We are enjoying learning about poems and we had a lot of fun pulling (so many) library books off the shelves to create spine poems! We are so thankful to everyone who works so hard and volunteers in our library to re-shelve books so we can do really neat things like this! If you ever want to volunteer to help in our library please don’t hesitate to contact the school! We started off by reading the spine poem Mrs. N created to inspire us. She had us visualize the time of day this poem may take place, how it could be like a dream, and how it told a very short story.

Today is Monday.
I dreamt,
The most magnificent thing.
The shape of my heart,
It looked like spilt milk.
Day is done.
Tuesday.
Again.
Spine poem by: Mrs. Normand

After we had a good understanding of what a spine poem is Mrs. N. gave us the choice of working in a group or alone to create our poems. Here are the spine poems we created. Try to visualize the poems in your head as you read them! We are learning to do that as we listen to stories and poems.

Day is done,
Today is Monday.
Little lost bat.
Tuesday,
I dreamt,
The cat came back,
It looked like spilt milk.

Wake up world,
One world together,
The earth made new.
King of the skies,
Listen to the wind.

Water,
Cats,
The cat came back.

Little lost bat,
On the move,
Today is Monday.

A visit to the circus,
Nothing like a puffin.
Star stuff,
The right word,
Mr. Ferris and his wheel.

David smells,
Smelly socks,
Again!
Oh no! Not again!
David gets in trouble.

Oh no!
My crocodile does not bite.
How big is it?
Dealing with bullying.

How to be a cat,
I am cat.
Cat, you better come home.
Why?
Mattoo, Let’s play.
The lighthouse cat.

Bear under the stairs,
Don’t wake the bear!
Mr. Bear and the bear.

One special day,
The cat next door,
The Klondike cat,
My house.

The runaway hug,
Hug me,
When I feel sad.
Hug Machine,
Happy!

The students were very excited to hear that Mrs. Normand’s cousin, Mrs. D.N.A., would be coming to the school in the afternoon to do another science experiment to teach about Matter. Today Mrs. D.N.A. and the students raced 4 different liquids. In the race was water, syrup, molasses, and ketchup.  Mrs. D.N.A. reviewed what the students had already learned about matter.

Solids – Have their own shape (If you put them in a container the shape stays the same). They don’t change their shape on their own, but you can break (or squish in some cases, like play-dough) a solid.

Liquids – Take the shape of the container they are in.

Today students learned that liquids also flow. Mrs. D.N.A. took a few pictures and had one of our lovely students take a video (so Mrs. Normand could watch what the class did while she was away). Unfortunately the video was too large to put on the blog post. If I can figure out how to load it over the weekend I will add it. If not feel free to come in one day before or after school to watch it. It is really very exciting to see! There was a lot of cheering as each liquid finished the race.

If you are interested in finding out the results ask your child and I’m sure they would be very happy to tell you but below is a recap of the race in case they cannot remember all the details.

*Spoiler alert – Race results below*

Water was the fastest and finished the race in less than a second taking 1st place. For awhile it looked like Ketchup was going to come in 2nd, but then it lost stamina and Syrup pulled into the lead taking silver. Ketchup managed to continue flowing and finished in 3rd. And finally after much cheering, Molasses finished the race in 4th place. It was very exciting to watch how the some liquids flowed fast and some were much, much, much slower.

Unfortunately in her efforts to allow enough time for the students to write about the race Mrs. D.N.A. forgot to take pictures of the mess she created at the end of the race. Thankfully there are so many wonderful helpers willing to help her clean up at the end of the experiments.

Please continue to practice counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s with your child. For counting by 2’s focus on counting forwards starting on any even number between 0-100. If your child has this mastered have them start on an odd number for more of a challenge. When your child counts by 5’s have them start at any number with a 5 or a 0 in the ones place and focus on counting forward. When you practice counting by 10’s with your child feel free to start anywhere between 0-100 and have them count forwards (and backwards if you feel they are up for the challenge). Your efforts make a big difference in our classroom learning time!

If you noticed I highlighted the ordinal numbers, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th above. Ordinal numbers are another part of our Math unit that we will be learning about. Have fun with your child lining up toys, having races, and putting objects in order. Have them practice writing ordinal numbers up to 10 and reading the words for ordinal numbers as well. There are many great games you could make around this concept.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs. N.

 5^th – 8^th – Book Fair (Please see the school website or class newsletter for times)

6^th & 8^th – P/S/T Conferences & School Clothing available for purchase

 8^th – Picture Orders are due

9th – Class Celebration (Thanksgiving) in the afternoon

12^th – No school – Thanksgiving

26^th – Picture Retakes

30^th– Halloween @ Warman Elementary (Please see the classroom or school newsletter for guidelines)

Today we were very happy to be able to tour the Fire Hall. We had two amazing tour guides, Mr. Austin and Mr. Taylor. They taught us a lot about the trucks and equipment used to fight fires and rescue people.

We were very excited to see their new Engine! We were even the first group to tour through it. There were so many levers and buttons inside. On the outside there were so many doors and compartments that all of the equipment fit into. They even keep hoses in the bumper!

We really liked the Aerial truck with the ladder that can go so high you can see Saskatoon and Osler at the same time! We thought it would be really neat to be up that high.

We saw the clothes that all of the Fire Fighters wear to fight fires and the clothes that they wear to go to other emergencies. They have to be able to get changed into their emergency clothing very quickly.

One other neat thing about our tour was were also the last class to see their very old (Mr. Austin even said the truck was older than our parents) truck! On the old truck the fire fighters had to ride on the outside and hang on really tight on the way to a fire.

The Fire Hall is having an open house/BBQ on Wednesday October 8th from 6-8. Everyone is welcome to attend!

Mrs. N.

Well here it is, our upgraded blog. We are very excited to be able to keep posting blogs and keep you up to date with what is going on in our classroom. Enjoy the pictures from September.

In September we made flowers using white glue to draw, chalk pastels to colour, and black paper as the background. It has added a nice pop of colour to our classroom as the leaves outside begin to disappear! We are very thankful (and so are our parents) that Mrs. N. waited until after our pictures were taken to do this art with us because it was quite messy (but it was also so much fun)!

Last Friday a real circus performer came to our school. Her name was Sapphire.  She did many neat tricks like juggling, contact juggling, putting her arm all the way around her head, and everyone’s favourite, glow in the dark hoola-hooping! She amazed us with her skills but she also taught us a very important lesson: It is ok to be who you are and no one should make fun of you for that. She talked about how when she was younger many people were not kind to her and how she wished someone would have stepped in and told the unkind kids to stop being so mean. Sapphire challenged us to always stand up for our friends, classmates, and others we may see who are getting picked on or bullied. What a great message!

Thanks for being patient as we upgraded the blog. Check back again soon for pictures from our tour of the fire hall!

Mrs. N

It was really nice to see many of you at today’s pancake breakfast!

Our picture day is Tuesday September 22nd. If your child will be away on Tuesday please let us know and they can have their picture taken on Monday instead.

Please sign up for Parent/Student/Teacher interviews by going online to www.schoolinterviews.ca If you cannot access the site please let us know what dates and times work for you and we can sign you up. Interviews take place October 6th & 8th from 3:45-7:15

Family Fun Night is coming up on Thursday September 24th.  Tickets will be pre-sold at school on Sept 22nd & 23rd. Tickets will also be available for purchase at Family Fun Night. We are still looking for BINGO prize donations. Thank you to everyone who has, already donated bingo prizes, volunteered to work at fun night (both in our classroom or in the concession). This school community event cannot run without parent volunteers! We always appreciate your help!

There is No School for students on Friday September 25th.

Our Terry Fox Walk will be held September 30th (rain or shine). As as school we will be collecting money for the Terry Fox Foundation. We will be collecting money between Sept 24rd-Sept 29th.

We wrote in our Friday journals again today. We had a lot of fun brainstorming a list of all the things we learned and did this week. Please take a few minutes to read your child’s Friday Journal and write back to them. They really enjoy the notes you have written in their books!

We had our first spelling test this week. Spelling tests will be marked and sent home the following week for you to see and sign. How the spelling test is marked will be outlined when your child’s book comes home for the first time. Please sign and return the test book promptly each week so that your child will have their book for the next test.

Have a wonderful weekend! We can’t wait to see all the students smiling faces again on Monday morning!

Mrs. N & Mrs. M

This Friday is Meet the Teacher Pancake Breakfast. Please come to the school for pancakes anytime between 7:30am and 8:50am. After you have had your pancakes please stop by the classroom to say hello! As we are such a big school we would appreciate it if you brought your own plate and cutlery.

Our Picture Day will be Tuesday September 22nd. If your child will be away that day for any reason please let us know as the photographers will also be in the building on the Monday.

We have really been enjoying learning about patterns. On Monday we worked in stations building patterns out of a variety of elements (the actual objects used in the pattern). We built patterns while thinking about the different attributes that could change. We built patterns where the colour changed, the thickness of an element changed, the shape changed, the position of the element changed, and even the size changed. As you look at the patterns on this page ask your child to tell you what the core of each pattern is and what attribute or attributes are changing in the pattern.

We really enjoyed all the stations, but overall the favourite was using the SMARTBoard to extend the patterns!

Enjoy the pictures! Hope to see you at the pancake breakfast!

Mrs. N.

It is always amazing how after the first day of school the classroom begins to feel like “home” again. We have finally met the smiling faces that go with the name tags that have been on desks and lockers for the last few weeks. We are both so excited for this year and all of the potential each student brings to the classroom. We recognize that every student has different likes and dislikes, has their own unique learning style, and has their own story to tell. September is all about learning who each student is so that we can meet all of their leaning needs. Thank you for assisting us on discovering who your child is by filling out the purple sheet that was sent home on the first day of school. We look forward to working together with each of you as we work to teach your children.

As a class we have spend a lot of time this past week understanding how our classroom is a “community.” We have spent time discussing what a safe community looks like because that is what we want in our classroom community. We have decided that our classroom is a place where we will always try our best,  it is OK to be yourself, we are encouraged to ask questions, and it’s even OK to make mistakes.

We are a “bucket filling” classroom and we are excited about the 2015-2016 school year.

Mrs. N & Mrs. M

We are busy getting our classroom set up. We are filling the shelves with books, getting names onto desks, getting newsletters and planners ready, and so much more. We are looking forward to meeting many smiling faces on the first day of school!

More information will be posted on this blog in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned! This year is going to be great!

Mrs. N & Mrs. M

Earth Day is coming up!  The W.E.S. students and staff will be showing how much they love for their planet by participating in a few activities throughout the week of April 20th—24th.  Below  outlines the activities your child will be participating in with their class at school.

Tuesday April 21 – “Turn if Off Tuesday”- we would like to challenge each classroom to turn off at least one set of lights in your classroom to conserve energy.

Wednesday, April 22– “Earth Day” – students are encouraged to bring a garbage free lunch on this day. This means students can bring reusable food and drink containers, not disposable ones. We make a lot of waste as a school and even one day with a garbage free lunch will reduce waste by a lot!

Friday, April 24 – School Wide Garbage pick-up.  Each class will participate in picking up garbage in their grade alike areas to make our school community a greener place.

*In order to participate your child will require gloves. Please send a plastic bag (a grocery bag) and gloves with your child.

Please note – Our Math test has been moved to Friday March 6th.

We love having the student nurses in the school! They have done so many wonderful things in our classroom and in our school. On Monday the nurses and some very wonderful Grade 11 helpers from WHS helped us to plant seeds for our community garden. We learned that seeds can be big or small and they come in so many different shapes. We planted the seeds in soil on Monday and now they are in our classroom under a bright light that is like the sun.  As a classroom community we need to work together to make sure that the seeds are being taken care of.  We will each take turns watering the seeds with a spray bottle to make sure they don’t dry out. We can’t wait to see the seeds start growing into plants! We are making predictions about when the seeds will push through the soil. We think that when we get back after the weekend we will see some plants. We like to talk about which plants will grow the fastest. Some of us think the tomatoes will be the first plants to grow, others think the cucumbers will grow the fastest. We will be keeping track of our plants on a timeline so we can see how they grow and change.  Thank you nurses and Grade 11’s for helping us learn!

On Monday afternoon we had the perfect winter weather for snowshoeing.  Most of the students (and their teacher) had never been snowshoeing before, so it was lots of fun to try something new.  We enjoyed walking through the trees behind the school, climbing hills and playing in the snow. Everyone gave their best effort and got lots of fresh air and exercise!

Mrs. M.

On Monday afternoon our class was excited to start our community garden project, hosted by the        U of S nursing students. The students listened to the story, Stone Soup, and then had the opportunity to make their own soup. From the story the students learned about the importance of being part of a community and sharing with others. Almost everyone decided to give the soup a try and some students enjoyed it so much, they went back for a second helping! The students also had fun playing a team building game.  Each group had to try to get a hula-hoop around their circle as quickly as possible without using their hands. As the students came up with new strategies, they had fun trying to beat their fastest times, while helping each other and building trust and teamwork. We are excited to be a part of this project and are looking forward to planting some tomatoes, sweet peppers and cucumbers next week!

Mrs. M.

Today was a day filled with lots of exercise and physical activity! This morning we were excited to be invited to spend some time in the gym with our Kindergarten care partners. Everyone had lots of fun and set a good example for their younger buddies.

In the afternoon we walked over to the Legends Center to spend the afternoon skating and playing in the gym with three other grade 2 classes. It was great to see everyone participating and enjoying the time with their classmates. The time went by all too quickly and on our way back to school, many students were already asking,  “When can we go back again?”

Mrs. M.

Today was the 100th day of school and we did lots of fun activities to celebrate. We made special 100 day glasses to wear, read the book 100th Day Worries, and figured out the best ways to count 100 cube-a-links, Popsicle sticks and blocks. During math time we played Hundreds Chart and Addition Bingo and for art we created gumball machines with 100 gumballs in each one. We also brought home a 100 day bookmark describing things we would and wouldn’t like to have 100 of. Most of us agreed that we would like to eat 100 candies, but no one wanted 100 brothers or sisters or 100 diapers!

Today we met another one of Mrs. N’s relatives, her Auntie, Dr. Editor! She sure does remind us of Mrs. N. and her cousin, Mrs. DNA. They all have so much in common!

Dr. Editor came to our class today to help us learn how to take two words and put them together into one word that means the same thing. We had to wear special masks while we did surgery.  We used “stitches” (glue), “gloves” (mini mitts), “scalpels” (scissors), and “band-aids” (….they were really band-aids) to perform surgery on words to make them into contractions.  Dr. Editor had us listen very closely (she said that in order to be good doctors we had to follow directions) as she explained the rules of how to perform surgery on our “patients” (words).

Dr. Editor told us that there are many other word combinations to make contractions and that maybe she would visit another day to help us learn about them, but for today we performed surgery on contractions using the word “not.” She didn’t talk about the word “won’t” or any other contractions that don’t follow the normal rules (We know that there are so many rule breakers in the English language, we love to find them in our reading!) perhaps next time Dr. Editor visits she will help us to understand the word “won’t”!

were + not = weren’t        have + not = haven’t        should + not = shouldn’t         could + not = couldn’t

has + not = hasn’t        had + not = hadn’t        is + not = isn’t        would + not = wouldn’t

We all were good medical students today and we made great beginning doctors. Hopefully with more practice we will be able to use more contractions in our stories and writing!

* Some of our “patients” didn’t get photographed today due to medical complications and the need for follow up surgeries.

Check in again soon, Tuesday is the 100th day of school and Mrs. M has some really great learning activities planned!

Mrs. N.

There is no school for students on Friday January 30^th. Since there is no school on Friday our spelling test is on Thursday this week.

The grade 2’s are excited that they have an opportunity to be part of Dance Club this year. Some students took home permission forms yesterday. No prior experience is necessary, but students need to be committed to attend lunch hour practices in order to be part of the club.

In Math we are continuing to learn about addition and subtraction to 18. Please work at home practicing Math facts with your child. Dollar stores often carry flash cards; this is a simple and fun way to build up your child’s mental Math skills. At school we practice using a variety of different strategies to solve addition and subtraction equations. We use number lines, counters, 10 frames, fact families, and sometimes we even draw pictures to help us understand what a question is asking.

We have been working on missing piece addition. Knowing fact families really helps us to do these types of questions. A missing piece addition question might look something like this ___ +7=13. We know that these numbers can be moved around as they are part of a fact family. This means we can rewrite the question and use subtraction to help us find the missing number. Our new question becomes 13-7=___. Then from there we are able to do subtraction to figure out the missing piece. We may also see questions that look like this 4+___=8. Again we can turn it into a subtraction question 8-4=___ and then we can figure out the missing piece. Here is a link to a website that we enjoy using during computer time. Without a membership you are able to do a limited number of Math questions every day, but if you are looking for a little extra practice at home this is a great place to start! http://ca.ixl.com/math/grade-2/complete-the-addition-sentence-one-digit

We are having so much fun inferring in our reading! Today we worked in groups reading four different stories on iPads. We had to really use our inferring skills today because some of the stories were kind of strange. One of the stories was about cows, another was about some parents acting really strange, another one of the stories was about seeing things like boulders moving and snow that was really newspaper, and the last story was about people waiting for a train that was delayed. As we read each of the stories we began to notice similarities between them. We suspected that Mrs. Normand was playing some kind of trick on us because she asked us to read all four of them! We were right; the trick was that all four stories were related to each other.

If you get a chance to ask us about it we would love to tell you more. If you want to read the stories (and story…as we learned all of them make up one story) for yourself the book is called Black and White and it was written by David Macaulay. We really enjoyed reading it and know you will too!

Mrs. N

On Thursday we got to see ALL of the “evidence” that was in the envelopes. Each group presented the evidence that they had and it was exciting to see what other people had in the envelopes! As we saw the objects we hung them on a timeline on the board to try and piece together Tim & Grandma’s day.

Many times as an object was presented someone from another group had an “Ah Ha!” moment because they now understood how their evidence fit into the big picture! For example one group had a thimble in their envelope as evidence. From this we could infer that someone was sewing. As more evidence was shown to the group our thinking changed! Another group had dice in their envelope and another group had monopoly money in theirs. Suddenly our clues all fit together because some of us knew that a thimble was a game piece in monopoly. Our thinking changed from the idea of someone sewing to someone (we still don’t know who) playing monopoly! From this activity we learned that when we infer sometimes our thinking can change as new information is presented.

Some of our evidence gave an exact time (they went sledding at 2:00), some of it gave us an idea of when an activity took place (they baked cookies sometime in the morning), and some of it we will have to do our best to infer. For example we know that someone played monopoly, someone crocheted, and someone painted, but we don’t know who did these things or the exact time they did them.

Here are a few pictures of our activity.

We are looking forward to writing short stories or journal entries about Tim and Grandma’s day based on what we learned. It will be interesting to see how each of us uses the clues to infer about Tim and Grandma’s day.

Mrs. N

Today we learned about what a snow day is. A snow day is when school is cancelled because there is too much snow. We thought that would be really neat to have a snow day, but since we live in Saskatchewan it likely will not ever happen! Even though a snow day with school cancelled may not ever happen didn’t stop us from coming up with a list of things we like to do when it snows.

Here are some of the things we like to do when it snows:

After we thought about all the things we like to do when it snows Mrs. N read us a short story. The story was about a boy, named Tim, who stayed home with his Grandma because it snowed, school was cancelled, and his mom had to go to work. When his mom got home from work Tim and his Grandma were not there. His mom found “evidence” or clues around the house to give her hints about what Tim and his Grandma did during the day.

We worked in small groups looking at envelopes of “evidence” about Tim and Grandma’s day. We made inferences about their day based on what was in the envelopes. For example in one of the envelopes there was a recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. Based on that evidence we could infer that Grandma and Tim made cookies during the day. Each of our envelopes of “evidence” only gave us a small glimpse of Grandma and Tim’s day so we don’t know the whole picture yet.   We are looking forward to Thursday when we find out what was in the other envelopes so we can use all the evidence to put together a timeline of what we think their day looked like.

The neat thing with inferring is that sometimes we may infer something based on the evidence and once we find out more information it may change our thinking!  Check back in after Thursday to see what we were able to infer based on all the evidence!

Mrs. N.

Today we  read a story called Author A True Story by Helen Lester. It is a story about becoming a writer. In the story Helen describes some of her early years and how she felt about writing.

“Often I couldn’t come up with a single idea and my stories got stuck in the middle, and I couldn’t think of a title, and I had trouble making the changes my teacher wanted me to make, and I lost my pencils, and I wondered why I was doing this, and I got very, very, VERY frustrated.”

We were so inspired by the story that we started the process to become (self) “published” authors. Today we started with a structured story map. The story map is tool we used to fill in some blanks about the “who,” “what,” and “where” of our story. Once we had filled in our story maps we took our ideas and wrote a paragraph. Some of us were so excited about story writing that we wanted to work on them during our indoor recess. Some of us even wanted to take them home to keep writing! We have defiantly caught a writing bug in 2MN!

We know that sometimes we may not have a single idea, or we might get stuck in the middle. We might not have titles for our writing, and sometimes we many not want to make the changes our teachers ask us to make. We may lose our pencils and occasionally we may be frustrated, but we are still very excited about getting our ideas onto paper.

We look forward to sharing our published stories with our classmates, care partners, and family members in the coming months!

Today we talked about resolutions and how a New Year can be a fresh start. We thought about the things we are good at in school. These are the areas where we “glow.” We also set some goals in the areas where we need to improve or  “grow.” A personal goal of mine for 2015 is to use this blog as a way to communicate with all of you. This is my area where I need to “grow.” I have much learning to do, especially when it comes to uploading pictures and media files.

Some of you may be wondering about The World According to Humphrey.  This is the information we received today.

Due to shipping delays, the One School, One Book Family Book Club reading calendar will have to be pushed back. We anticipate at least one more week. We will be sending an updated reading schedule home with the books as soon as they arrive. Sorry for the delay and thank you for your patience!

Mrs. N.

Welcome!

We are glad you are here! Hopefully you will find this space to be informative. A place where you can find out about what’s going on in the classroom (please see the school webpage for general school information). This will also be a place to peek into our classroom and see what we are learning about!

Student’s names will never appear on this blog; however student work may occasionally be posted. Each student in the class will be given a number to identify their work. You will be given your child’s number so that when you see work appear on this blog with that number you know that it is your child’s learning.

We will try to keep this blog updated on a regular basis, but as always if there is a need to contact either of us please call the school, write a note in the planner, send an e-mail or stop by the classroom to talk. We are looking forward to 2015! Let’s get started.

Mrs. M & Mrs. N