December!!

Wow, have we ever been busy!

We have finished our Christmas concert🎄🎶, had a fun (and snowy🌨❄️) field trip to Heritage Village Museum), and today created our gingerbread houses!  In between we actually did other school work, as well😏

Here are some photos from today:


Tomorrow we will have our Pancake Breakfast thanks to the PAC!  Between Recess and Lunch we will be doing our school-wide bingo.  In the afternoon we will be enjoying a Christmas movie🎬

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas 🎄and a healthy, happy New Year🎉

P.S.  I hope you all enjoy your clay Christmas presents 🎁

 

 

 

Invertebrate Research Project

Our grade two students led small groups in studying about a particular invertebrate.  This was a project planned and organized by our student teacher, Ms. Darcy Teal.

Their end result was a poster which had an answer sheet (about some key points) and a life cycle of their chosen animal.

This afternoon the groups presented their findings.  The grade two in each group read the information they found out about: how their animal moves; how it catches its food; where it lives; how it protects itself; and other interesting facts they found. The grade one(s) described the animal’s life cycle.  All students in each group answered questions from their classmates about their animal.

I was very impressed with how well all students presented their work.  I have included pictures of their posters here, which are displayed on the bulletin boards outside our classroom.  The grade twos have taken photos of their individual posters and will post them next week on their ePortfolios.  They will also help the grade ones post them on their ePortfolios, as well.  We cannot do them this week as the ePortfolio site is down for maintenance.

This was a great learning experience for all students.  The grade twos are developing their leadership skills and the grade ones are learning how to work well with others, and how teamwork can be successful.

 Here are the finished posters:

Our Class Charter

We have been having several class discussions, over the past two months, on feelings and how we want to feel while we are at school.  We did a huge brainstorm and came up with a long list of feelings that are important to us.  We then whittled that list down to four categories, leaving in the original feelings.

The next step was to discuss what we all need to do, and how we all need to behave, so that we can all feel these ways.

These are the students’ words.  I was very impressed with what they came up with.  They are very insightful!

Our next step will be to look at what we do (what happens) when someone doesn’t follow our Charter.

This Charter process is part of the RULER program out of Yale University.  All of Rosser (each class) is working through this process.  We are all at different stages.

As a part of RULER we are also looking at feelings and learning how to plot ourselves on the Mood Meter, a chart in the classroom.  Initially we have been charting the main characters from the Harry Potter series as we read each day.  We will be working towards charting ourselves in the next few weeks.  I will post more about the Mood Meter in a day or so.

This vocabulary may help you with your child as you discuss how their day was at school.

Poppies … lest we forget …

Students created beautiful poppies.

We began with a directed drawing lesson where the students drew a large poppy on white paper.  They then traced these with black China markers (a type of grease pencil).  The centre circle was solidly coloured in with green waxed crayons.  Students then painted the petals red. This all happened on Friday. Today, when the paint was dry, students traced over their outlines, cut the poppies out, and glued them onto green construction paper.

The complementary colours (red and green) really pop when put together!

These are on the bulletin board at the back of our classroom.  They look amazing!

Invertebrates Under the Sea …

Look at the awesome mural that the students have made for our look at invertebrates which reside under the ocean waters!

Our grade twos did the painting and all students created an invertebrate creature.  They first drew their creature, then they outlined them with Sharpie markers, and finally, they coloured them with oil pastels.

This mural is on a bulletin board in our classroom.  Check it out if you are in the school.

Student Teacher

Hello all,

Our student teacher, Ms. Darcy Teal, has re-joined our class.  She will be with us until Friday, December 1st.  As a part of her short practicum she will begin to take over some of the teaching duties (attendance, working with small groups) and work towards teaching specific lessons and eventually a few full days.

We look forward to her time with us in the classroom.

Thank you for your support in her learning journey with your children.

ePortfolios

Students had their first experience with their personal ePortfolio sites.  Their initial posts were very simple in appearance but were, in actuality, a real learning experience for them.

We had explored the ePortfolio site on Wednesday afternoon during our Computer Lab time but we ran out of time before we could publish the first post.

As the grade two students were more experienced on the computers (from our lessons last year), on Thursday morning they became ‘experts’ on the logging in process for the ePortfolio sites.  Then, throughout the day on our two class computers, they took turns teaching the grade ones how to log in (both onto the class blog and then onto their own site) and how to create a simple post using a header (Hello!) and adding in a simple sentence in the text box (My name is ____.).

This simple post gave students an opportunity to learn to use some of the keyboard functions such as: shift (for the capital letters and the exclamation point), space bar (between the words), the period, and the letters for the words.  These are their first steps in becoming more comfortable with, and more capable of using, the computer as a tool to share their learning experiences.

I hope that the MailPoet app worked and that you got notification of their post.   When you log in to see your child’s post please remember to change the generic password to your own personal one.

Thank you for your continuing support of your child’s learning.

 

Apples Galore …

Thank you to all parents who sent in an apple for our apple explorations.  Students noticed that apples came in all sorts of varieties, colours, sizes, and shapes.

Students spent some time observing their apple and then making a pictorial presentation by colouring a paper apple in as close a copy of their apple as possible.

We have looked at how the apple life cycle works:

We will continue our explorations this week with the apple life cycle and how it correlates to the seasons of the year.