September 11 - 15th

We had an amazing first full week together continuing to build on community, friendship, identity and belonging. As a group we have been discovering our identities through the lens of the Medicine wheel as well as establishing our understandings of expectations of us as learners using this framework. We will continue to dive deeper into this work throughout the year. 

Here is a snippet at what we have been focusing on over the week - (my apologies I did not take many photos this week).

Literacy: Foundational literacy is supported by phonics which includes learning about letters and sounds and their correspondence as knowing the relationship between letters and sounds supports reading print messages. We have started the year off by reviewing the following grapheme-phoneme (letter sound) correspondence:

short vowels: /a/- ant  /e/- end  /i/ - itch, /o/-octopus, /u/- up 

FLSZ rule - the letters f, l, s, z are doubled after a short vowel sound, for example - Jeff will pass Buzz.

diagraphs (when two letters come together to produce a new sound): /ck/ back, /sh/ sheep, /th/ this, /th/thumb, /ch/ chop

As part of this work students worked through various activities and tasks to build on their phonetic and phonemic awareness such as word work, word chains, build a word, roll and read and reading passages. These activities will be coming home with your child on a weekly basis so you can see what they have been working on at school and will allow you to support their learning at home as well as to celebrate their progress with them. 

Exploring listening and speaking through building stories and oral story telling - Students have been engaging in the practice of building stories using loose parts and the oral tradition of sharing these stories with others. This is another foundation of literacy which centers on communication, respect and collaboration. Students have enjoyed this purposeful play with materials in order to create a representation of their ideas /stories and then sharing with their peers and teachers. 

Math - this week we continued our focus on patterns,  building on understanding that patterns are created by attributes such as color, shape, size, position, direction and that they must repeat. Students were tasked with determining the attribute of patterns and identifying the core of the pattern and how many times the core repeated (term). The other work we took up this week was a review of numbers 0-100, finding them on a hundreds board, reading numerals, identifying numbers built with base ten blocks and building numbers to represent numerals. In this work we were also looking at place value - the position of each digit in a number (one and tens). 

Science - Throughout the school year we will interweave the units of computer science and scientific method into our program. These focus on the guiding questions - How can creativity support design? and What methods and processes can be used in scientific investigation?

We have already integrated these guiding principles into our work as we look at how we can view our world through a scientific lens and through holistic indigenous principles. This week we spent time outside in our natural spaces around our school being mindful of our surroundings and all we can learn and appreciate from nature but also focussing on what we can give back to our surroundings. As a group we engaged in sit spots, conversations about what we sense and how we feel on the land as well as time nature journalling where we were focused on looking at objects from afar and close up. These practices were complimentary to our work on our first unit of Earth Science where we built representations of the systems found on earth - Land, water, air, plants, humans and animals. 

Name Art -  Representing our names and identities through water colors. 

Important Dates/Information

Monday, September 18 - Please have your child's "The Story of My Name" returned to school. 

Wednesday, September 20 –  

• Library Day: please send the library books that your child borrowed last week (1-2 books) back to school in order for them to be able to sign out new books this week.  Wednesdays will be our scheduled book exchange day. 

Thursday, September 21 – 

• Terry Fox Run – 10:00 – 10:30 am - **please send your child in appropriate footwear and clothing to participate in this activity along with a water bottle. Parents are welcome to join us on the upper field for the activity. 

•  We will be accepting Toonies for Terry until the end of September to support Terry Fox's legacy and the Canadian Cancer Society.
• Meet the Teacher / Open House – 3:30 - 5:00 pm : This will be your chance to meet your child’s teachers, see the school and their classroom. Please plan to drop in at any point between 3:30-5:00 to have your child lead you on a tour of their classroom.

  Please note this will not be a time to discuss individual student learning or concerns. If you have a specific concern that needs to be addressed by the teacher, please reach out and schedule an appointment.

Friday, September 22 –    

• Non Instructional Day – No Classes for Students

Thursday, September 28 - 

• Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation will be honoured at school. 

Friday, September 22 - 

• National Day for Truth and Reconciliation - in lieu of  - Schools Closed