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Weekly Update

Hello students and parents!  

The next two weeks are going to be very exciting and busy for everyone.  Starting tomorrow we will begin our robotics unit.  For the next two weeks the students will be concentrating on understanding how the robot works, programming and building.  When they master that part they will have to use the robots to solve a problems posed to them.  I anticipate it will be a lot of work, but also a lot of fun a and a fantastic learning experience.

The students have had an opportunity to do research on the Maritime provinces.  They have been working in groups creating a poster about their province and the goal is to attract tourists to come visit their great province.  They will eventually be making commercials to go along with their posters!

During their research the students discovered the diverse landscape of the Maritimes, so they each chose a landscape of their choice using google maps and used that picture to inspire their pastel art work they created last week.  I’m happy to say the art looks fantastic and the students are now using the art to inspire them to write a story and even poetry!

In science we have been continuing our boat and buoyancy unit, doing a variety of experiments and tying it in with our inquiry with the East coast work.  

The students have been challenging themselves in math.  They have been using their own personal strategies to solve double digit addition problems.  The new math curriculum encourages personal strategies, and using a variety of strategies to solve problems.  As a class we have shared our strategies and attempted to use different ones to different problems.  I have stressed to the students the importance of ‘sharing your thinking’ showing in pictures, words or number combinations on how they arrived at the answer.  We have also started story problems, and the students have even been coming up with problems on their own!  This week we will be focusing on double digit subtraction, it’s always a bit trickier than addition so I anticipate the students will share personal strategies just like when we did the addition problems.  

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Stephanie

Overfishing links

How does over fishing affect the people in the Maritimes?

What is overfishing?

Problems with Fishing in Canada

Overfishing photos

Maritime Province links

Newfoundland and Labrador

Facts and information
Different Links

New Brunswick

Facts and information
Different links

Prince Edward Island

Facts and information
Different links

Nova Scotia

Facts and Information
Different links

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!

I’m sorry for the delayed post, I’m afraid to say technology has not been on my side this week but luckily internet has decided to work consistently all weekend (yay!).  I hope everyone had a great spring break, it was so relaxing (minus digging my car out of the snow today).

I’m excited that the students and I will be moving into our inquiry work with a new Canadian community.  The focus now is on the Acadian communities of the East coast.  Below are links related to Acadian culture and history but we are expanding on that and focusing also on current events in those places and how life is the same, but also different from us.  I’m struggling a bit to find student friendly sites for the age group about current events and present life of Acadians but I’m going to extend my resource base and see what I can find in the next week or so.  If anyone has anyone they could share with the class please let me know!

About the Acadians 

Historical Acadian Village 

Acadian history 

Acadian map timeline

Information on the Acadians and the Mi'kmaq people

Interactive site about the Acadians

We’re working on our boats and buoyancy unit, it’s going to be a great link with our social studies inquiry work and I look forward to the experiments we can do in class!

As mentioned during interviews, I found a great math site that has activities related to the grade two curriculum, for students interested in doing some online math at home, these links are great and a lot of fun!  I recommend checking them out to build on your math skills outside of the classroom. 

Math link 

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!

I feel like it’s been ages since I’ve last updated, it’s been a busy few weeks for the students!  We have been continuing with our prairie inquiry work, we have been taking a break from the past and focusing on the community around us.  The students all chose a prairie animal that interested them and did some research.  They created questions and write ups about the landscape, food, habitat and most important their size.  We needed to know the size because the students were posed the challenge to make life sized animals!  We have been doing our measurement unit in math and they put their skills to the test, it wasn’t easy but they managed to successfully recreate the animals!   In art with Mrs. Hittel they then did some painting techniques to make it look even more realistic.

We have been doing a lot of work in measurement, using non-standard units of measurement, comparing and estimating.  We have continued our work with a daily word problem and teh stduents onctinue to practice their mental math strategies. 

In science we wrapped up our hot and cold unit and now we have started boats and buoyancy.  This unit will be a lot of fun as there are plenty of experiments and problem solving tasks for the students to use their scientific inquiry skills!

The students have still been working on their prairie stories and poetry, when you come for sharing night have them share what they have done so far.

Have a great week, hopefully I will see everyone on Thursday!

Ms. Q

Voyageur Information

Here are some links with information about voyageur life and the history of fur trading and even Hudson's bay company!

Information about Voyageur life and fur trading
Hudsons bay company history and the fur trade

Animals used for fur trading

 

 

Weekly Update; Voyageur Week!

Hello parents and students!

I hope everyone had a great long weekend,  I had the opportunity to attend some very interesting sessions at teacher’s convention last week that I hope will help me implement some new ideas in class. Pioneer day last Tuesday was a great success, the students got a taste of what life was like for a pioneer child and I’m sure have many stories to share with you about the day (Ask them what it was like writing with ‘kid friendly’ quills and ink!)  

This week will be the start of our voyageur week, in conjunction with our prairie inquiry work I thought it would be a good idea to explore the notion of trading posts, the Hudson bay company’s influence and the effect that has had on shaping Canadian communities.  Since we have been learning about Winnipeg, one of the prairie communities we are studying we will celebrate a festival they hold every year in the city called Festival du Voyageur.  We will celebrate the festival on Friday with a variety of stations and activities throughout the day, it should be a fun and memorable time for the students!  To get in the voyageur spirit I will encourage the students to dress up as they would have!  Some suggestions for voyageur wear could be a toque (red if you have it!) a plaid, lumberjack style shirt,  suspenders, sashes…. This is of course optional; it’s just a fun idea if the students feel like dressing up to get into the voyageur spirit!

Ms. Q

More pioneer links

 Hello students and parents!  Feel free to browse the links to get ideas for pioneer day!

Travel back in time
Prairie images
Pioneers of the west
Pioneer life
'Letters from the trunk' interesting interactive site to learn about immigrants and settlers coming west
Search photographs on the Glenbow site
Games about pioneer life

All images from the Glenbow museum website.

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!

As January has come to a close I’m reflecting on what a busy month it was.  Between getting back into the swing of things after the Winter break, to skating weekly and many of the students being involved in the musical it was a very busy time!   

The students have been continuing to work on their poetry unit, first completing a poem about the senses and how it relates to the prairies.  Earlier this week the students started a brand new kind of poem, it was a struggle because it’s a new concept for them.  In small groups they have been collaborating to create a personification poem.  So far they are doing a fantastic job!  My hope is they will create their own after experiencing it in a group setting.  

We had a math challenge this week.  We had a group discussion about what it would be life to attend school if they were a pioneer child.  As a group we realized most had to walk a long distance, and we didn’t have the convenience of a car, bus etc as we do today! So on our record breaking temperature day on Thursday, as a class we walked around the school field until we reached a kilometer. I timed the class to see how long it took to walk and in groups or on their own the students had to figure out how long it would take to walk FIVE kilometers if they knew how long it took just to walk one. It was interesting watching what the students used to help them come up with the answer, we’re not finished with the problem, it is ‘to be continued’ next week.

We had our Fort Calgary and Cantos museum trip on Friday, what perfect timing for that trip as we are focusing on prairies and how the settlers made it out west.  I could tell the students appreciated the hands on activities they were able to participate in and hopefully they will come away with some new ideas and questions as we dive deeper into our inquiry research.

Subitizing: What is it and why is it important?

You may have heard your child mentioning subitizing activities we have been doing in class. Subitizing is "instantly seeing how many" meaning,  subitizing is not counting but recognizing common pattern arrangements such as those we may see on a dice or domino.   How good can you subitize? The results might surprise you....

Can you count faster than a chimp? 

not easy eh?

The students has been practicing this, doing games, quizzing one another and just explaining what they see. This is an example of what a student might explain if they were subitizing if they saw this picture for just a few seconds:

They would tell me they see 9, when I ask how they know here are some explanations I have heard from them before:

"I see 3groups of 3 and if you add 3+3+3 that is 9"

"I saw one group of 6 blue dots and one group of 3 red dots and that gives you 9"

"I recognize that pattern, when I see it I know it's 9 because I've seen it before"

This is something that can easily be practiced at home, the students have really enjoyed the games we play in class and as they progress the hope is that the more they can subitize quickly they better their number sense will be if they can instantly see things in groups and be able to clearly explain how they know the answer. Things that can be used at home to practice:

-coins

-dominos

-dice

-cards with dots

-anything you can see in groups!!!

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!

The first few weeks of January have been very busy for us, we have dived into our prairie research and the students are comparing life as a prairie kid in the past compared to now.  Some examples of research questions the students have come up with are:

What was school like?

How did people get around?

What did they eat?

What were houses like?

How did people stay warm in the winter?

What kind of jobs did people work?

What did kids do for fun?

What tools did people use to make life easier?

Our trip to Fort Calgary and Cantos museum on Friday is perfect timing, as the students can take what they learned from the trip and apply it to their research questions!

We have started a poetry unit, using the prairies as our inspiration.  The first poem the students created was a piece about the senses, some wonderful pieces developed from that.  We’re moving onto different kinds of poetry and the students have been creating art that will later be used as an inspiration for their writing.

I taught the students how to use google maps last week, they thought the satellite view/streetview function was the neatest thing!  Using it I showed them areas of Winnipeg that were of interest, they I let them explore with it outside of the city looking at the prairie landscape from a bird’s eye view, the students then designed their own bird’s eye view art using the google maps for ideas.

In math we have been working on strengthening our number sense, they students have been doing activities with grouping and subitizing.  We will be starting a unit around measurement soon, linking it with our prairie inquiry work. 

Busy weeks coming up!  In February we will be having a pioneer day….more details to come soon!

Ms.Q