Writer’s Wall

Please visit the Writer’s Wall in our classroom. Last month we read Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell.

Our writing focused on describing how the main character, Molly Lou Melon, was confident and talented.

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PS- This is Samarjit’s great idea of including our Writer’s Wall on our classroom blog.  Thanks Samarjit!

Reading Groups

This year at Moberly we have divided all of the grade 2 and 3 students into different reading groups based on their independent reading levels.  I am lucky to work with group 5.  My group has been working on the Reading Power of QUESTIONING.  Good readers ask questions before they read, while they read, and after they read.  To practice QUESTIONING we followed Adrienne Gear’s Reading Power lesson using the book If by Sarah Perry.  Our job was to choose one of the “if…” question pages and write our own questions.  The students were so proud of their work that they asked me to put it on a bulletin board to show the school.

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Division 13 New Year’s Resolutions

It was very interesting to read all of the first journal entries of 2013.  I asked the students to write their New Year’s Resolutions for school.  It was neat to see that every student’s resolutions were the same or very similar to what I would have written for them.  I went through their journals and copied out the resolutions on a piece of chart paper that now hangs at the front of the class for easy reference.  Please read the resolutions below and see if you can guess which resolution was written by your child; and, please help support their resolution at home.  

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What we are learning about in January 2013!

We have been back together for one week and what a busy week!  This month we are learning some new topics during Math, Health and Career, Science and Language Arts periods.  Please read the list below and talk to your child about what they are learning at school.  Ask them questions, or research questions together at home to fuel their enthusiasm! 

1. In Math we are learning about data collection and graphing.  Students are learning to read different types of graphs.  Students are also creating their own graphs by asking their classmates survey questions.

graph 2. In Health and Career we are using the Canadian Food Guide to learn about healthy eating including the four food groups and how to make a balanced meal.

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3. In Science we are learning about Matter.  There are three main states of matter: solid, liquid and gas.  We are doing experiments to find out how these states interact together (or don’t).  Student are hypothesizing what the outcome of each experiment will be and are asked to explain their thinking.

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4. In Language Arts our resource teacher and I have been focusing on reading with the students one-on-one to reassess their current reading level.  We have been very pleased with the improvement all the students have made in their reading.  We are moving students into different reading levels as their reading improves.  It is very important to continue to read with your child every night.  It is especially important to ask your child questions about what they are reading.  Ms. Loevenmark and I are finding that our students’ fluency and word strategies have improved but often the students do not understand what they have read.  In a nutshell, they can read all the words but they don’t understand what they are reading.  We are therefore, not able to move all students up a reading level until their comprehension of their reading is stronger.  Please help your child to practice thinking about what they are reading not just their reading fluency and word attack skills. 

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Thank you for your support!

Have You Filled A Bucket Today?

Yesterday our Youth and Family Worker, Mr. Baker, visited our class to share the book Have You Filled A Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud.

This is a wonderful book with an important message.  The book explains that everyone in the world carries around an invisible bucket.  Buckets carry good feelings.  You can easily fill someone’s bucket with kind words and kind deeds thus being a “bucket filler”; but, buckets can be emptied by “bucket dippers” who take out your good feelings.  Bullies are “bucket dippers” and bullies themselves carry empty buckets.  Most importantly, when you fill up someone else’s bucket your bucket gets filled too!  Now when Mr. Baker sees us around school he asks: “have you filled a bucket today”?

Small Saul

I just read a great book to my two boys.  It is called Small Saul by Ashley Spires.

We borrowed it from the local library near my parents house on Mayne Island.   Small Saul is not an ordinary pirate.  He has his own way of doing his pirate duties including redecorating the pirates’ sleeping quarters and baking cakes for dessert.

After Saul is thrown overboard the pirates realize what a treasure he is.  They quickly sail back to bring him aboard.  My boys loved this book so much that I searched the internet for some more information on the author/illustrator Ashley Spires.  I found her website and read that she is Canadian and was born in British Columbia.  I wonder if she has ever been to Mayne Island?

A Great Read Aloud!

Today we read the story Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown.

This is a wonderful read aloud.  Lucy the Bear finds a pet in the forest she names “Squeaker” after the squeaky sound he makes.  At first, the pet is wonderful and Squeaker and Lucy have lots of fun.  Soon, Lucy discovers Squeaker may not be the perfect pet.  He has trouble being potty trained and likes to rip the furniture.  Squeaker eventually finds his family again and Lucy now wants an elephant for a pet.  This book is available at our school library if you wish to borrow it to share with your family!  Enjoy!

Amazing Adjectives!

Today in class we used picture books from the Usborne Touchy-Feely Series That’s Not My… to practice identifying Adjectives!

Adjectives are describing words.  This series has an adjective on every page and the adjective matches the page’s unique texture which students can touch and feel.  For example in the book That’s Not My Baby the first line is “That’s not my baby… his hat is too soft.” and the picture has a baby wearing a soft hat you can feel.  The students quickly identified that the adjective is SOFT and it is describing the BABY’S HAT.  After we eagerly read through the books hunting for adjectives, we made an adjective wall to use during our writing time.