Community Read

We have been continuing with our community read and have had several parents participate on different occasions. The students are loving having their parents come so they can show off their blossoming reading skills.  Please consider joining us for our special Christmas Community Read on Thursday December 20, from 8:30-9:30.  We will have special Christmas treats available for our readers.

Cultures and celebrations around the world

This month we have been learning about different cultures, traditions and celebrations around the world. Yesterday we learned about Germany, and the history of the Christmas Tress.  During Art time, we made these cool Christmas tree hats!

Check out our new Knuffle Bunny Video!

We have been spending the week enjoying the writing of Mo Willems.  One of our favourite books has been Knuffle Bunny.  We wondered what Knuffle Bunny did while he was lost, so Mrs. Wideen and I thought it would be fun to see where Knuffle Bunny went....

Reading Folders

Parents - Please know that I am in the process of completing updated reading assessments.  I am going to be hanging on to the reading folders this week, so that I can have the students choose new books that more accurately reflect their current reading level.
Thank you for your continued support.

Schedule Change

After some internal shuffling, I just wanted to let you know that our schedule has changed a little bit. Beginning Monday, October 29th, our new schedule is...

Day 1- Drama/Dance/Music

Day 2 - Gym

Day 3 - Library

Day 4 - Art, Drama/Dance/Music

Day 5 - Gym

A Halloween Brain Break....

Source: youtube.com via Tammy on Pinterest

Time, Temperature and Money

Today, we are starting a new math unit that covers Time, Temperature and Money. Here are some activities that you can work on at home to support our learning at school....

• Discuss with your child the special events your family celebrates during the year. Have your child help you record these dates on a calendar.

• If you have an outside thermometer at home, direct your child's attention to where the mercury is in the morning and then again at night.  Ask him or her if the mercury has risen or fallen.

• When shopping with your child, point out food products (up to a dollar) and have your child read the amounts.

We are looking forward to some really fun activities to do with these topics over the next few weeks!

Our Virtual Field Trip to Kenya

On Friday, we joined thousands of schools from across North America for a virtual field trip to Kenya. We watched on the smartboard, as a scientist showed us pictures and videos of the work that he did in Kenya.  He even showed us his camera that got eaten by a lion!

Spiders!

We started learning about spiders today! It goes along nicely with our science unit on life cycles, and it goes with our book Charlotte's Web.
This was the Spider Anchor Chart we did today, of our schema (prior knowledge) as well has some new learning from today.  We are going to continue to add to our chart as we go.

Welcome Primary Quad Bloggers!

This week we would like to give a special welcome to Mrs. Robinson's class, Mrs. Martel's class and Mrs. Sarchet's class. Take a peek around our blog to see what we've been up to! Can't wait to hear from you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our 2B families and visitors to our blog a very Happy  Thanksgiving!  Here is a little bit of the history of Canadian Thanksgiving, taken from Kidsworld.com...

Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day

Harvest Season

How It Began

The origins of Canadian Thanksgiving are more closely connected to the traditions of Europe than of the United States. Long before Europeans settled in North America, festivals of thanks and celebrations of harvest took place in Europe in the month of October. The very first Thanksgiving celebration in North America took place in Canada when Martin Frobisher, an explorer from England, arrived in Newfoundland in 1578. He wanted to give thanks for his safe arrival to the New World. That means the first Thanksgiving in Canada was celebrated 43 years before the pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts!

Official Holiday

For a few hundred years, Thanksgiving was celebrated in either late October or early November, before it was declared a national holiday in 1879. It was then, that November 6th was set aside as the official Thanksgiving holiday. But then on January 31, 1957, Canadian Parliament announced that on the second Monday in October, Thanksgiving would be "a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed." Thanksgiving was moved to the second Monday in October because after the World Wars, Remembrance Day (November 11th) and Thanksgiving kept falling in the same week.

The 49th Parallel

Another reason for Canadian Thanksgiving arriving earlier than its American counterpart is that Canada is geographically further north than the United States, causing the Canadian harvest season to arrive earlier than the American harvest season. And since Thanksgiving for Canadians is more about giving thanks for theharvest season than the arrival of pilgrims, it makes sense to celebrate the holiday in October. So what are the differences between Canadian and American Thanksgiving, other than the date? Not much! Both Canadians and Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with parades, family gatherings, pumpkin pie and a whole lot ofturkey!

Read more: Canadian Thanksgiving | History | Tradition | Harvest Festival | Thanksgiving Day | Holiday http://www.kidzworld.com/article/2614-canadian-thanksgiving#ixzz28W5qYWD1

Here's a little video of our year so far!

Try our video maker at Animoto.

Literacy Centres

Each morning, our class spends about 30 minutes doing some independent literacy centres.  The centres we are working on this week are:

Reference Roundup : we are learning to work with the dictionary.

 Jump into writing: where we are working on some fall writing activities

Non-fiction news helps us get acquainted with non fiction writing

Buddy reading to help with our fluency

Reading Ebooks on the iPads. 

All of this makes for a fun and busy morning!

Global Read Aloud

Today, October 1st is the offical starting date of the Global Read Along.  What is the Global Read Aloud you may ask?  Watch the video below to find out all about it!

Our class is really excited to be a part of this exciting opportunity! We will be reading the book "Charlotte's Web". We were with Mrs. Wideen's class this morning and did a Skype call with Mrs. Lierman's class in Surrey, BC to make our predictions!

Reading Stamina

We are working so hard building our reading muscles.  We are already up to 11 minutes of uninterrupted reading time!

What a great day yesterday!

We had so much fun at the Terry Fox Run yesterday.  We got to go on a long walk on a beautiful day - does it get any better than that?  Here are some pictures from the little party we had in the field when we got back from the walk.

We're working on our writing stamina!

Ariana and Fatima shared their writing today.  They did a fantastic job!

Tomorrow is Picture Day - And The Terry Fox Run

Just quick note to remind families that tomorrow is picture day. Complicating things a bit is also the fact that it is our school wide Terry Fox run in the afternoon.  If you are wearing your dress shoes for pictures, it would be a really good idea to bring some running shoes for our activities later!

Wow! Two weeks under our belts already!

As we settle in, and the air begins to cool in the mornings, it feels so good to be back.  I am lucky enough to have my class for the second year, with a few wonderful new additions.  Having the same kids for the second year has made for such a smooth transition to school.  The students come in knowing my expectations, and I know exactly where we left off.  It has been amazing!  We are now starting to get into our regular routines in Literacy and Math.
In Literacy, we are working on how to read non fiction texts.  The students have learned that non fiction texts don't have to be books.  Maps, magazines, newspapers and even menus count as non fiction too.  Today for example, we read an article on the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Boy, did we have some unique ideas as to why it leans!  We are learning that readers are like runners.  It takes motivation to get started, stamina to continue, but when the goals are met, boy does it feel good.  We are working on building our reading stamina right now.  Our goal is 25 minutes of independent reading.
In writing, we are working on building our writing muscles and stamina to work undisturbed on our writing for as long as possible.  The students did great today!  They worked on their writing, listening to classical piano music for 30 minutes with the room absolutely silent!  I am so proud of the work they are doing!
In the next few days, Take home reading folders will be coming home.  I encourage you to look through these with your student, and work through it at a pace that is comfortable for your family.  When the folder returns to school, we will choose a new book.  Please note, the books that are being sent home, are based on their last reading level from last year, so for some students these books may be too easy or too hard.  Please bear with me as we work to reassess the students reading levels.

In Math, we are starting our Numeracy Unit.  The goals for this unit are

• Read and print numbers to twenty
• Build numbers with concrete materials
• Estimate number of objects and check by counting
• Count forward to 100, and backward from 20
• Count by 1's, 2's, 5's, 10's and 25's
• Develop strategies for adding and subtracting

We think we have our schedule finalized.  As of now, our Gym classes are on Days 2 and 4 (currently wednesday and Friday), and Library book exchange is Day 1(currently Wednesdays).  If anything changes, I will let you know.

As always thank you for the support.  Check back often for updates.  Once our agendas come in, I will be able to communicate through there when there is an update.

Welcome Back!

We have had an absolutely amazing start to the new year. I couldn't ask for a smoother start! Check back often for updates, pictures and videos. You can also keep up with our learning throughout the day by following us on Twitter - @twobelanger!

It's Almost Time!

It is so hard to believe that the summer is drawing to a close and soon we will be back into routine at school.  I have missed all of my students and colleagues throughout the summer, and look forward to seeing everyone again! I have had a really fun summer with my family.  We travelled on a few short road trips, but mostly we had fun just staying home and being together.
I have been working on planning some things to make this year even more fun than last year.  It is so great that I know everybody coming in, so we can get going right away!
I really hope that you have had a fun, safe and enjoyable summer with your families, and I look forward to seeing you all very soon!