November 14-18

 

Upcoming Dates: 

•  November 21-27: Book Fair 
• Check out the Book Fair blog post for more information! 
• Virtual Book Fair Link:  https://virtualbookfairs.scholastic.ca/pages/5184682
•  November 24-25: Parent Conferences 
• 24: evening conferences 
• 25: daytime conferences (no school for students) 
• Please sign up for at time slot (15 min) if you have not already done so! 
  
  

Language Arts 

This week we began Writer's Workshop. Writer's Workshop is a process that supports students in completing writing tasks with a structured weekly routine: mentor text & brainstorm, draft, edit/revise, feedback, publish. 

The book "The Best Part of Me" was our mentor text for this week. It is a beautiful book written by a group of Grade 3 students, focusing on their favourite parts about themselves. Room 12 students worked together to brainstorm their best parts and challenged themselves to use sensory language & synonyms to make their writing more interesting to read. 

We are super looking forward to sharing this writing task with you at Parent Conferences! 

Math: Graphing

In Grade 1, students will be creating and interpreting Picture Graphs and Bar Graphs while in Grade 2, students will be creating and interpreting Picture Graphs, Bar Graphs and Dot Graphs. We began our learning of graphing by conducting whole class surveys around our emotions each day. This week we built on that skill by creating our own survey questions and recording our own data using tally marks. 

Some questions we asked each other include: 

• What is your favourite breakfast food? 
• What is your favourite type of dog? 
• What is your favourite video game? 
• What celebrations does your family do? 

Ask your child about their survey question and which option received the most votes! 

Word Work Groups

In Ms. Midgley's Word Work Group students have been learning about digraphs. Digraphs are two letters that go together to make one sound. This week we learned about the SH sound and sorted pictures based on whether they started with s, h or sh. Students who were ready for the challenge also used the corresponding words. We learned about the Animated Literacy character Sheriff Shadrack and his Shaggy Sheep - ask your child about the sound and action for 'sh.'

In Ms. Greenhall's Word Work Group students have been learning about consonants. This week we reviewed the letters B, S, M and R using the Animated Literacy actions. We then cut and sorted pictures that start with these letters. Ask your child about the actions for B, S, M, and R. In Ms. Lacour's Word Work Group students have been learning about vowels. This week we reviewed short "A" and looked at the "AT" word family. We then sorted pictures to match the corresponding words. Ask your child about words in the "AT" family.

In Ms. Romanko's Word Work Group students have been learning about blends, inflected endings and novel study. Blends or are groups of consonants whose sounds blend togetherEach letter within the blend is pronounced individually, but quickly, so they ‘blend’ together. This week we worked on the blend 'ST' and sorted pictured based on whether they started with s, t, or st. Students attempted to write out labels for their pictures if they had time. Our inflected endings group worked with the plural endings 's' or 'es'. They looked for patterns in words to know when to add an 's' or an 'es'. The base words ending is sh, ch, s, or x needed an 'es'. If there was already the letter 'e' on the end of a word, it only needed an 's'. It was tricky but in the end all of the students understood the difference! We have a few students working on reading comprehension. These students were given a short passage to read and answer questions following their reading. They all did amazing and will move on to a short novel study next week.

In Ms. Gierl & Ms. Green's Word Work Group, students are learning about Common Long Vowels. We began our learning this week focusing on the different sounds like A makes. We explored short A sounds such as "cat, cap, trap" and long A sounds such as "tray, pail, rain, hay." We began sorting using picture cards into short A and long A columns and some students extended their learning by brainstorming additional words that would fit into each category. Our next steps will challenge us to move forward with short and long A sounds in word form.

Classroom Painting 

As most of you know, Lake Bonavista School is being painted! This is very exciting for our school community and it's been really neat to meet the painters and observe their process. We were lucky because our classroom was the first one to be painted! While it was being painted, we got to spend our days in the portable. We worked SO hard to transition from inside the building to outside the building in the mornings, for phys. ed and for music class. I am very proud of how well they persevered in this disruption to our routine - Room 12 is amazing!