Hello to all,
It has been such a fun year, so many new learning experiences! I wanted to say thank you to all of my Silver Springs families for their wonderful send off, gifts and well wishes. I have enjoyed my 13 years at Silver Springs and have had so many enriching experiences teaching and learning with your children. I will miss all of you and thanks for the memories! With warm regards, Mrs. St. Cyr P.S. One of my gifts, (a lovely bottle of Pinot) did not have a card so I don't know who to thank. If it was you, thank you kindly. The month of May is half over, can you believe it! It has been so nice to be able to get outside and have some fun fresh air. UPCOMING DATES: MAY 17: Celebration of Learning 6-8pm-students will be performing their hip hop dance this evening MAY 18: Professional Development Day-No school for students MAY 21: Victoria Day-no school for staff and students and staff MAY 31: Zoo Field trip 9-2:45 Thank you for all of the parents who volunteered. As always, this would not be possible without you. MATH We have been using Cuisenaire Rods to develop a variety of mathematical ideas. When exploring, students quickly learn to assign a value to the longest rod and then assign values to the other rods. One of the basic uses of Cuisenaire Rods is to provide a model for the numbers 1 through 10. If the white rod is assigned the value of 1, the red rod has the value of 2 because the red rod has the same length as a two white rods. The rods from light green through orange are assigned values from 3 through 10, respectively. We have been using the rods to practise part-part-whole (breaking a number into its parts), addition and subtraction. Students are learning how adding and subtracting are related. There will be an opportunity for parents to explore Cuisenaire Rods during our Celebration of Learning. WRITING We are learning the elements of a story through fairy tales and how to make revisions to enhance the quality. Students have been verbally practising their fairy tales with their made puppets and backgrounds to spark imagination. Students are making some clever revisions on their written fairy tales. READING With the beautiful weather we are having, it can be difficult to keep up with home reading. Please keep in mind that students benefit from reading each evening, even if only for 15 minutes. Students continue to make gains in their reading and it is exciting to see their progress. This week inline skating starts and I know the students are very excited. We skate Monday and Tuesday from 1:55-2:50pm and on Wednesday from 8:35-9:25am.
The week of February 12 we skate on Wednesday from 1:55-2:50pm. January has gone by so quickly! We are settling back into the routine of school after having a much enjoyed Christmas break. Just a reminder that report cards are going home Wednesday January 31. Also, please send in the in-line skating permission forms. Thank you to those who volunteered to help put equipment on. This month we were lucky to have Scientists in School join us where students experimented with liquids and how their interactions with other substances. We learned about states of matter, the difference between mixtures and solutions and how we can all be scientists if we have a curious, questioning mind. We even made big, big bubbles, and froze a "tube of science" with ice and salt. There was a lot of excitement taking place that day! Thank you to all the parents who came out and offered their assistance. These activities would not be possible without you and your support. During our building unit, students collaborated and used their problem solving skills to plan and construct a marble run. Interesting conversations took place, when trying to problem solve why the marble was bouncing out, travelling too fast or why it was getting stuck. The students were quite engaged and took pride in the practical nature of the project. Currently we are working hard to learn our basic addition and subtraction facts to 20 for grade one's and to 100 for grade two's. Any practice you can do at home will provide your child with a strong foundation for adding and subtracting larger numbers. This week students are working on their creating snowmen and then writing about them. Students are experimenting with using descriptive words and are practicing writing in complete sentences.
We did a guided drawing/painting lesson of a larger snowman and the kids did such a good job of putting their own creative touches on them. Some are featured in the office for your viewing pleasure. Elf houses are looking fantastic! There are so many creative ideas and I am impressed with how the students used found items to create such unique structures. Everyone is excited to build our elf communities (sneaky way of incorporating social studies) in the library. The library will be transformed into an elf "kingdom" by the end of Tuesday. Students are asked to bring their elf houses home for the end of Wednesday as we need to prepare library space for the Family Festive night on Thursday. Upcoming Dates: Elf houses home Wednesday December 13 Family Festive Night Thursday December 14 from 6-7:30pm Santa's Workshop Wednesday December 20 at lunch time 12 noon dismissal on Thursday December 21-Students can wear their jammies! In Math students have been working with counting collections. Counting collections are items found in the classroom or home that students count. Counting gives students an opportunity to practise oral counting, counting strategies, and how to group objects in strategic and efficient ways. Students also record numbers and represent their thinking. Counting is a very good way to help children develop number sense. What can you do at home? Count items such as cheerios with your child and ask them what comes next? How can you keep track of what you are counting? Are there more efficient ways to count? Can you group by 2's, 5's, 10's? What tools can you use to help you keep track? Below are students practising their counting and grouping skills. As a wrap up, students shared their struggles of keeping track and next day, students used tools to help them be efficient counters. I hope these examples give you a few ideas of how to help your child count items around the house. Happy counting! Breaking News!! On Friday, a new friend joined our class. She is a grey wolf and the students named her Wynter. Yes that is Wynter with a 'y" . Some of you might remember Milton the Moose from last year. He provided us with many opportunities to read and write. Wynter will also give students an authentic reason to practise their reading and writing skills. Students are excited to learn about the wolf and have written research questions. Some examples are: How do wolves stay warm? What are wolves scared of besides humans? How do wolves survive? How many wolves are in a pack? What is the oldest wolf in captivity? How far do they live from Calgary? We will be spending time learning where to locate information and how to record it. Ask your child what their research question is and perhaps you can look for some information together. Meet our new classroom friend, Wynter. A big thank you to all of the parents who joined us on the fieldtrip to Telus Spark. Students learned about mixing mixtures and how various liquids reacted with one another and had an opportunity to be a junior architect where they used their problem solving skills to build a 3-D structure out of plastic pipe and connectors. Students were engaged and had a great time. Ask your child to tell you about some of the experiences they had.
Week of November 20-24 It has been a busy week getting ready for interviews. I enjoyed meeting with you and appreciate all of your support. In math students are working on number recognition using subitizing and understanding numbers using the 100's chart. Please read the following if you would like to help reinforce concepts at home. WHAT IS SUBITIZING? Subitizing is not a term that we use often, but it is an important mathematical concept that helps to build a strong foundation for number recognition. Subitizing is the ability to “instantly see” how many or when students can spontaneously recognized and discriminate small numbers of objects. Students who can successfully subitize are able to “just know” a group of numbers and recognize the pattern. We move students on from one by one counting to subitizing. examples: The value of a hundreds chart. It functions much like a number line, but in a more condensed space that highlights place value and patterns. While the number line helps with the concept of sequencing, and base-10 blocks reinforce place value, the hundred chart combines these skills on a grander scale. Students see number lines, organized in groups of 10. They also observe patterns of tens and ones both horizontally and vertically. Those who internalize these patterns gain a distinct advantage in learning more advanced skills. What you can do at home: Use a hundreds chart and help your child look for patterns vertically and horizontally. Notice how each vertical column increases by 10 each time. Pick a number on the chart. Ask your child to name the number that is 1 less, 1 more, 10 more, and 10 less. On Thursday we will be going to the Telus Spark Centre. This is very exciting for all of us! Please pack a litter less lunch (as best as you can) and a water bottle. We will be boarding the bus at 9 and returning approximately at 2:45.
Thanks to the families who brought in their community projects. Please send in if you have not yet done so.
Students continue to make and read numbers and this week they are learning how to record using tallies. Incorporating any counting activities is beneficial such as counting number of meatballs on plate, number of meatballs on everyone's plate, number of cars driving by tec. Counting on is a great strategy to familiarize students with number and helps make counting in the teens and beyond a bit easier. The strategy 'counting on' is a good one to practice at home. Counting on: If you know you have 10 and you have 5 more, then student counts on from 10. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Knowing the friends of 10: 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5, etc. will increase efficiency when doing math as well. In writing, students are putting the finishing touches on their books that they are so excited to publish and share. They will be out for your viewing pleasure during Parent/Teacher conferences. We are also hard at work creating a writing and art piece that connects colours to emotions, based on Todd Parr artwork and Dr. Seus's My Many Coloured Days. Happy winter everyone, seems that we are in the depths of winter straight away this year! This week in math we are learning to represent numbers in different ways and how to build numbers using Base Ten materials. Grade ones need to recognize, write and build numbers to 20 in addition to knowing addition facts to 20 and grade 2's need to know the same up to 100. Practising addition facts with your child is a great reinforcement activity. We continue to build our literacy skills during focused reading sessions with the teacher, reading to self and reading with a buddy. The students enjoy sharing what they have read with one another and I enjoy listening to them discuss what was read. There are a variety of topics ranging from the greatest inventions to how Scooby Doo solved the mystery of the missing tooth! With Remembrance Day approaching, we are reading about peace, and what it means. Students will reflect on what peace means to them and will write a sentence about it. Our Remembrance Day Program will be on Friday November 10th at 10:45am. All are welcome. Social Studies: Students are learning who the important members are in their community and how they help us. Students have done a fine job representing their houses and who is in their family. Other upcoming dates: November 16th Parent Teacher interviews @ 4:30 to 7:30 and November 17th from 8:30 to 1:30. Please sign up online. |
Photo used under Creative Commons from marshallross