Les animaux de notre région

Students have been learning about Canadian regions. We’re now starting to learn more about animals that live in our region, l’Ouest canadien.

Children chose animals that interested them. Such animals included the lynx, white tailed hare, orca, and chipmunk.

They studied photos and tried their best to draw them realistically, paying attention to such details as colour, texture, or proportion.

This term, we will have a simple research project that will have students learn about animals’ habitat and food.

They’ll practice their presentation skills again by sharing this knowledge with classmates during a show and tell session.

L’éclipse solaire

We watched the solar eclipse (une éclipse solaire) today via NASA’s live Youtube feed.

Here are some facts we already knew:

  • A solar eclipse involves the sun.
  • One should never look directly at the sun, but it’s especially dangerous during an eclipse.
  • There are special glasses one can wear to safely see an eclipse.

Here are some facts we learned:

  • We learned that a solar eclipse is when the moon blocks the sun.
  • We learned of the term “diamond ring effect” (un halo), the visual effect seen around the sun as the moon completely covers the sun.
  • We also learned that the next total solar eclipse, in North America, will be in about 20 years.

Here are some ‘wonder questions’ we now have:

  • We wonder when the first ever solar eclipse happened?
  • We wonder if there’s anything happening to the sun’s surface during a solar eclipse?
  • We wonder what’s the difference between a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse?

 

Le concours porte!

Division 10 students worked well as a group in completing this door decoration.

They designed it themselves and completed parts individually. It all came together in only two days!

We’re participating in a school-wide door decorating contest this week – as part of Literacy Week.

La lecture avec un.e ami.e

Division 10 has been practicing to read well with a partner. After the holiday break, we’ve needed to review basic rules such as sitting next each other or choosing one book to read together.

During these sessions, students practice important life skills like turn-taking, listening, making compromises, encouraging others, and even teaching.

Number Routines

Maia demonstrates flexible number sense by considering different ways to get a sum of 14. She can show her math thinking symbolically using drawings and equations. Students are learning that they need to be precise in math, whether in properly printing digits or including symbols. Sometimes, students forget to include the ‘plus’ or ‘equal’ sign, so we’re trying to review our work too!

In Term 2, we continue to develop our number sense with a strong focus on addition up to 100.

What is number sense? You can think of it as “a person’s ability to understand, relate, and connect numbers.”

Our math learning takes form in different ways – worksheets, open-ended morning questions, picture books, games, drills (Chrono Maths), and number routines.

One such number routine is the ‘problem of the day’. This week, students have been reflecting on their addition strategies.

We’ve been using Carole Fullerton’s Good Questions: A Year of Open-Ended Math Problems for Grades 2-4 for daily discussion.

Open-ended questions are low-risk and inclusive to all learners. They invite multiple solutions and rich discussion. The class understands that so long as the answer ‘makes sense’ (ie. is logical), it is up for group consideration.

Students practice both creative and critical thinking skills during this activity, helping make math more dynamic. They also develop their communication skills as they might be asked to share their math thinking in different ways – symbolically, concretely, and/or verbally.

Open-ended questions include more students in the act of problem-solving. The more often we expose students to these key math ideas the more fluent they become; the more we recognize and celebrate different problem-solving approaches, the smarter the collective becomes. (Fullerton)

As the school year progresses, we’ll continue to build on this and other number routines.

Thinking about Thinking

Students practiced some metacognition today. We discussed the various core competencies that we use at school every day: communication, thinking (creative and critical), personal and social responsibility.

From the Ministry of Education website:

The Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need in order to engage in deep, lifelong learning.

Students worked in groups, studying photos taken since September. In making our learning visible, we realized just how much we do at school!

Les maths au gymnase

We started playing a new game in PE this week. Students aim to win the biggest number of points by throwing beanbags into the hoop.

Yellow beanbags are worth 1 point each. Red beanbags are worth 10 points each.

This simple game has students practice a number of skills.

Students practice spatial reasoning in assessing how hard or soft to throw a bean bag for it to land on target.

They practice personal and social responsibility in participating in the game and encouraging their classmates.

Finally, they practice creative and critical thinking in counting beanbags to figure out final scores.

Le matériel de base dix

We’ve started exploring base 10 materials this week. We’re exploring this Big Idea from the Grade 2 curriculum: “Numbers to 100 represent quantities that can be decomposed into 10s and 1s.”

We’re learning this content regarding place value:

understanding of 10s and 1s

understanding the relationship between digit places and their value, to 99 (e.g., the digit 4 in 49 has the value of 40)

decomposing two-digit numbers into 10s and 1s

As seen in the photo above, students had fun exploring even bigger numbers. They noted how the number 10 is important in each unit, ex. 10 ones make one ten, 10 tens make one hundred, etc.

We’ve been learning relevant math vocabulary such as une unité (a one), une dizaine (a ten), une centaine (a hundred), or valeur de position (place value).