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.