being set up for reading on Epic Books, an online reading site. 

Tuesday, September 29

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. I have been away for 10 days because of cold/flu type illness. I am pleased to be back. We have had many student absences as well, so our class size each day averages about 11 students. It certainly helps me to get to know students more deeply.

We have delved into our Social Studies work focusing on Myself as a Unique Person and have now moved on to Community. Students have created some wonderful booklets about themselves using a variety of art techniques - tear art, shape art, string art and fabric art to illustrate various aspects of themselves, such as favorite sport, game or holiday. We have done self portraits as well - including detachable masks. We have also written daily on these topics.

In our Math, we have been  working on sorting and patterns.

Tomorrow, we will honor Orange Shirt Day. Students have decorated paper orange shirts. We have also created small pouches using foam paper and ribbon as was done in the read aloud book Shi-Shi-Etko. The pouch will hold little nature treasures  over the course of the year as a way of remembering. Today added the first piece - a community piece. Each students got one scale to add to their pouch. If you have one, please wear an orange shirt tomorrow. If you don't, no worries - we will  make an orange accessory out of paper.

Thursday, we will be learning about Terry Fox and on Friday, we will hold our Terry Fox run as individual classes in order to maintain our distancing measures.

 Friday, September 4, 2020

Welcome back to school everyone! It's been a long time. We were thrilled to see our students again and we're excited to get back to in-school teaching and learning. The first week has flown by. It' an exciting time when we get to know our students and learn about their interests, personalities and strengths. 

We have many new procedures to learn this year - sanitizing, hand washing, mask wearing, one directional hallways, staying within our classroom cohort, just to name a few. I've been very impressed this week with how well prepared the children were with mask wearing and their understanding of why we need to do this. We will continue to reinforce the importance of this as the year goes on. We will continue to follow AHS guidelines to keep all of us safe.

As we haven't been in school for such a long time, we will slowly grow into our learning routines, focusing first and foremost on wellness and rebuilding our classroom community.

Our class is 18 students and we are able to spread out well in a large, bright classroom. We will do as much of our learning outside as possible - as long as the weather holds.

Please do not hesitate to call the school if you have any questions.

We are looking forward to a great year in Room 4 with our Grade 1 and 2 students.