Friday, December 21, is the last day of school before Christmas break. We have 2 theme days coming up too. On Friday, December 14th, it is crazy Christmas dress-up. Wear your favorite Christmas things like Christmas clothes, antlers, Santa hats, bells, ornaments, etc. On Friday, December 21st, it is Christmas PJ day.
Language Arts
Writing:
In our writing, we have put a strong focus on writing complete sentences and including beginning capital letters as well as ending punctuation (periods, question marks and exclamation marks). We also now know that proper nouns (actual names of people, places, games, stories, etc ) need to be capitalized as well. I introduced to them that every sentence needs a subject (who/what),and predicate (doing/describing). We looked at some example sentences and understood that words like I, me, we, it, his, and proper names, are all examples of a subject in a sentence. The subject of a sentence usually comes at the beginning of the sentence. "Fido ate my homework". Fido in this sentence is the subject, and ate my homework is the predicate. I will begin to look for subject and predicate in the students journal writing.
We have talked about opinions versus facts. Opinions reflect what a person believes and thinks, where as facts represent truthful things that cannot be changed.
Phonics:
We have finished up talking about long vowels and rules for sounding out long vowels. We are starting unit 4, and we began with looking at blends, specifically 'l' and 'r' blends. We will then look at compound words and syllables in words, and what they are.
Math
We are well into our measurement unit. The students have been comparing objects using words like longer, taller, shorter, wider, narrower, bigger, and smaller. In grade 2, when measuring an object, we use non-standard units of measurement. A non-standard unit of measurement is something that is not always the same, like an eraser. We could measure the width of our desk with an eraser. The students would say "my desk is 12 erasers wide. We could also use a paper clip to measure, which would change the width. "My desk is 16 paper clips wide". We don't use standard units (cm, kg, ml) until grade 3. We will be studying the days of the week and the months of the year, and compare masses later on in this unit.
Science
In science we are well into our hot and cold temperatures unit. We have been looking at how thermometers work. If at any point your child has an opportunity to read a thermometer, please allow them to do so. Please reiterate with them that any temperature below zero needs to have a minus in front of it. We have talked about heat sources (things that produce heat) and insulating materials. How do insulators work? We will be testing different insulating materials. Some other things that will talk about later are how changing the temperature of things (melting, freezing, burning, and cooking) changes them. Also we will look at how to protect ourselves when handing things that are hot and cold.
Social
We have looked at the geography (land and water formations) of our three communities we are studying, as well as weather that occurs during the year and comparing them to our own community of Leduc. The students were truly amazed at the annual average snowfall amount of Iqaluit (236cm). They also learned that Saskatoon is one of the sunniest cities in all of Canada. We have also looked at the early days of the 3 communities and how they were when settlers first arrived and what they were like even before that.
I hope everyone is having a great lead up to Christmas vacation.
Mr. Aasen
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