Jan 25-28, 2016

After a few 5-day weeks, we are headed into a few shorter weeks. There is no school this Friday Jan 29. Report cards will be handed out on Thursday Jan 28. Also, there will be a substitute in on Thursday as I am away at a conference. 

Important Notes: 
-Lice Busters are coming in on Tuesday. If you would like to opt out, please email me by the end of Monday Jan 25. 
-Telus World of Science Field Trip Permission Forms are due on Wednesday with full payment. 
-Spelling Test on Thursday this week
-Mission Impossible is in the gym all week (this week and next week). It is an obstacle course set up by our Grade 4-6 SWAT members for the entire school to attempt. The kids are going to love it!

Language Arts
Writing-distinguishing between expository and narrative writing; distinguishing between fact and opinion. They will also be spending time writing varying sentences about creatures that live in the forest. One of the skills that we focus on in Grade 2 is changing sentences to be more interesting for the reader. For example, a series of sentences that start with 'He went...,' 'He did...,' 'He had...' are not very exciting. Students are beginning to use different words to start sentences to make it more attractive to the reader. 
Phonics-words ending in -le, high frequency words ending in -le; hard and soft c (being able to recognize the difference)
Spelling-all of our words this week end in -le
Daily 5-continue reading The BFG by Roald Dahl

Math
We continue to practice using numbers to 100. The students are doing exercises such as: counting letters in a series of words, grouping numbers into tens and ones (groups of objects and numbers in numerical form), identifying words in written form (ex. 13 and thirteen), 'counting on' starting at a variety of numbers between 1-100, and using pictures/diagrams to help with addition and subtraction questions. 

Science
We have been using thermometers quite a bit lately. The students are gaining comfort with reading thermometers and understanding the scale on the stem of the thermometer. It can be a difficult concept to understand when numbers above zero are positive and numbers below zero are negative. This is their first encounter with negative numbers.