October Beginnings

Welcome to October everyone. I can't believe the awesome fall weather we are having. Here are some updates for this week and next. 

Wednesday, October 7th, is early dismissal. The students are dismissed at 2:15. If your child is on a bus, it will be here for them. If you pick up your child, please be here at 2:15, not 3:00pm as usual. This will happen on the first Wednesday of every month. 

Next week, is Thanksgiving. There is no school on October 12th for Thanksgiving, or on October 13, as it is a PD day. We are moving right along in our studies in grade 2. Here are some updates as to what we have been learning about.

Language Arts

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(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.

Math

Since the beginning of our patterns unit, we have discussed numerous terms. The type of pattern we are studying is repeating patterns.  A repeating pattern is a pattern that has a section that repeats. The section of the pattern that repeats is called the core.  We are also discussing attributes. An attribute is what is changing in a pattern.  Examples of attributes are colour, shape, direction, or size.  An example of a repeating pattern is up, up, down, up, up, down.  The pattern core is up, up, down, and the pattern attribute that changes is direction. The students have been doing many activities that involve creating, extending, and recreating repeating patterns and recording their patterns in their math journals.

Science

In science, we continue to look at different aspects of magnetism. We have learned that magnets have a North and a South pole, and that opposite ends of a magnet attract, and same ends repel. We learned that the earth is giant magnet (although very weak), and that is what makes a compass work. We will be testing out different magnets to see if magnets have different strengths, and writing a quiz this week on what we have learned so far

Social Studies

We will finish up our mapping unit this week with a small test at the end of this week. The students hopefully remember their mnemonic to help them remember the 4 main cardinal directions on the compass, starting with North at the top, and going clockwise. (Never Eat Soggy Waffles).