Division 10's News of the Week

Good morning everyone and happy Sunday to you all. I hope everyone got out into the sunshine on Friday and Saturday before the rains began. I guess the positive note to that, is it sure is lovely to sleep when the rain is coming down!! The sweet sound on the roof is like music right??? But now that its daytime, time for some sunshine again!! We had a great week last week! We started our week with writing about what we know about bears. We will be learning about bears for at least the next month. Your child will be reading about bears, writing about bears, doing poetry about bears and art about bears. They will know so much about bears that they may all want to become conservationist officers by the end of it!! We start new units by writing what we already know, this is a great way to show children that they can build on prior knowledge to increase their existing knowledge. They love sharing what they know and are always so excited to learn more. While the grade ones are doing reading with Mrs. Roopra, our resource teacher, the grade twos have been reading about polar bears. I have some wonderful writing on the polar bears that is at grade level, they are reading together, we discuss what we have learned and then they are working on answering questions regarding the information that they have read. They are doing such a great job. Soon we willput it all together into the form of a written report. This will be working on their higher level of thinking! We also learned about the parts of the bear (with the entire class) and as scientists we labelled the parts, then wrote what the job of each of the parts is. Ask your child if they remember what the job of the tail is? (nothing!!) and how the bear lost his tail??? This week we also went outside for our nature exploration. On this day we took our drawing boards and our cozy seats and sat by the stream at the edge of the field. We spent two minutes quietly looking at the stream, then they would turn around and draw what they observed..we then turned around again, looked, then two minutes more of drawing without looking. This is a good lesson on focus and memory. The drawings that the children did were amazing and have been put into their nature books. This week we had two assemblies on Friday. In the morning there were two BC Lions who visited the school (onine) and they shared tips for conserving energy and electricity. They did a great job presenting. We actually did some exercises with these two BC Lions. Our afternoon assembly was to acknowledge Martin Luther Kings Birthday and we all wore black. We are all working hard at understanding that our skin colour does not identify who we are ...it is who we are on the inside that matters. Having discussions like this at home are very important. In Math: The grade ones have begun working on our number operation skills-addition and subtraction. For the next little while , the children will be involved in many hands-on, concept building activities. The focus this term will be additon and subtraction to ten. In Grade 1, the goal is not memorization of facts, rather its the development of mathematical language and an understanding of the concept and having the ability to apply the concept of addition and subtraction in a variety of ways. Meanwhile the grade twos are working on different strategies to get to an answer without using their fingers or manipulatives. Ask your grade two child how the "number in the middle" strategy works....7 + 9...ask them..they love this strategy!! Thank you to all the parents who have sent soap and for the handsanitizer. It sure helps encourage the children to wash their hands when they have nice soap!! They are really great at it!! And with that..enjoy the pictures. Have a great Sunday I will see everyone back on MOnday. take care, teri