In Math, the Grade 2s continue to learn about data collection and analyzing their results. We started Monday off with some very challenging word problems. Can you and your family try and solve this word question below? If you can, please show your thinking on a separate piece of paper and hand it into Mrs. Ralph!

Charlie saw 19 butterflies on the long weekend. On Friday he saw 8 butterflies, he saw 3 more butterflies on Sunday than on Saturday. How many butterflies did Charlie see on Saturday and Sunday? **hint** remember to look at the total of butterflies that Charlie saw altogether, draw out your thinking in a graph. Good luck!

While the Grade 2s have been up to their elbows swimming in data word problems, the Grade 3s have begun a new unit in their textbooks, FRACTIONS! I love to connect fractions with food. When we share, we can make equal parts. When we split an orange, it can be divided into 2 equal parts, making a half or 1/2. When we cut a pie or a pizza to share between friends, we can cut it into 6 equal slices. If you can, please show your thinking on separate pieces of paper and hand it into Mrs. Ralph to solve the questions below.

Can you cut out a circle and cut it into two equal parts? Now, can you cut out a rectangle and cut that into 3 equal parts? Finally, can you cut out a square and cut that into 4 equal parts? If you can, please bring it in to show Mrs. Ralph! Good luck!

In preparation for Earth Day, which is on Thursday, April 21, 2021 we began to make ‘stained glass globes.’ Today was just our first day preparing them and they already look beautiful. How do you think we made them? It involves a coffee filter, markers and spray bottle! Stay tuned to see the finished product. As a family, can you discuss the importance of taking care of our environment? What are ways that YOU can reduce the size of your carbon footprint? How can YOU make even a small difference in protecting Mother Earth?

In writing we are beginning to explore a new genre of writing, Instructional Writing. What is the purpose of instructional writing? How are instructions used in our every day life? Some ideas that come to my mind include recipes, instructions to build lego or a robot, IKEA furniture assembly instructions etc. Can you think of other ideas that require instructions?

As a challenge, can you please give Mrs.Ralph explicit and clear instructions on how to grow a plant. Here are some instructional key words that you are encouraged to use in your writing: First, Secondly, Next, Then, Finally. By incorporating these transitional words will signal to your reader that they must move onto their next step. Remember to include in the steps the materials or equipment that you will need. 

Although this week was a shorter week, it was still a full, productive week of joy and learning.

In Social Emotional Learning (SEL) we are exploring a variety of emotions. This calming exercise allowed us to identify various emotions we were feeling and to communicate those feelings through colouring. I enjoyed observing the different colours that the students chose to identify their feelings. For example, some felt that brown represented goofy where as others thought goofy was better represented by yellow or pink. The beauty of this activity, is that it is self expressive, there is no right or wrong answer. However, a telling response was that many students were feeling tired and or calm on Monday afternoon after returning from Spring Break.

In Science, we continue to explore the wonders of butterflies! This week we took an in-depth look at labelling the body parts of a butterfly. Ask your scientist if they remember what the purpose of a proboscis is, hint is that it acts like a straw; can they recall what the three body segments are on the butterfly? Next, we worked on distinguishing the differences between a moth and a butterfly? Have your curious scientist explain to you the differences in how to accurately identify a moth from a butterfly and visa versa.

In our Landforms Unit in Social Studies we continue to examine Landforms, but are now taking an in-depth look and analyzing how the land can be changed by environmental factors. On Thursday and Friday we discussed at length how the Earth experiences both rapid and slow changes. We continue to discuss and explore the various environmental factors that can influence a rapid change on Earth’s land, some examples include a volcano, tsunami, wildfire, earthquake and landslide. Can you think of more examples that causes a quick and rapid change to the land? We have just begun to look at the definitions of Weathering and Erosion and trying to distinguish the differences between these two words. Currently we are describing the process of weathering as making a mess. A mess is created from the weathering process because large rocks are broken down into smaller pieces. Erosion follows Weathering, as Erosion cleans up Weathering’s mess. Erosion will take away the broken down pieces of smaller rocks. Stay tuned as we continue to explore these new terms and definitions.

In P.E. we continue to practice our ability to demonstrate safe, fair play, leadership and good sportsmanship in a variety of individual and group games and activities. On Friday we played a variety of physical distant games that incorporated a variety of fundamental movement skills. These games also relied upon our listening skills and stressed the importance of playing cooperatively. Movement Master was a big hit in Division 7 today and I believe it will make a regular occurrence in our rotation of games. Since Movement Master relied upon so many gross motor movements, the students were easily able to monitor their physical exertion levels.

Finally to end our week we splashed a bit of colour on our walls with our chalk pastel tulips to represent that Spring is here as well as exploring the use of shape and line to create our unique and creative Funky Bunnies to line our hallway.

Spring is upon us! The sun is shining, the sky is blue and on March 20th we can officially welcome Spring!

This was yet another busy week in Division 7.

We are immersed in our study of Butterflies. We learned all about the anatomy of the caterpillar. Ask your young scientist if they remember the difference between the true legs, thoracic legs and prolegs (**hint, some legs are used for holding food, some legs will remain for when the larva becomes a butterfly and some legs are used for climbing). Your scientist is encouraged to tell you all about the following wonders: have you ever wondered how a caterpillar can climb in a vertical position? What is an adaptation that the caterpillar has that allows them to move in such a way? How can a caterpillar protect itself? Are some caterpillars cute and fuzzy just for appearance or is there another reason for why they have bristles? As scientists, we learned new vocabulary pertaining to the caterpillar, one interesting word is spiracles! Spiracles are the external openings that allow for gas exchange (respiration), it is the organ that allows the caterpillar to breathe. One interesting fact that we were astonished with is the number of eyes that a caterpillar has, not just two like we thought, but they in fact have 12 eyes! YES, 12!! However, most are so tiny in size that you can not even see them.

This week we really enjoyed exploring the various landforms that make up our world. We began by making a landforms flapbook that consisted of various layers of landforms. Next, I was set on the students creating a dinosaur landform. My intention was to draw a dinosaur that incorporated the various landforms that we have discovered thus far, this consisted of a river, lake, bay, peninsula, mountain, valley, hill, plain, island and ocean. However, my ‘plan’ was quickly thrown to the wayside as the students expressed that hope to instill their own creativity into the assignment and rather than create a dinosaur, similar to my example, they wanted to create their own unique animal. I was all for this plan, however, the only requirement was that they must include all the landforms, and boy were the students up for the challenge. They were the teacher and I was the student in this lesson as I was blown away with their creativity and originality with this activity. I now am enjoying landform dragons, robots, humans, godzillas, a stegosaurus and so much more!

We continue to learn and practice our Social Thinking skills. As a class we have discussed the importance of being on the group plan compared to being on our own plan. When we are working on the outlined group plan, we are working together and striving to accomplish the same goal, which ultimately makes things smoother and easier for everyone. When one or two people stray to be on their own plan while others are on the group plan it can make things more difficult to accomplish as we are no longer working together. Along with practicing being on the group plan, we continue to demonstrate our ability to show whole body listening. Listening with not only our eyes, but our ears, mouths, hands and feet. When we are actively looking at the speaker we are thinking of the speaker. Our bodies remain cool and calm, and in control, to demonstrate respect to our listener and to show that we are engaged.

Something that many of the students look forward to is Friday! Hip hip hooray for the weekend but also for MATH GAMES! Today we rotated through various math games that again focused on foundational addition and subtraction skills. We continue to practice our ability to recall all the combinations of numbers that add up to ten, known as a fact family, as well as using our knowledge of doubles (i.e., 8+8 = 16) and doubles +1 (i.e., 8+8+1 = 17). Today was another great round of math games, the beautiful combination of learning through fun and games.

Although we are immersed in our Geometry units we still want to maintain our foundational math skills. On Fridays we have math games where we will continue to utilize our addition and subtraction math facts! Today was our first day with our math games and it was a major success!

Hello families of Division 7, 

My name is Mrs. Ralph and I just returned from maternity leave. This week we wasted no time to immediately dive into some new routines as well as new learning concepts and big ideas. Please follow along on our class website for weekly updates and to catch a glimpse of our learning journey. Thank you for joining us!

Math – Geometry

Gr 2s are exploring the multiple attributes of 2D shapes and 3D objects. Gr 3s have just been introduced to the use of their very own textbooks. They too are exploring a unit on Geometry. Their focus is currently on polygons. Can you name the polygon that has 5 sides? How many sides does an octagon have?

Science – Butterflies

Our big idea is that living things have life cycles adapted to their environment. As inquisitive learners, we wonder, how are life cycles similar and different? Just this week we looked at the term metamorphosis and how it applies to butterflies – it is the structural transformation that a larva undergoes to become a butterfly. 

We connected Science + Art together as we made a crayon resistant watercolour butterfly painting. Stay tuned as these butterflies will soon be decorating our hallways and adding a pop of colour!

Socials – Landforms 

We are beginning to review our understanding of the various landforms that shape our world. We will take an in-depth focus on how environmental factors such as wind, ice, water as well as human impact and how they affect the shape of our land. How many land and water formations can you name? Ask your child if they remember what a plateau is? How can islands be formed? 

Language Arts 

Writing – visualizing – we are working on incorporating rich, descriptive language in our compositions to allow our reader to visualize our words. Currently this week we began working on a written piece that focuses on a type of weather and we are connecting the weather to our senses. What does this weather look like? What does this weather do? What does this weather sound like and how does this weather feel?

Reading – as good readers we are working on our ability to connect to a story by making connections text to self, text to text and text to world. We are also practicing our ability to infer, to use clues to develop meaning from the text. I read the book Seven Blind Mind by Ed Young and did not show the students the illustrations. They practiced inferring by relying on clues from the text to determine what this strange and unknown ‘thing’ was. 

Core Competencies – we are focusing our attention right now on the Core Competency of Communication “ I can share my ideas and questions” and “I can listen to others.” As a listener it is important to remain respectful and demonstrate whole body listening to our speaker, this includes listening with our eyes, ears, mouth, arms and legs.