lundi le 5 janvier 2016
Happy New Year Division 6 families! We are back in the classroom to continue our fun learning activities. To enrich our experiences, we have some exciting field trips and guest presentations planned this term. For example, we will go on a Native Plant tour at Beacon Hill Park and watch the Victoria Symphony perform at UVIC. In preparation for our Symphony visit, our first in-class presentation will be a trumpet player next Tuesday, January 12th.
In Language Arts this term, there will be more of a focus on writing. This week, students are reviewing the present tense of the irregular verbs avoir (to have) and être (to be). For Grade 3's, these verbs are to be memorized for the next two dictées on January 14th and 28th. We sing songs to help us remember them and we have them posted in the classroom as a visual reference when speaking, reading and writing. Today students shared one thing they did during their holiday, orally and in their journals. They are learning to write a topic sentence, then add interesting details. This will lead into our paragraph writing skills in the upcoming weeks. Students will also be learning to write letters to their new Doncaster pen pals. Grade 2's are continuing to do additional reading and phonics activities with Mme Rolston, while Grade 3's are doing English Language learning.
In English, Grade 3's will continue where they left of before the holidays. This week we will review grammar topics such as proper and common nouns, plural nouns, possessive nouns and homonyms. Next are prefixes and suffixes. In Reading, we will continue our novel study of Stuart Little, by EB White. To support reading at home, Grade 3 students now have access to a great reading program called RAZ Kids. Log-on information will be coming home by Tuesday, January 12th.
In Math, Grade 2's are now learning their basic addition and subtraction skills. Number sense booklets have gone home today and students are encouraged to complete these at home and return them to Mme Rolston upon completion. Grade's 3's are asked to begin memorizing the multiplication table. Today we reviewed some of the strategies for multiplying by 0, 1, 2 and 10. A multiplication table was sent home before the holidays. We will soon have a fill-in-the blank test. Students are encouraged to practice at home. One fun way of doing this is to login onto abcya.com. Search for multiplication games!
In Social Studies, students have started a geography unit on mapping. We will learn to map our classroom and our school. Today students learned how to read a compass using a pirate treasure map. Students will also soon be learning about our world continents and Canada's provinces and capitals. We will begin a Science Unit on plants later in the term when we go to Beacon Hill Park for a plant tour and visit our local parks in early Spring.
In PE, we will continue our basketball unit. Our focus is on ball handling and team building. Our library visits for term 2 are now on Friday's and we will have the opportunity to visit with our part-time librarian/comedian, Mr Leichner! Please help your child remember to return and/or renew their library books weekly on Fridays.
Please note that Monday January 11th there is no school and is a PRO-D Day for teachers. We will be getting to know our new BC curriculum, which will be rolling out (most probably) this coming September 2016. This is when many teachers will begin transitioning to some of these new big ideas and concepts. Drafts of the new curriculum are available at https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/.
Have a wonderful week, Mme Garcin