Hello parents,
I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful sunshine that we are having. What a lovely way to end September. Did you know that we made history for the warmest (dryest) September? I think with such a wet spring, that we were deserving of such beauty!

First off I want to thank all the parents who were able to come to the open house and for those who couldn't, i missed you! It was nice to touch base with some of the dads that don't get the opportunity to pop in as often as the mamas do. I hope you had opportunity to read my overview...which didn't really tell you much more than the blog has been doing, but now you have it in hard copy as well as the daily schedule to check out as a reminder.

Secondly I would like to congratulate the children on an amazing job during the Terry Fox Run. We did a mini warmup in the gym led by a former parent in our classroom, Lani, then we walked to the beach, did our 30 minute run, walked back and then had to say good bye to 14 of our cross country runners who then proceeded to do an amazing job at the cross country meet. What a busy, energetic day for our children.

In class we have been working hard on our apple unit. On Friday we talked about the seasonal life cycle of the apple tree, we did some writing and then some art really looking at how the apple tree changes at each season. We will do one more lesson on the apple/apple tree then move on to taking a look at pumpkins and the similarities that they have to the apple.

Next week we will be putting more of a focus into Thanksgiving as it is just around the corner. Can you believe how fast the month has flown by and now it is Thanksgiving???

On Thursday, Catriona, our partner from SPEC will be joining us to talk about travelling seeds and how nature affects how different seeds get planted. Catriona has worked with the kids in our class as well as Ms. Jung's class for the last 4-5 years and has done an amazing job of introducing our children to the life of a gardener. Over the year we will do many lessons with Catriona about gardening and what is involved with being a gardener. We will be planting crops at the church across the street and then harvesting our crops when they become available. For the past five years it has been free, but as costs of gardening supplies and Catriona's time have become more costly, we are being charged 5 dollars per child to make this program viable. Because I think this is such an amazing program I will be covering the cost out of our classroom fund that we have been given by the PAC......so thank you PAC.

With that, I have a few pictures of some of our activities that we have done. Unfortunately I had forgotten to take the camera to the park so these are just a few photos of our work.
See everyone tomorrow,
Enjoy your last evening together,
cheers,

teri

Montaganews--Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2012

What a super day we had in paradise....your children are truly wonderful! I so look forward to coming to 'work' each Tuesday because your children are eager to learn and happy to be at school. Thank you for that! Since this is my first blog to you, I'd like to let you know what Tuesdays look like for your child.


They arrive at 9am and start with their calendar as usual.  After calendar, Grade 1s can read a book and then draw (or keep reading).  Grade 2s must do a 'fun sheet' and then read and then draw (if there's time).  This is also the time I may give them their unfinished work from last Tuesday to finish up.  I also use this time to connect with parents and answer any questions. I send the 'fun sheets' home as soon as they're done. I see the fun sheets as a different way to get them thinking...

Our first lesson is "Health & Career Education" (formerly called Personal Planning).  I noticed in the overview it says I'll be starting with a NUTRITION unit but I'm starting with a FRIENDSHIP unit instead.  We've already been talking about this and your children have shown me that they are very kind & caring friends already.  I'll try to dig deeper as we move along this unit as social responsibility is very important to me.  Sometimes I'll be sending home their work the day we do it, sometimes, I'll keep it all together and send it home at the end of our unit.  If I send it home the day of, it might because I'm thinking you might like to use it as a springboard for conversation.

After recess, we have Math. Right now, we are learning about sorting and patterns. Today we learned about the 'core' of a pattern so feel free to ask them what that means and to give you some examples. The Grade 2s have learned to translate patterns into letters (i.e. ABABAB) and/or numbers (123 123 123) and/or colours (red, blue, red, blue, red, blue). Ask them how many times a pattern has to repeat for us to know that it truly is a pattern.


After Math, at 11:40, we go to the LIBRARY for our weekly book exchange time.  This means students should bring their book back every Tuesday so they can sign out a new one. 

After lunch, students have COMPUTERS with Mr. Asmoucha.  This is one of their favourite times of the day. They work on the portable MAC computers to learn the basics of a MAC computer. Sometimes they use software such as Kidspix and sometimes they go to safe educational websites to do online learning activities. (When they are learning with Mr. A, I am teaching his class French in his room.)


After computers, we have journals time. During 'Journals' they write about whatever they want to tell me about. Often it is about what they did on the weekend, sometimes it is about something exciting coming up and sometimes they springboard off of a book. Right now, I give the Grade 1s a sentence starter (ex. I like....).  This is when I connect with them on a personal level and help with their writing too.  You can help them by talking about what they did on the weekend which will help them remember things to write about.


After all this hard work, we may have free play (usually-not always).

----BIRTHDAYS----BIRTHDAYS----BIRTHDAYS----BIRTHDAYS-----BIRTHDAYS

Of course, if it is a BIRTHDAY day, we make a card for the birthday person. The birthday kid gets to wear a crown for the day and choose a birthday story for me to read aloud to the class. Birthdays are special and on Tuesdays we go all out for a birthday! (Ms. Taylor has kindly let me have the birthday celebration job because I just absolutely LOVE birthdays...including my own!) If you wish to send in cupcakes or something for the class on your child's birthday, feel free to do so on their birthday or the closest Tuesday. Please don't feel like birthdays are only celebrated on Tuesdays. Just know that on the closest Tuesday to your child's birthday, he/she will be coming home with a class birthday card and feeling like a prince or princess.


There's a lot of information packed into my first installment of MONTAGANEWS...believe me...they won't all be this long!



Have a great rest of the week everyone and I can't wait for next Tuesday already!!

Ebru Montagano

Welcome back to school!!!

A big hello to everyone and welcome to division 10's blog!

First off, I have to tell you that I am not exceptionally computer literate and often I make many mistakes on this thing...but over the years I have gotten better and am excited to be writing to everyone again.

Traditionally I like to send one letter a week...I try to anyway...so you should receive an email reminder that the blog is up and go to the link and read it...sometimes there is some important information for you to read...but not always..hahaha..

First off I would like to congratulate the parents and children for a wonderful couple of weeks of school. It is always hard to get started after a wonderful summer, but before you know it, we are back in the groove.

The children are wonderful! Again, I must say we have a beautiful class who have all settled in and are showing what great workers they are.

Our first week back to school was a review for the grade twos and an introduction to the classroom rules for the grade ones. We talked about giving me five when on the carpet, we looked at being safe, fair and kind, we created a "promise" of wonderful things to do to keep our classroom running smooth and we read a book called "No, David" and "David goes to School" and we established things that we would and would not do in our classroom to make everyone happy...each other and the teacher as well.  I think discussing all these things in the first week has made a big difference in everyone's behaviour. Which has been stellar.

This week we have been talking about apples. This is our current Science topic. We started by brainstorming things we already knew about apples, talked and wrote about how much we "like/love" apples and today we looked at the parts of an apple and like scientists we learned how to lable and draw arrows to parts.

We really have been busy learning the routines of how to do things and where everything goes and everyday it just gets easier and easier.

Before i get to the informational part I just want to say Thank you to all the parents who have volunteered to be a lunchmom and to do cooking. I have many spots left tho for weekly volunteers. If you would like to volunteer on a weekly basis, see me and we can sign you up for a special spot!!! We love volunteers.

Information:

1. The Terry Fox Run is next Thursday at Jericho Beach. We will walk there in the afternoon and do our run and come back. Anyone is welcome to join us. The school is collecting toonies and loonies for Terry to donate to the Terry Fox Cancer Foundation.

2. Popsicles will be on sale tomorrow for $1. to sponsor an art program that Ms. Bailey is doing with her class. Popsicles are optional.

3.Our Gym Days our Monday and Thursdays before recess. Make sure your child is dressed appropriately.

4. Our spelling test days are on Fridays. So please support your child in studying their words that they bring home on Mondays. The grade ones will have two words this week (I,a) and will be adding two more each week that are sight words for the grade ones to know for reading and writing success.

5.Home Reading should be done everyday. After reading with your child, have them put it in their backpacks and then when they get to school, they are to put it into the home reading bin. I will be calling them up to read to me and exchange it for their next book. Thank you for supporting this activity.

I am so sorry that this is soooo long. I promise to keep it shorter in the future so that you will want to read it and not feel intimidated by it's length.

Have a great Friday and a great weekend,

Teri