December 18, 2017

Dear Parents and Guardians,

  Today, the students were given a challenge to create the tallest tree using only cups! While completing the challenge, the students explored teamwork, planning and cooperation. Throughout the project, they discovered vocabulary, including balance and foundation. Ask your child to tell you about their discoveries!

Reminders:

• Report Cards come home tomorrow
• Thursday, December 21 is an early dismissal for students
• NO school Friday, December 22 to January 7 for students

December 13, 2017

Dear Parents and Guardians,

This week, we have focused a lot of our class work around the book "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. We began by watching the story in video form, and then read the book a short while later. 

We began an art project where we designed our own mittens. We observed the mittens of a few students and noticed something - that each pair of mittens are an exact match! We discussed the word "symmetrical" and what would need to happen to make sure that our mittens matched. The students worked hard to make sure that their mittens were symmetrical and did their best drawing and colouring!

Today, we began a new writing activity. We each wrote 5 clues about ourselves that we will attach to the mittens, and as a class we will try to guess who made the mittens based on the clues. We wrote our first draft today, and will be starting our good copy of our clues in the coming days. Our focus remains on proper use of punctuation (commas and periods), capital letters, and juicy (descriptive) words.

The students also began to colour their own versions of the animals from the story. In groups of three, they will begin to practice re-telling the story and present their versions to the class on Friday!

The students have really enjoyed reading our new winter books during quiet reading and partner reading times.

Reminders

The winter celebration is coming up, and our class will be performing on Monday, December 18th @ 1:30 pm. Families are more than welcome to attend.

The deadline to return library books to the school is this Friday, December 15th. Please send them back to school with your child.

December 7, 2017

Dear Parents and Guardians,

   We started today by reading our sight word poems. While reading, a student stated, "Mrs. Witczak! I just realized that is a one star poem!" When asked why they thought it was a one star poem the students provided insightful answers about the poems length, lack of descriptive words and repeated use of the same language.

  As a class we decided to re-write the poem to make it four stars. I was very impressed with the descriptive language, detailed steps and transitional words the students incorporated!

  After completing our class version, the students were challenged with completing the following:

• Underlining transitional words in green
• Underlining descriptive words in red
• Adding a final descriptive step
• Drawing a picture to match our poem

  Ask your child to show you their work. It is in their Poetry Folders that came home today.

  This week we also learned about things that can hurt your sense of hearing. The students were then given the task of creating a poster with a partner.

Reminders:

• There is no school tomorrow (December 8)

December 2

Dear Parents and Guardians,

It is hard to believe it is December already! 

We have been continuing to practice our sight words and our poems each day. It is very nice to see the students incorporating these words into their writing and spelling them correctly! 

This week, we have spent a lot of time writing about "How to Make a Gingerbread Cookie." We wrote it over the course of three days, with the first day focused on title and materials, second day focused on the first two steps, and the third day focused on the rest of the steps. The students were asked to take their time on each step, incorporating their transitional and juicy (descriptive) words. Have your child point out the transitional and descriptive words in each of the following:

We also began to explore punctuation, including proper use of commas, periods and capital letters. 

In social studies, we continued our alphabet by exploring "H is for Helpful." We discussed the word "responsibility" and came up with some responsibilities of our own, at home and at school. Ask your child why it is important for them to fulfill their responsibilities, and what their responsibilities are. 

In science, we wrapped up our discussion of sense of sight, and moved on to our sense of hearing. The students learned what the ears help us to do, and why it is so important to protect our hearing. Ask your child the following:

-what do my ears help me do?

-what is is called when someone cannot hear?

-what could I do that could damage my hearing?

-what can I do to protect my hearing?

Message from the Office:

Hello Parents & Guardians,

Please find attached our December Newsletter. Dec 2017.pdf 

Have a nice day,

Barb Rocca