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.