This week in Grade 1 and 2
Happy Weekend, all! I hope it has been a relaxing weekend with your family. 🙂
We continue to grow and stretch in Division 9. This week brought us a few new experiences! Here are some highlights!
Tuesday: We learned about Sea Gardens! For thousands of years many Indigenous folks of the Pacific Northwest have been practising Aquaculture, setting up rock walls that clams love as a habitat. The clams can grow and flourish AND be harvested all throughout the year. Why do clams go under the sand though? Well, we listened to a story called The Chattering Clams, an adaptation by the podcast Circle Round. This story teaches us how the clams came to be under the sand and also a lesson on using kind words rather than spreading unkind rumours!
Wednesday: We had a design challenge on the theme of Coco Chanel. We learned about her life and then designed an outfit for a paper doll using a variety of different fabrics and materials. We had so much fun, most of all because we did this with our new buddy class, Ms. Ginter’s Grade 5 and 6s!
Thursday: Mega Math and THE CASE OF THE POISONOUS PIZZAS. This was a 5 clue puzzle reviewing patterns. The students worked SO hard to identify the suspect who poisoned Pepe’s pizzas! We were helped out by Detective Bert…..ask your kids 😉
We have also started doing throwing and catching in gym, and having so much fun doing it.
Friday: We had just a great, immersive time doing Story Workshop. We focused on Character and Setting and, if possible and ready, the Problem of the story. First we read “The Panda Problem” (hilarious) and then started building and creating. We have a group of storytellers and it is really inspiring to see how dedicated they were to working on their stories. I tried to catch photos and clips of most of the students– usually in Story Workshop a teacher can document a few kids each time- but ALL the students were really invested in their work. Many wanted to work through snack time and to continue later in the day. How exciting.
Those are a few highlights from this week. We are also working on assessments leading up to the Snapshots of Learning being completed. As I mentioned before, the Snapshots of Learning are anecdotal and more general reflections of your child’s learning thus far in the year. There will be a more specific comment directed at Numeracy and Literacy to reflect your child’s progress on the proficiency scale.
LASTLY,
I want to start posting a few conversation starters for when your child comes home from school. So often we say: ‘How was your day?’ And what do we get in return? ‘Good’. I know at home at the dinner table I am experimenting with different questions that elicit different and more in-depth answers from my Kindergardener. Here are a few for trying out!
- Who did you play with today?
- What made you happiest today?
- How would you rate your day on a scale of 1 to 10? (explain the 1 to 10 scale!)
- What was the nicest thing you did for someone today?
- How were you brave today? (This is a great one, as we have recently been talking about courage and bravery)
- If you changed places with Ms. Merkel tomorrow, what would you teach the class? (and please pass on the answers to this one to me 😉 Just kidding!)
- AND, our go-tos at the dinner table: What was the best thing that happened? What was the saddest thing that happened? (the latter is my son’s contribution, and I think a good one to remind us all that we have ups and downs and all are good and normal.)
More next week! Take great care and enjoy the sunshine I see peeking in my window 🙂
Ms. M