Grade 2 Parents,

We are very excited about our trip to go skating at the Legends Arena.

There are too many grade twos, so we’ve divided the classes into two afternoons. Your child’s class will be walking to the rink after lunch recess on:

• Thursday, February 12^th

Children need to be dressed appropriately for walking, and they need to have their skates and helmets in a sturdy bag that they are able to carry independently. No plastic grocery bags please.  Bus students are not allowed to bring skates on the bus so someone will have to deliver the skates for them.

All children need helmets for skating….no bike helmets. Hockey helmets, skating helmets, and snowboarding helmets are acceptable.

No hockey sticks will be allowed on the ice….there are too many children for this to be safe.

Parents are welcome to join us at the rink to help tie skates and to skate with us. Preschool children will not be permitted to join us at the rink as there will be well over 100 Grade 2 students on the ice as it is.  We want to make sure everyone is safe and has fun. If you are planning on taking your child home with you at the end of the skating afternoon, please inform your child’s teacher.

We will be walking back to the school in time for end of the day bussing.

Children who do not know how to skate -or don’t have skates- will be supervised to do some physical activities in the gymnasium at the Legends.

Permission form/note will be sent home on Tues. Feb. 3rd- please sign and return to school

Thanks!

This week we practised passing and shooting the rings with the ringette sticks….next week we move onto floor hockey sticks!

We have been working on missing piece addition and subtraction. Knowing fact families really helps us to do these types of questions. A missing piece addition question might look something like this ___ +7=13. We know that these numbers can be moved around as they are part of a fact family. This means we can rewrite the question and use subtraction to help us find the missing number. Our new question becomes 13-7=___. Then from there we are able to do subtraction to figure out the missing piece. We may also see questions that look like this 4+___=8. Again we can turn it into a subtraction question 8-4=___ and then we can figure out the missing piece. This is a difficult concept for many of the children.

We will be having our unit quiz on Addition and Subtraction before the winter break, so please continue to work on math facts to 18 at home.

Here is a link to a website that we enjoy using during computer time. Without a membership you are able to do a limited number of Math questions every day, but if you are looking for a little extra practice at home this is a great place to start!http://ca.ixl.com/math/grade-2/complete-the-addition-sentence-one-digit

In Health we have been learning about illness and disease. We have learned a lot about germs and bacteria and what they can do. Today we started 2 experiements that will last all of this week, and into next.

1. The first experiment is showing why it is important to wash your hands. We have 3 pieces of bread- one was handled with a glove ( so no germs), one was handled with 1 pair of clean hands, and the last was handled by our whole class’ dirty hands (ick!)

2. The next experiment is going to show us how our skin protects our bodies from germs causing illness. The happy apple has no cuts in his skin to let the germs in. The sad apple has cuts which will allow the germs to get inside.

We will be observing both the bread and the apples this week to see if anything changes…….

I thought you would enjoy these pictures from our Badminton wind up last week…..we did so well with trying to volley with our partners, even though some of us were unable to see over our “nets” 🙂

Last week Mr. Dyck came into our classroom for a visit during our writing workshop time. We were talking about what kinds of things does Mrs. Tebay write at the end of their stories after she reads them. The students did a great job remembering the things I want them to try and do when they write their next story. I wrote down 6 things and then told the children to think about which one they need to have as a goal when they are writing- what do they need to work on?

The next day, each student got a sticky note and chose a writing goal for themselves to work on. We are going to focus on one goal until the February break. Make sure to ask your child what their goal is, and how they are doing at working towards that goal. I am always pleased that most children pick a goal that I would also pick for them!

I am amazed at many of the stories that the children are writing…..they are so imaginative!

I spent two days this past week doing a ministry directed reading assessment with each child. We were lucky enough to be given sub time to complete this because it takes a long time to listen to 25 children read one-on-one. Mrs. Martineau spent Monday and Tuesday with the class and I pulled kids all day and listened to them read. A lot of the children moved up one or two levels. I had many happy students 🙂

Here’s a little info on our PM Benchmark levels and how we assign reading levels: At Warman Elementary School, we assess student reading levels using the PM Benchmark program. When assessing your child’s reading level, three factors are considered. The first factor is accuracy. Accuracy is the percentage of words they read correctly. When your child is reading, they should be at least 96% accurate. When a child is reading with less than 96% accuracy, they may not understand what they are reading, and often times they become frustrated. The second factor is fluency. Fluency is the smoothness and pace in which they are reading. In order for children to understand what they are reading, they need to be able to read at a good speed. The third factor is comprehension. Comprehension is what they understand about the story. When assessing their comprehension, they must be able to summarize the story, including the important characters, events, and details from the beginning, middle, and end of the story. They also must be able to answer questions regarding what they understood about the author’s message. The six comprehension strategies that we focus on in our school are: Monitoring Comprehension: encouraging readers to think about their thinking as they respond to the words, pictures, and ideas in a text. Activating & Connecting: teaching young readers how to build knowledge and understanding by connecting what we already know to what we are reading. Asking Questions: showing children how to use questions to deepen their thinking and discover new information Inferring & Visualizing: showing students how to create pictures in their minds and merge background knowledge with the text clues to draw inferences (informed predictions). Determining Importance: helping children identify, organize, and share the important ideas detailed in a text. Summarizing & Synthesizing: guiding readers to see the bigger picture, pull together their thinking, and share their learning about the world. When your child is proficient with all three of these factors, they are then assessed at the next level. In order for children to become better readers, they need to read books at their level. If for example, they have higher than 96% accuracy and have sufficient comprehension, but their fluency is lacking, we may decide to keep them at the current level in order to work on their fluency. Learning to read is so much more than simply reading the words on a page. Understanding and comprehending a text is just as important as being able to decode new words and remembering sight words. Please keep this in mind as your child is bringing home leveled reading books that you might think are too easy. Each child develops reading skills at their own pace, just as each child develops walking, talking, and other activities on their own time. We want our students to be reading at least at a level 19 by the end of grade two, but we know that some students will not be. As long as each student is showing consistent growth in reading, we do consider those successes as well. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions or concerns about your child’s reading level.

The comprehension strategy that we have been working on this month has been Inferring. When you infer you usewhat you see in the text and what you already know to figure out what the author is telling you. I love teaching this strategy because there are so many fun activities to do with it. We have looked at pictures and then made inferences about what happened and why? We have snooped inside Mrs. Tebay’s school bag and made inferences about why things were in there. We have read many books…even some without words. I think that our favourite activity has been to watch a wordless “short” video and make inferences about what is going to happen.

When you read at home with your own child ask them what they infer….and make sure they tell you why!

Today in gym we used the badminton raquets. We talked about the different pieces of equipment and safety rules, and then had fun trying to hit the birdie with our raquet. Tomorrow we are going to try and volley with a partner. Aren’t these the cutest badminton players you have ever seen?

Today in math we played a partner game to help us practice equal and not equal. Each group had a cup with 2 sided counters in it. They had to dump out their counters and create a number sentence with how many counters were red and yellow. They then had to compare their answer with another group to determine if the sets were equal or not equal. This was a lot of fun….and involved a lot of math. The children had to figure out the number sentence, how to write it down, figure out the answer and then determine whether the sets were equal or not equal.

Please remember to practice math facts to 18 with your child. We need to have many of these facts in our memory- they will provide a strong base for us when we get to addition and subtraction to 100.