Grade 1/2 Experiences at Rosser Elementary
Division 3 is holding a bake sale this Wednesday at Recess and Lunchtime. They are hoping to raise enough money so that they can sponsor an owl at the rehabilitation centre. Please help them with their cause by sending some cash with your child on Wednesday so they could purchase a baked item.
When students are doing their ‘seatwork’ assignments there is a wide variety in the final outcome of what each student will produce. There are, of course, different learning outcomes for different subject areas; just as there are different levels of expectations for each grade. I use this visual to explain the difference between a minimal effort and one that has met all the expected criteria. This idea is used for all areas of our curriculum – not just their artwork – and visually demonstrates what is meant by including ‘details’. For artwork they can see what is meant by ‘details’ through the gradually more developed pictures. In their written work, students are reminded that ‘details’ are the way their writing has answered the reader’s questions of ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘why’, and ‘how’.
Today we launched our new science based theme – bats!! We began by recording what we KNOW (or think we know) about bats. I asked the students for their input and wrote out their responses on chart paper. There were no ideas left out (right or wrong).
We then made a similar chart paper with the things that we WONDER about (i.e. our questions about bats):
We are all looking forward to learning more about these fascinating animals!!! We will keep you posted.
Last weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving. Before the long weekend we had some class discussions as to what it meant to ‘be thankful’. I put the students into partnerships with one student from each grade together. Here are a few of their thoughts:
As the winners of the Terry Fox fundraiser, our division won a play activity with the Me to We club. This afternoon we were treated to fun-filled hour of gym activities set up the Ms. Sikic’s club. There were five stations including: tail tag; bean bag hand ball; one where you knocked over skittles while on a balance ball; an obstacle course to maneuver while carrying wiffle balls in a scoop; and a scooter course. The class was divided into five groups and they rotated through the different stations.
We gave our hosts a great big “thank you” for their thoughtful planning and their clever station set ups.
We had an exciting morning on our field trip today. Students learned a lot about how a farm provides us with our food – which we buy from our grocery stores. Students had an opportunity to see a real cow being milked by a milking machine, and then saw the milk being fed to the baby calf, Charlie.
I’d like to thank all the parents who helped us out by driving and supervising on the trip. We couldn’t have done this trip without you.
As a finale of the trip students were able to choose a pumpkin to take home to carve for their Hallowe’en celebrations.
I hope everyone had a fun-filled morning.
We held our Terry Fox assembly and run this afternoon. The Grade 7’s put on a wonderful assembly which consisted of: a slide show; a video clip of Terry’s Marathon of Hope; student speeches about Terry; the whole student body singing an inspirational song; and the announcement of the poster contest and which division raised the most money.
Guess what?!?!? Our division (5) raised the most money of all the other divisions. We raised $76.00!!!!!!! We are all very happy and excited to have been able to raise this money in support of cancer research in Terry’s memory. I send a HUGE THANK YOU to all the parents who helped their child understand and appreciate the importance of charity for such a worthy cause!!!
On Friday we will be having our Terry Fox Assembly and Run. This will be followed by our annual Corn Roast. Parents are very welcomed to join us for this important event.
I will be telling the class about Terry and his journey across Canada – as well as his battle with cancer. Students will be decorating a paper ‘running shoe’. They will be encouraged to dedicate their run to someone they know who currently has cancer; has survived a bout with cancer; or who has lost that battle.
Our school has been very fortunate to receive a government grant for the purchase and construction of a new playground to replace the one that we currently have. Students in all classes (school-wide) have been working through a process of looking at all the components that go into a playground. They have been having discussions with peers in small groups as well as with the whole class.
In our division (5) we looked at the five initial proposed ‘mock-ups’ to determine which of the elements were important to our students. The students knew that they were not voting on any one of the whole pictures but that they were discussing the individual parts of the playground.
We came up with a list of items that our class felt were important elements of our new playground. Most of our students wanted: things to climb (nets, monkey bars, etc); things that spin or swing (tires, saucers); slides; bridges; and balance beams.
At tomorrow evening’s PAC meeting Mrs. Gojevic will be looking for input from the parent community. When all ideas are joined together a new ‘proposal’ will be created by the playground company. It is hoped that this process will be quick so that the de-construction of the old playground, and construction of the new one, can be completed before the poor weather settles in.
We are all excited and looking forward to this new addition to our school grounds.
We have been reading and enjoying the books by a great Canadian author – Phoebe Gilman. We began with the original “Jillian Jiggs” and worked our way through additional stories about this delightful girl, along with other of this author’s stories such as: Something from Nothing; Pirate Pearl; The Gypsy Princess; and Little Blue.
Students had many opportunities to respond to these books by: renaming one book; adding another page to the end of another book; describing their favourite part or character in other books; and designing a map to show the travels of characters – to name a few. They have created quite an interesting collection of responses in their booklets.
