Hi Everyone….
It was a pleasure to meet with all of you for interviews.It has been another quick month in Grade 2/3A and I thought I would highlight some of the themes we are learning about.
Math & Media Literacy:
- This month our focus has been on learning to collect information in order to sell a product. Each student picked a product they wanted to sell and thought of two different questions they could ask to collect information. Below are our learning goals for this unit:
- Collect data using surveys
- Organize and sort the information they collected
- Communicate clearly their information
- Read and think about data by making observations and inferences
- At the same time, the students are learning how we can use Media to sell a product. They know that Media is when we send a message about something.
- We continue our work on finding and using the best addition strategy to help us add numbers. We have a Math Wall of Fame up in the classroom to highlight these strategies and the students are given lots of practice time.
- I am asking at home for parents to drill their child on mental math questions, such as: (Grade 2: what is 42+13 or Grade 3: 87+56) Students are being encouraged to practice adding numbers mentally. Soon we will be starting to learn more about subtraction.
Reading and Writing:
Texts We Read This Month:
- Planting the Seeds of Kenya, A River Ran Wild, Being Respectful, Rufus Goes to School, Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Day, Say Something, Rosie Revere Engineer!
Making our THINKING Visible is an important learning goal our class is exploring. The students are using a graphic organizer to record their thoughts, questions, connections, predictions BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER they read a text. As well we created together as a class, some Success Criteria for our Reading Responses.
Does your response Include?- Start with a thinking prompt…..
- Use details or evidence from the text
- Include your own thoughts (important connection, question, big idea, thought)
Level and Feedback:
We have also started a Character Studyin Reading. Our goal is to learn more about the parts of a story, beginning with characters. The actions of characters help children understand the story better. I have been teaching students to use graphic organizers to help them dig deeper into the reasons why characters act certain ways. Our big question we are focusing on is: Describe how characters change over the course of a story? The Grade 3’s in particular are learning to use evidence from the story to support their responses and their own ideas.
In Writing, we are continuing to learn more about the writing trait: Sentence Fluency. The students are now quite enthusiastic about finding ‘showing sentences’ in books they read. Here are some samples of showing sentences that students have written:
- My tongue feels like it got stuck in a sandbox.
- My heart was pounding as fast as a cheetah running.
- My teeth began chattering so much, I thought they would run right out of my mouth.
As well, in Writing, I introduced the class to a concept I call SPOTLIGHT. This is to help encourage their editing and revising skills. The students use placemats and a coloured pen to make their writing better. Revising writing is often the most challenging phase; yet MOST IMPORTANT part of moving a student from a Level 3 to a Level 4.
Science:
This month I introduced the students to the Engineering Design Process.
After some engaging activities, both grades are trying to solve a problem:
Grade 2 Problem: We learned from our school investigation that Oriole Park is not that easy for all people to move around in. How can we make our school more accessible?
Grade 3 Problem: Not all homes look the same. Some are built in unexpected and crowded places. How can we design a home in a crowded community that is safe and people enjoy?
As part of our Structures unit, I showed a TED Talk clip to the whole class about Ingenious Homes in Unexpected Places. Afterwards, as a class we decided that this meant: clever, intelligent, creative homes in places where people do not usually live.
Both grades created a Plan of Action by drawing Blue Prints to show how they planned to solve their problem. Throughout the building process, students will keep track of notes in their Science Notebook of ideas/concepts that worked and ones that didn’t.
Social Studies: We continued this month to learn about Successful communities through the topics of Traditions & Celebrations and Early Settlers and Natives. We read an amazing book called a River Ran Wild and From There to Here, which highlighted our big idea of: communities change over time. This month each grade created a piece of a mural using the following learning goals:
Grade 2 Learning Goal: Create a mural to show how communities looked at different times and how communities should be inclusive places.
Grade 3 Learning Goal: Create a mural to show how communities have changed over time and how technology has made our lives easier.
Co-operative Learning Goal: We will work as a team to create the best mural we can.
As well, each student worked on a scrapbook assignment, where after reading a non-fiction text, they had to record and represent the most important information. This is a skill they will be using throughout all of the grades when dealing with large amounts of non-fiction information. As well, each Grade 2 student is having a chance to present informally their Traditions work they completed at home. The class has really enjoyed hearing how family traditions change over time.
In keeping with my philosophy of children creating and thinking of solutions to problems, our next task in Social studies, will be for Grade 3’s to think of a better way that the Natives and Early Settlers could have resolved their differences. While the Grade 2’s will create a tradition or celebration that ALL people in a community can participate in. Stay tuned!
Poetry: The students through my Urban Voices workshops are starting to write some amazing poems. I will end this newsletter with a poem the whole class wrote together. Their ideas are powerful and important!
Words can….
Words can blow your mind.
They can jump into your brain.
Words can take you to a whole new world.
Because a word is a world.
They can go anywhere.
Words can teach you anything.
About people, animals, colours, structures.
Words can be power.
They can be good.
They can be bad.
Words can describe.
You might use them in different ways, but really words are amazing.
Words are everywhere.
Words cannot be just words.
Words can be anything.
By Room #12
Grade 2/3A