Ms K Shellard and Ms M Flores - Grade 2 Class
Dear Families of Division 14,
Thank you so much from both of us! We are so grateful and inspired by your kindness and generosity during the holiday season.
We hope you all have a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year and that your holiday season was filled with love, warmth, and cheerful celebration! We look forward to seeing you in the New Year.
Thank you again for your thoughtfulness this holiday!
With Gratitude,
Kelly & Maya
As a Math/Science/holiday activity we made Italian Pizzelle cookies with Ms. Ballarin’s class today. Ms Ballarin and I both have pizzelle makers at home, mine was given to me by my mom. While making the dough, we used Math concepts to measure using measuring cups and spoons. In Science, we also explored changes in matter through heating and cooling. It was exciting for the students to make cookies in a new way. Each child ate one cookie to 1 1/2 cookies at school today. We hope they enjoyed making and eating them!
Big Idea: Materials can be changed through physical and chemical processes
First Peoples Principles of Learning: Learning takes patience and time
Curriculum Competencies:
Core Competency: Critical Thinking and Reflective Thinking
Last week the students voted on which art project they wanted to try for a winter theme. In a close vote, the Snowy Owl painted art was the winner. The entire project was completed only with paint. The students first chose their background colour. We then learned how to splatter paint “snow”. Next we followed step by step instructions to paint the snowy owl. Once the owl was dry we added the beak, eyes feathers, legs and the branch. After that we outlined our owl to make it stand out against the background and learned how to paint on the feathers. They turned out beautifully! The students also did a self reflection on how they feel about their final product. Ask your child what they liked best about the snowy owl art.
Big Idea: Inquiry through the arts creates opportunities for risk taking
First Peoples Principles of Learning:
Curricular Competencies:
Content:
Core Competency: Creative Thinking
Learning involved:
Division 14 has been learning about the Golden Rule in class. First, we read the powerful book called The Golden Rule by Ilene Cooper. This book addressed how this important rule about treating others the way we want to be treated spans all parts of the world and all religions. Following reading the story, we then brainstormed the important messages from the book. It will be permanently displayed in our class and we will refer to it often. Ms Flores then worked with the students on quotes from the story and they spoke about what each of the quotes meant to them. Following these activities, you will have worked at home on what the Golden Rule means to your family’s culture.
Big Ideas:
First Peoples Principles of Learning:
Social Awareness and Responsibility involves the awareness, understanding, and appreciation of connections among people, including between people and the natural environment. Social Awareness and Responsibility focuses on interacting with others and the natural world in respectful and caring ways.
People who are socially aware and responsible contribute to the well-being of their social and physical environments. They support the development of welcoming and inclusive communities, where people feel safe and have a sense of belonging.
Profile 3: I can interact with others and the environment respectfully and thoughtfully
I can build and sustain relationships and share my feelings. I contribute to group activities that make my classroom, school, community, or natural world a better place. I can identify different perspectives on an issue, clarify problems, consider alternatives, and evaluate strategies. I can demonstrate respectful and inclusive behaviour with people I know. I can explain why something is fair or unfair.
Learning involved:
Share the story as a family:
Dear Families of Div. 14,
As a class community, Division 14 has engaged in a daily Calendar routine for 59 days. Each child is responsible for being the leader of this learning activity after one month of watching me lead the routine. There are many Math concepts and life skills that are included as part of the daily calendar routine. These activities help students practice every day and build their number sense. They apply the daily number into different formats and math applications. We have also been learning to count by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to lead us to our 100th day of school, which will occur in February. In addition, we have been learning about the number of the day (today it is 59), place value, addition, subtraction and about multiplication. Also, the calendar routine provides opportunities for students to practice important skills such as self-regulation, oral language, presenting to their peers and leadership skills.
Big Idea: Collaborative daily routine as a class community provides structure, enhances academic and social skills and increases a sense of belonging for each member of the community.
First Peoples Principles of Learning:
Learning Involved:
Curricular Competencies:
Content:
Core Competencies: Critical and Reflective Thinking
First Peoples Principles of Learning: Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place).
Learning involved:
For Remembrance Day, students participated in an art project using the Pointillism technique first developed in the late 1800’s by some famous painters. As a class community, we engaged in a discussion about peace and harmony. We then watched a video about the Pointillism technique and saw famous paintings by Georges Seurat and other painters who used this technique. We learned how to do the points using markers in order to creatively decide how to fill our doves with colour. They all turned out so different and were all beautiful. We also brainstormed what peace means as a group and then the students wrote what peace means to each of them.
Big Idea: People connect to the hearts and minds of others in a variety of places and times through the arts.
First Peoples Principles of Learning:
Curricular Competencies:
Core Competency: Creative Thinking – Profile 2
Content:
Learning involved:
Hello Families,
Division 14 has been learning that we are all working towards different learning goals. There are things we all can’t do “yet”! One of the ways we have been addressing this is through literature. This story was about a giraffe named Gerald who believed he could not dance. Others believed the same. But a wise cricket helped Gerald to understand that he could dance once he found the music he loved and just tried his best. Here are our artistic representations of this story. First we learned how to do a directed drawing of our giraffe and made sure to show dancing movement in the arms and legs. We then used paint and learned how to blend white with blue a little at a time to make different shades. This created a moon that looked like it glowed. We also learned how to use the end of a paint brush to make our grass.
Big Idea: Inquiry through the arts creates opportunities for risk taking.
First Peoples Principles of Learning:
Curricular Competencies:
Content:
Core Competency: Creative Thinking
Learning involved:
The self-assessment asked the following:
Yesterday Division 14 took part in the Stagecoach Arts Umbrella workshop. The leader’s focus was on the 3 “C”‘s; communication, collaboration and connection. This was a drama lesson where most of our acting was using our bodies and our faces, rather than our words. All of the students were actively involved and had a great time becoming different humans, animals, objects and foods. Enjoy the pictures of our acting in action!
Core Competencies:
Dear Families of Div. 14,
This is our first blog post for our class. Some of our blog posts will contain the Curricular and Core Competencies that have been covered in the lessons. Other posts will simply be a sharing of photos from a particular event or activity. To see a picture closer up, simply click on the image and it can be made larger. We do our best to take photos of all of the children, but sometimes:
The blog is available for parents as a vehicle to start conversations with your children. It is a way for you to know what is happening at school and the learning that is taking place so that you can then say to your child:
We will often attach a video of a story we shared so that you can “read” it together at home. This should spark more conversation between you and your child. Positive comments can be left by families for our classroom blog. I have signed up all parents for the blog using the emails from MyEd. If someone from your family wants the blog, but I did not sign them up, please have them send me a request to subscribe to the blog. Alternatively, if you do not wish to receive the blog moving forward, please unsubscribe.
On Thursday, September 26th, our class was a big part of the Truth and Reconciliation assembly at Gilmore. We were so happy that many of our families were there to watch! Wearing our orange shirts, many students shared their learnings from the story You Hold Me Up. We also created art in groups of 3 that represented a line from Chief Dan George’s famous poem, My Heart Soars. The teachers created a slideshow using the art from Div. 13 and 14, accompanied by Chief Dan George’s poem being sung by a Toronto choir. Students volunteered to share the land acknowledgement or read the poem for the assembly. All of the students bravely and confidently spoke into the microphone and did a fantastic job! Well done Div. 13 and 14!
My Heart Soars
The beauty of the trees,
the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass, speaks to me,
The summit of the mountains,
the thunder of the sky,
the rhythm of the sea, speaks to me.
The faintness of the stars,
the freshness of the morning,
the dewdrop on the flower, speaks to me.
The strength of the fire,
the taste of the salmon,
the trail of the sun,
and the life that never goes away,
they speak to me.
And my heart soars.
– Chief Dan George
Attached is a video of the story You Hold Me Up. Please share this story as a family and discuss the ways that your child is held up and holds others up.
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