We had a spooktacular week. In Math we made patterns with Halloween symbols. We also learned about "T" charts and how they help to organize information so that we can figure out the math problem. We will have a patterning test on Friday, Nov. 7th.
Language this week was great. We kicked off the week Guided Reading Groups. One group read "Vampire Dentist" and the other group read "Landon's Pumpkins". We got to read with Mrs. Aubrey, Mrs. MacDonald, Miss Michele or Mrs. Milosek and talk about the books. We have been focusing on visualizing, and how good writers use adjectives to help their readers paint a picture to deepen their understanding of the story. Everyone drew a Halloween scene and then wrote a descriptive paragraph to go with it. Afterwards we read our paragraphs to each other and listened to feedback from Mrs. Aubrey and our classmates using 2 stars and a wish. A star is something you liked about the paragraph and a wish is something you think the writer could do to "bump it up". Most of us finished our Halloween Safety Tips in Bitstrips. We hung the bitstrips up in the hallway so that the Grade 2 kids could read them. Our Halloween theme continued with our physical education classes. We had Halloween obstacle race that was great! We also played statue tag and that was lots of fun too. In Art we made black cats or a diorama scene. We wrapped up our soil unit with a test. Most people found it a little bit easy and a little bit hard. Our next Science unit will be structures. The whole school worked on a team building activity that challenged our perseverance, resilience and grit. We had to lift up a meter stick with just one finger. After the activity we talked about what problems we had and how we solved them. In Religion we talked about "The Golden Rule" and how it is a lot like bucket filling. Next week we will be talking about our favourite saints. November 1st is All Saints Day. On Friday we had LOTS of snacks! Thanks to everyone who sent in treats, they were yummy. One of our favourite parts was when all 5 kindergarten classes paraded through our class in their Halloween costumes. They were so cute! Jolly Roger also stopped by to say hello. Check out the photos. Another busy week, another great week. See you next week. We had another great week. Today was pyjama day for United Way. Most of us wore P.J.s today and brought in stuffies. We raised a lot of money. Mrs. Aubrey put photos of the money on our website so you can count it at home with your parents. We can check the total together on Monday. Our stuffies came to gym with us today and we got to play parachute games with them. They helped us learn some science and engineering too. Mrs. Aubrey asked us to think of a way that would could get our stuffies off of the parachute. When we flapped the parachute while we were kneeling the waves were small; when we flapped the parachute while we were standing the waves were BIG. We figured out that the muscular energy from our legs was added to the parachute while we were standing. No matter how hard we flapped only the sphere shaped ones came off. Then we decided to try making the parachute into a giant ramp. Half of the kids held the parachute up high and gently waved it while half of the kids held the parachute still and low to the ground. Guess what? It worked! All of the stuffies came off of the parachute.
Gym was so awesome this week! Parachute stuffies was on Friday, but we also got to do a Halloween obstacle course at our other gym times. Our class helped Mrs. Aubrey set up a really fun and spooky obstacle course outside on Monday. It was so much fun we decided to play it again inside on Thursday. When we got back to class we talked about ways we could "bump up" the game and we are going some of the ideas next week. In our Global Read Aloud we read the book "ish" by Peter H. Reynolds. The book had a great message; you don't have to be perfect and you should not worry about what other people say about your work. The students in Virginia thought that the book had the same message. They said, "Just be the best you that you can be." We had a little trouble getting connected to the class in Virginia, but when we did it was fun! We told them that we had brought in loonies and toonies for the United Way and they asked us what a loonie is and what a toonie is. The students in Virginia did not know about Canadians having $1 and $2 coins, so we told them all about it. We also thanked them for telling us about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some of our students told the class in Virginia that finding out about MLK led us to discover some other incredible people like: Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi and Malala. Our two classes compared and contrasted our Thanksgiving traditions and our history of Thanksgiving. Did you know that Canada had the first Thanksgiving, even before the United States? We did a little research together and found out that the first Thanksgiving in Canada was in 1578 when explorer Martin Frobisher gave thanks for surviving his journey. The American students and teacher were very surprised to hear that. On Thursday we had the netbooks for the first time this year. Mrs. Aubrey set up our class on Bitstrips for Schools and we each got to make our own avatar. Our first assignment was to make a comic about a Halloween Safety Tip to share with the Grade 2 classes. Mr. Rogers is going to print our completed bitstrips in colour so that we can hang them up in the hallway for the Grade 2 kids to see. This was also our first week to do Guided Reading Groups. We divided into four different groups to read and discuss four different stories. The four different books we read were: To The Pumpkin Patch, Monster's Halloween, Carlos First Halloween and The Monster Pumpkin. In Math we have been working on repeating patterns and we even got to do some spooky Halloween patterns. Everyone had a chance to use the Smartboard to make a repeating pattern, extend a repeating pattern or show the core of a repeating pattern. We finished Lesson 2 in Spelling. Our focus was on words that had the short e or short i sound in them. Some of the activities were a little tricky, but we worked them all out. In Religion we talked about God's laws and Government laws. It was interesting to hear how many of the laws from the 10 commandments are also government laws. Our class found out more about composting in science this week. We did a sorting game with organic and inorganic items to decide which ones should go in the green bin. We also looked at different kinds of erosion (water, wind, ice) and how it is effecting our planet. Miss Michele told us that her Grandmother's neighbourhood in Quebec had been changed by erosion because the moving water in the river had washed away the land where the across the street neighbours once lived. Everyone took a look at their bricks on Monday. There is a photo in another blog. We found out that a mix of clay and any other soil made the best bricks. Listening is still a focus in our class. We played an addition listening game with numbers up to 24. Mrs. Aubrey timed us and it took 21/2 minutes to complete the game. We are going to try and beat our time next week. We prayed for the two soldiers that died this week and we sang O Canada loud and clear. Next week is Halloween and we are planning on having a spooktakular week! Read a Raz-Kids book and tell us about it in the comments below.
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