Week of June 8-12

Good day to everyone.  Just a reminder that the permission forms for our field trip to Devonian Botanical Garden need to be returned with money by this Friday.  We are wrapping up any unfinished core curriculum and will soon be winding down for the year.

Language Arts

Spelling:

Our spelling words for this week are homonyms.  These are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean something different.  They are as follows;

hole   whole   no   know   not   knot   ate   eight   to   too   two   right   write   one   won


Writing:

For writing, we will be finishing up our Goldilocks stories that are being written by the students, with new characters.  These are their own made up stories that follow the story line of the original Goldilocks and the Three Bears story.  They got to make their own new characters and ideas to make it their own. We have had a continued focus on including exciting detail, forming complete sentences and using proper punctuation and capitalization.


Math

In math we have finished up addition and subtraction and will be writing our unit test this week.  We have already began looking at 2D shapes and 3D objects, classifying them, naming them, and grouping them, based on attributes.  For example what two objects fit in this group;  They must have round faces, and they can slide.  The answer would be a cone and a cylinder, as they both have a round face and can slide.  This is the mathematical terminology I would like the students using when describing shapes and objects;  Faces (flat or round), edges (straight or curved), vertices, rolls, slides.


Science

In science we finished up our buoyancy and boats unit.  We have started our small crawling and flying animals unit, which we will be supplemented by our field trip to the botanical gardens.

Spelling Words

Our spelling words for this week are as follows;

call   wall   draw   fall   ball   paw   crawl   talk   because   walk

Spelling Words

It is a short week this week with there being no school this past Monday, as well as our field trip to Fort Edmonton on Tuesday.  We will still have a spelling test on Friday.  The word list is as follows.

sound   frown   soil   mouth   now   toy   oil  spoil   noise   owl

Spelling Words

Our spelling words for this week are double "o" words.  They are as follows;

foot   food   soon   good   hood   noon   room   wood   boot   tooth

Education week.

What a great week we have had at East Elementary for education week.  On Monday the kids got to experience Drum Fit.  What a great experience for everyone.

On Thursday, we got to experience a Zumba class. Another fantastic period of activity.

A bust week of activity also included "Hats on for Mental Health" day.  There were varying types of hats to support and acknowledge mental health and its prevalence in society.

Language Arts

Writing:

We began this week our Unit on fairy tales.  We read a few different fairy tales, such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella.  We are now focusing on Goldilocks.  The students are now going to re-tell the story in their own words.  We are using a picture sequence to go through the story part by part so they can focus on including as much detail as possible on one part before we move on to the next.  As always, there is a focus on conventions and sentence structure in their writing.

Math

In math we have been working really hard on addition and subtraction of 2 digit numbers.  The students are working with many different strategies to solve 2 digit equations. Writing equations vertically is a good way to help distinguish the ones and the tens place and help with more accurate solutions.

Odds & Ends

Today a second field trip form was sent home.  This one is for the annual Track and Field day in Devon.  We are again doing a hot lunch order form for that day.  The permission form as well as the lunch order form and payments need to be returned by next Thursday, May 14th.  The forms for Fort Edmonton with payment, if you have not done so already, need to be returned by next Wednesday, May 13th.

Swimming has been great!

Grade 2A has had a wonderful time swimming this year.  Everybody is geared up on the bus of our second last day!

April 13-17

Good day everyone.  I hope you all had a great weekend. A couple of things to note this week.  We are swimming today, Wednesday and Thursday.  Thursday is our last day of swimming.  The students have done a great job listening, following directions, and getting changed quickly following to ensure we arrive back to school for dismissal at the end of the day.

A reminder that Wednesday is popcorn day.  Bring 50 cents and get a bag of popcorn for snack.
This Friday at East elementary we are hosting pool D of the Grade 5-6 floor hockey tournament.  The Eagles play their first game at 4pm in the gym.  There will be a concession put on by EEPA, with funds being returned back into East Elementary Programs.  If you have children or siblings playing come out and cheer them on.

One last important reminder, our class pictures will take place next Monday, April 20th.

Language Arts

Spelling:

This week our spelling words continued to work on adding endings.  This week all the words are "short" vowel words that you have to double the last consonant before you add the ending.  For example, map would become mapping.  The exception to this rule is a word ending in x.  You do not double the x.  The spelling words for this week are as follows;

jogging   running   trimming   skipping   shopped   sadder   gladdest   hopped   winning   mixed


Writing:

We continue to look at informative/expository writing versus narrative writing.  We have been comparing strong paragraphs of writing to weak paragraphs.  The students are really starting to grasp the kind of detail required to capture and captivate the reader.  Identifying why a paragraph is strong or weak is very important to being able to write yourself.


Math

The last few weeks we have had a strong focus on 2 digit addition.  Mastering basic math facts (1 digit addition like 8+6) is a great skill and the foundation for 2 digit addition.  The students have been learning many different strategies for doing 2 digit addition.  They have been using hundreds charts (counting by tens and counting by ones), using base 10 blocks, using snap cubes, and we have just started doing vertical addition.  In vertical addition we like to begin with adding the ones together, then add the 10's together. The ones are red, the tens are green.  In the end, this will probably be the easiest and quickest strategy, especially when they eventually get up to 3 digit addition and higher.

   32
+ 46
   78

We will continue with addition and later on subtraction of numbers to 100, into May.


I hope everyone has a great week and weekend ahead.

Mr. Aasen