Category: We are mathematicians.

Cities in the Snow

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out our cities in the snow display in our hallway by the cloakroom area. Students used their creative minds to draw their buildings. We just love how each one of them are quite different as they made it their very own! 

Students recently made beautiful rainbows. They are hanging in our classroom and really brighten up the room! Feel free to come take a peek!

Mathematicians at Work

Both grades have been working hard while having fun as mathematicians. To find out more about what your child is learning about, please go to our We are Learners > Mathematicians page. Here is where you can find what your child is expected to know and some suggestions on how you can support learning at home. A deck of cards is really all you need to reinforce learning at home. A digital option that students have enjoyed is Math Tappers; it can be downloaded onto an iPad for free. Children can choose different sums to 20 and up to 100 to practice their addition fluency and accuracy. We are aiming for 100% accuracy and to improve on their timed score each time.

Scientists 

We have been learning a lot about water, the water cycle, sources, and conservation. To find out more about what your child learned in Term 2, please go to our We are Learners > Scientists page. Students have been really engaged in sharing their knowledge by recording their own re-creation of the water cycle using an app called Puppet Pals HD Director’s Pass. You can download Puppet Pals for free (limited characters and scenes). Students will be showing you their projects during our Family Read time tomorrow. Please join us to celebrate their hard work! Projects will be uploaded to our blog soon for everyone to enjoy.

Symbaloo

The other day, we introduced Symbaloo to the students. This is a visual bookmarking site where we have posted some fun websites to visit. To access, look to the right-hand sidebar under Links and click on Symbaloo. Some students really enjoyed Free Rice. There are online flashcards to practice sight words or Math fluency strategies. 

Primary Days of Music

Students sang beautifully today. Thank you to Mr. Douglas for teaching them such wonderful songs about diversity and taking care of our earth. 

Report Card Envelopes

A reminder to sign the report card envelope and return it to school as soon as possible. If it is not returned before spring break, may we suggest that you place the envelope inside your child’s planner; that way, the two will stay together. Thank you.

After Spring Break

We look forward to seeing your child back on April 1st refreshed and ready for an exciting week of Hip Hop dancing! Please dress appropriately each day for movement in the gym. There will be a whole school performance on Friday, April 5 in the afternoon.

If we don’t see you at the end of the day on Friday, we hope you all have a wonderful spring break! Keep up with your enjoyment of reading during the break!

Gung Hei Fat Choi! Happy Lunar New Year! We started the day learning about some of the common traditions that are followed during the Lunar New Year like cleaning the house, eating certain lucky foods, leisees (lucky money), lion dances with loud music and ones that even dance on tall poles! Please ask your child about that!

Our story about Sam and the Lucky Money [click on link to listen to the story] taught us about using the strategy of making predictions. As students listened, they were stopped at four different points in the story to make their predictions. This strategy helps us to think ahead, to revise and verify predictions, and make connections to prior knowledge and the text. Feel free to encourage your child to make predictions when reading at home. We also learned about looking for an author’s message. Often, the author has a message or a “big idea” they are trying to tell the reader. After reading a story at home, encourage your child to tell you what the author’s message is. Here, one strong message was to be grateful for what we have.

During Math, we learned how to count and write from one to ten in Cantonese. Students have been practicing their numbers before and after, ten more, and ten less but writing numbers in Chinese was a tricky challenge for some because of the extra “ten” they had to write to represent how many tens there are. This was a great way to reinforce what they have been learning about. They had so much fun and thoroughly enjoyed this!

Math – How you can support at home: Give your child a random number up to 99 (for grade 2’s). You can use a deck of cards and use 1-9 as digits; draw two random cards as the number to use. Ask the following:

• What is the number before and the number after?
• What is the number that is ten less and ten more?
• What is the number that is two more and two less?
• For extra challenge, what is five more and five less?

Core Competency connection:

• I can be open to learning about cultures.
• I can try my best at learning new things and show determination.

We have been learning all about patterns – both repeating and growing patterns. Students are expected to be able to name the core pattern of a repeating pattern (grade 1 & 2’s) and to describe the pattern rule for a growing pattern (grade 2’s). Click here to learn more about what we are learning about.

Ways to support at home:

• Notice and talk about patterns around the home and in nature.

• Build repeating patterns with items at home. Ask ” What is the core pattern?”

• Build growing patterns at home. Ask “What is the pattern rule?
  • HINT: Growing patterns have the same sentence frames: “Start with ______. Add [number] [item] each time.

• Check out the patterns we made at school. Use the samples to review. Then cover up the “answers” and practice finding the core pattern for repeating patterns. Similarly, use the samples to practice naming the pattern rule for increasing patterns. To pause the auto-play, hover your mouse over the image.

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What patterns can you create at home?