October: Month at a Glance

Dear families,

We have a busy but fun month ahead! With Meet the Teacher, Thanksgiving, the Pumpkin Stroll, Picture Day and Halloween all coming up, we are ready for an exciting month of activities!

Here are our learning goals for the month:

Language

In writing, we continue to work on organizing our ideas into short paragraphs. We continue to check over our writing to ensure that we have a capital at the beginning and a period at the end. Including more details in our writing is being encouraged. We are practicing this by using an idea building web at the beginning of every writing activity, then choosing our top three ideas to write about. We will continue to work on following the hamburger model when writing paragraphs.

In reading, we are getting ready to begin our Daily 5 centers. For our listening center, could you please send in a pair of headphones (that can stay at school for the year) with your child, in a freezer bag labeled with their name on it? They will use these headphones every time they are in the Listening to Reading center.

Math

We are finishing up our Data Management unit this week. Then, we will move into our unit on Number Sense. We will be practising skip counting as well as representing numbers in different ways using concrete materials as well as number lines and ten frames.

Grade 2:

We are learning how to read, represent and compare whole numbers to 100

Here’s how you can help at home:

  • Go on a Number Hunt. Have your child look for and read numbers on houses, signs, billboards, or in store windows.
  • When preparing a meal, ask your child to estimate how many beans there are in the measuring cup or how many forks there are in the drawer. Have your child check his or her estimate by counting the items. To practise counting by 2s, 5s, or 10s, ask your child if there is a way to put the items in groups to make counting easier

Grade 3:

We are learning how to read, represent and compare whole numbers to 1000

Here’s how you can help at home:

  • You and your child can play a game using two sets of number cards labelled 0-9. Shuffle the cards and, without looking, choose 2 cards to form a 2-digit number. Ask your child to say that number, and to write the number in it’s expanded form (e.g. one card might read 7 and another 5, so when put together they become 75. It’s expanded form would be: 70 + 5, it is 7 tens and 5 ones). A challenge would be to move onto 3-digit numbers.
  • Choose a book with a large number of pages. Open the book to a random page and ask your child to tell you the numbers 1 greater than, 1 less than, 10 greater than, and 10 less than the page number.

Science

We are continuing to work on our Soils unit (Grade 3s) and our Grade 2s are continuing to learn about Liquids and Solids with Mrs. Froats.

Raz Kids

Raz Kids will be starting up shortly. Once I have our class signed up, I will send home a letter with your child’s log in information.

Celebration Days

Next week, I will post a letter about our upcoming Celebration Days as well as the House Colour that will host our Halloween party on the 31st.

Rainy Days

Rain is in the forecast for the week. Please ensure that your child has a pair of indoor shoes and a pair of outdoor shoes. This will help keep our classroom free from mud. For indoor recess, you are welcome to send your child with a board game or an activity for them to play with their friends. As a class, we discussed keeping these games in the classroom all year (labeled with your child’s name on it) to have for those days when we can’t get outside. If you do choose to send a game in, please make sure it’s not a family favourite…as much as we try to take care of the games, they do get well used and they don’t always come home in the shape they arrived in!

Looking forward to meeting you at Meet the Teacher this Thursday from 5:30pm-7pm.

Any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Mrs. K. Hoy