Coffee Filter turkeys, Switch Days and Doubles Facts

Switch Days
This Tuesday we had our first switch day. Have you ever wondered why or what that means? While primary classes usually have fairly seamless daily transitions (language to math for example), some classes are on rotary (e.g., music). So, if students have music on a Monday or a Friday, they would in essence miss some classes due to holiday weekends. Having a switch day ensures an equal number of certain classes for students as well it equalizes curriculum minutes per subject. I know my class would mutiny if they missed art! 

Doubles Facts
I got a few notes this week about last weeks homework. We are working on developing strategies for adding numbers to 10 (and later to 20) quickly. In Grade Two, students need to develop these strategies to ensure quicker calculations and to move away from using manipulative materials (e.g. counting fingers or using cubes etc.). This is only gained through constant modeling (teacher or parent), gaining familiarity (using dice or cards to provide visuals) and repetition. Please don't panic if your child came home and wasn't able to fully articulate a strategy. They are still gaining familiarity and have not yet transferred information in class to their own independent work. The easiest strategies to start with are:
Doubles Facts 
If the question is 7 + 6 =
Then the doubles facts are: 7+7=   or 6+6 =
So, if a student knows 6+6= 12 from playing dice games, then they can easily figure out that 7+6 will be one more so 13.
Counting On
If a question is 10+3= then students hold the bigger number in their head (10) and then use their fingers to count on, 11, 12, 13. 
So, play those card, dice, bingo or snakes and ladders games! It will help your child gain number sense while having a little fun. Hopefully you find this helpful as you assist with your learner at home.

Some turkey talk:
I will leave you with a few pictures of our wonderful coffee filter turkeys completed for your windows at home. Hope you find them as groovy and festive as I do!

Holding our turkeys up to the window to see the light shine through the coffee filter. Using markers and water, we really had a good time mixing colours. 
                     Have a restful and Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Safety Village, Music and a new Student teacher

Our first class trip of the year was to Halton's Safety Village in Oakville. We listened to the Police Officer talk about traffic safety, when to call 911 for an emergency and what all the different traffic signs mean. Then it was time to go out into the mini-village and practise what we learned. Here is the village, complete with working traffic lights and mini-stores. Oh yes, the highlight was visiting the jail. I have some good pictures of that for the yearbook.

Here are our vehicles waiting for us.

 And we're off! Some of us were natural drivers while a few others need to remember which side of the road to drive on :) 

                     What a perfect day for a class trip outside! 


Music
Students get their music lessons from the fabulous 'Mrs Kirk'. This week students practised an amazing song and performed it for me in perfect synchronicity. They were so proud and so was I. 

                         (in case you are new to my blog, I never put the children's faces on this blog)

Student teacher
This year my class and I will host a student teacher from Brock University. This will be for her first term with observation time this month and one lesson taught by her in November. Eventually in December she will have a teaching block. Of course, I will always be in the room and teaching in some capacity. As well, there will be lots of opportunity for both of us to work in small groups with the children. You may hear about 'Miss Rioux' in the next little while and now you know who she is. 

Terry Fox Run, New Blog feature and Math stories

New Blog Feature
Thank you to everyone who attended our recent Open House. It was great to talk to each of you. I loved how excited the children were to introduce you, be the host/hostess by getting you cider and proudly show their work to you.  Chatting with each of you helped me to gather information about how I can better communicate classroom information. For example, after talking to a parent about how they followed the FM twitter feed, it occurred to me that I could provide that for you on this blog as well. This enables you to not have to navigate back and forth between our school website and this one. Also, it will give you those little daily details that I may not always include with this blog. If you look to the right under the list of dated blog posts you will see the twitter feed. Thanks to Mr. Cann (our wonderful librarian) who helped me figure out something called a 'widget ' and how to embed it onto this blog. As well, I also added google translate should you or a family member prefer to read this blog in another language. I use google translate quite often for my own 'art blog reading' as many of the best weavers are from Sweden. And let's face it, my Swedish is not so great. However, I find that google translates quite well with occasional semantic or meaning errors but you can still get the main points and ideas. 

Terry Fox Run
Tomorrow is the big day. We do a warm up and then the whole school gets out and runs a clearly laid out course around the school. I put in your child's agenda the sticker that says "I'm running for...." and attempted to explain what is appropriate to write on this sticker but you may have to do a little more explaining. I did read the 'Terry Fox' story and the students were very serious and respectful listeners. One student even said, "isn't it sad that we will always remember Terry as young because he can never get old". No truer words.

Math Stories
We are beginning to start our addition and subtraction unit using math stories by way of introduction. Students are learning how to use strategies to assist with quicker computation and number familiarity. 
Example: (Counters, pictures or objects are provided for students to create the following math stories...)
Addition story 
5 +6 = 11 (think 5+5 is 10 and one more is 11)
Subtraction story
11-6 =5   or 11-5=6
For more information, please look back at this previous link I wrote that explains some different strategies we will introduce this year.

Open House Art
Did anyone get my subliminal pun with the children's art? "We hope you leave with a good impression".  So, the children made 'leaf impressions'. 

Raz-kids, Dreambox , Owls and patterns

Raz-kids
Inside your child's agenda is the new teacher log-in passwords for this year. I would encourage you to join the parent portion as you can monitor your child's progress as they go along. I have enabled the 'Bookroom' and the 'Raz-rocket'. I will go over levels this weekend and update those when I get a chance. 
Here is the link: http://www.raz-kids.com/main/Login
If you see students on there who are from my previous class, this simply means their teacher has not updated their class roster yet. 
                                     Happy Reading!

Dreambox
Our school is so lucky to have the opportunity to purchase the computer program 'Dreambox'. I will update soon with more details. However, this is a math program with some of the interactive and engaging features that Raz-kids has for students. I'm really looking forward to starting this soon during computer lab time. It is also going to be another way to do math homework so I'm interested in learning the features and teaching them to my students. 

Owls in the Family
Our chapter book is 'Owls in the Family' by Farley Mowat. We are really enjoying it. Lots of laughing and asking great questions. 

Patterns/ Math
During our morning work, we are reviewing math concepts. In our regular math time we are learning new concepts. It is always interesting to see what students retain from the previous year. Since I have taught many of the students last year, I know what I taught. So they can't say 'I never learned that last year'. Doing the quick review each morning really affirms where I need to go with a lesson and what skills need consolidated before we move on. Here is a patterning chart that we co-created during our review lesson. Many students remembered some aspects of patterning but it was absolutely necessary to review.

Looking forward to seeing many of you at our Open House next week. 

Writing 'Small Moment' stories

We have begun to write personal narratives this week. We are looking forward to sharing the finished products with you at our Open House on September 24th. A focus lesson involved discussing how to break down an idea into a smaller portion and write about it. So, instead of being told to write about your whole entire summer which is a BIG idea (the Lucy Calkin's program calls this a 'Watermelon' idea), students use a graphic organizer to break it down into many 'small moments'.

As you can see from the above picture, this student used her 'seed ideas' to create a multitude of starting points for her next story writing. Each of these seeds is a potential story waiting to happen. Students in my class always like 'Writer's workshop' time. What do I do while students are working? I conference with each student to help them critique their writing and make it better. I also facilitate conversations between peers. Having students hear each others stories helps them improve their own writing. Here is an example of the checklist I use with them when we are having our meeting. Basically if you make learning and your expectations explicit, students aren't left guessing what they have to do to improve their work. 

Sometimes a conference might be simply to help a student spell a word or ensure the story makes sense. Here is how I help students with difficult words. I have them try it first. (You can often learn so much by how a student is forming words. This can help you create your next mini-lesson. For example...you can tell I need to do some teaching around vowel sounds and word endings but this student has some excellent strategies) 

Homework...and so it begins:

Each week, I will be adding one item of homework to our routine. Rather than give them all at once, I like to introduce the weekly homework one at a time. This week there will be social studies homework (Friday) and next week we begin word wall spelling words (Monday). Please check into the Homework section of this blog as I will update routinely. Generally, homework should only be about 10 minutes times the grade. So Grade Two should have about 20 minutes a night. Of course, some of this time could be reading with you before bedtime, or working on computer reading/ math programs. 

Read Alouds

We have been having fun reading some chapter stories already! Can you believe it, the second week of school and we have done 2 out of these 3 books! Not to mention some of our good, old favourites like 'A Bad Case of Stripes' by David Shannon and Muncha, Muncha, Muncha by Candace Fleming. Friday is our first library day. Mr Cann our librarian always says my class knows their authors! We regularly clear out his Roald Dahl section! Although I think Mike Wade with his 'And then it happened...' books is starting to become a close second with some of my students. 

                                     Have a great week!

A sneak peak of our classroom!

School started very smoothly this Tuesday. I am looking forward to a fabulous year teaching a straight Grade Two! We are off to a wonderful start with learning new routines and expectations. I sent a 'Welcome' note home in your child's agenda today and hope that you will visit this blog to find out 'what's new'! 

Building community
Whenever a new class gathers, it is important for the teacher to build a sense of community. A way to do that is simply to take the time to 'find out' about each other. Our school uses the language of 'Tribes' (a book that provides the foundation for most community building activities) that most Halton District schools use as a basis for teaching learning skills, cooperation and team building. This year we made 'cootie catchers' that I found at 'Scholars choice' (the teacher store) but I also think they could be made quite easily. I'm not sure what the technical term for 'cootie catchers' is and I only remember vaguely running away from anyone who touched me and told me I had cooties as a child so I think pictures are necessary.

 Students answered such questions as "My goals for this year are..." or "A subject I am really good at is..." and then played it with various friends in the room. It worked really well once I modeled how to use it and how to play.

Classroom set up
Desks are set up in groups of 4 in an L formation. This way all students can be facing the direction of the round table so I can assist students as they are working and am quite close to all the action. 

The carpet area with the Smartboard is where I do my focus lessons, read alouds and calendar activities. All our supplies are located there for easy access.

.
Our classroom library with books organized by author or subject. Favourite books are on the mini-round table in organized bins for easy access.

Our talking word wall, with our 'Word Wall Words' low enough for easy access using the Smartpen. 
My desk area, with a guided reading table (see the blue, half moon shaped desk). This can be used for mini-lessons. Under the table are small whiteboards and guided reading book sets ready for small groups. 

This is the end of our tour for now. Please visit weekly for updates (I'm usually pretty good at updates...although occasionally life gets in the way). Our first trip will be early October to Safety Village (yes, we get to drive around in those little jeeps!).

Welcome to a new school year!

Welcome
The first few weeks of a new school year is a busy, happy time. I have been in the school numerous times already setting up the classroom. I tried to make it look really different for a particular reason...
As some of you may know or have figured out, I am in a unique situation this year. Since I taught a split grade last year, I have been given the opportunity to take my existing 'Grade One' students on to 'Grade Two'. As well, I am looking forward to meeting some new students which will round out the numbers within the classroom nicely. I have done this before in my previous schools and the notion of 'linking' or 'looping' students on to a second year is not a new concept.There is significant research to support the success of this option and I am pleased to be able to have the opportunity. If you are interested in reading about the positive aspects, here is a good, reputable article to start http://www.edutopia.org/looping-multiage-classroom-grouping-palisades

Classroom set-up and September start-up:
I will post some pictures next week of our new classroom and some of our procedures and learning. Please check in to this blog weekly and I will have updates to help you feel connected to what is happening (as it happens!). You may have noticed that the on-line back pack did not have a materials list this year. If you would like to provide your child with some extra materials for their use only or help out the classroom by sending some items in, then this is entirely up to you. The school does provide for a consumable budget and basic items will always be provided. 

Summer
I hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable summer. Each summer I always take on one new project. Here is a picture of the pond that was built in my backyard. I am very lucky to have talented family members to help out. The sound of water trickling and frogs croaking is very relaxing. Here is a picture of my happy place :) 

One of my Uncles is a potter and made the amazing pottery fish so that they spout water.

If you build it, they will come. I have now counted well over 5 or 6 frogs! Can you see him?

Hope all of you are enjoying this long weekend and I will see you all on Tuesday.