RamsayRowland

January 23-27th  It was another awesome week in room 9! We were busy with projects, learning and fun!  Here is a look at our week -    I Can Develop Listening Skills / I Can Sequence Main Ideas in a Story This week students started listening to me read the short novel, Our Friend Hedgehog, This short novel is a great way to help students develop their listening and comprehension skills.  As we are reading each chapter, we stop, talk about, and draw key moments.  Using longer texts is also a great way to help students develop their prediction and summarizing skills over the course of a longer narrative. Here are a few of the discussions questions we have explored as we have been reading -  Discussion Questions Why do you think that Hedgehog lived on an island with only Mutty as a friend? Do you think the illustrations helped or hurt the telling of the story?  Explain your answer. Have you ever lost a friend?  How did it make you feel? Hedgehog...

January 16 - 20th  This was a busy week fiilled with finishing up projects, continuing on with new learning tasks . Here is a glimpse of some of our week -  I can decompose numbers into groups of 100s, 10s and 1s in a variety of ways using base ten blocks, pictures and symbols when working through independent tasks. I can create works of art using base 10 blocks and determine the number value of the picture.  This week we continued our look at numbers to 100 (grade 1) and numbers to 1000 (grade 2). Grade 1's spent time representing numbers and determining the value of the digits in their numbers. Grade 2's spent time finding numbers around the room, reading them and writing them in numerical form. They then spent time arranging the numbers in numerical order.  The next challenge was to create a base 10 person animal or vehicle. Students built the subject of their art from base 10 blocks and then added their artistic touches to their designs. Their last step was to de...

  January 9-13th  Welcome back, hope everyone had a wonderful break. We Had a wonderful week back together, reconnecting and sharing stories and adventures from our break.  Here is a glimpse at our week together -  Literacy: Grade 1 reviewed words with four letters such as CVCC or CCVC words (last, fast, trap, flip) through different tasks such as building words, writing words in sentences and reading passages.  We also introduced the diagraph  /sh/ and examined how it is found in the beginning, middle and end of words (shop, dishes, fish). A diagrph is a when two consecutive letters work together to make one sound.  Grade 2 also reviewed phonic skills that they worked on prior to the break and were introduced to the diagraph  /ph/  - phone, graph. We continued to build on our writing skills through narrative writing. Students wrote in their journals using the following sentence starters -  Over the winter break I  . . .  My fa...

December 12 - 16th Grade 1 and 2 had another week packed full of engaging learning, exploration and discovery.  Here is a look into our week together -  This week we continued our look at the season of winter, hot and cold and liquids as we dove into some literature on snow and snowflakes. We used the book Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin as a starting point . This is a nonfiction biography about a scientist and photographer who was fascinated with photographing snowflakes and their features. Students were inspired by Bentley's ambition to achieve his dream and the discoveries he made and they enjoyed looking at old photos of Bentley and his collections. From there we moved into two poetic story books - Snow by Uri Shulevitz and Snow by Cynthia Rylant where we collected a list of descriptive words for Snow. From there students were challenged to create their own poems using the format of a cinquain poems and words from our list.  Here is an awesome link that ...

December 5 -9th  We had another great week learning, discovering, creating and exploring together.  This is a little snapshot of our week -  i Can Use Different Mediums to Create. i can apply what i know about line, shape and texture to create.  We have been learning about ice in correlation to our unit on liquids and hot and cold in science. We have also been linking this to our look at Nunavut and the diverse features of glaciers and icebergs. Students have been fascinated with the size, shapes and colors of icebergs. This inspired us to look at art created with icebergs  as its subject.  We discovered Lawren Stewart Harris- a Canadian painter who was one of the original founders of the Group of  7. His work inspired us to create our own Iceberg art using chalk pastels.    I Can Appreciate the Diversity of Communities in Canada . I Can Examine and Explain Similarities and Differences in Communities in Canada As we continue to examine the di...

November 28 - Dec 2nd Welcome to December! We had a cold but enjoyable week in grade 1 & 2 in room 9. Here is a glimpse into our week - Literacy - We are very fortunate to have Ms Yasin working with students at Ramsay for the next few weeks. Ms Paradis and myself have opted to have our grade 2 readers(Group B)  to work with Ms Yasin on phonics, fluency, reading and writing while we continue this work with the rest of our class. Students in this group will work with Ms Yasin from 8:30 - 9:30 am - Monday - Thursdays so it is important that they do their best to get to school on time. This week this group reviewed vowel graphemes and applied it to their reading and writing.  Group A- my group worked on reviewing short vowels this week as these can be tricky to isolate and identify. We reviewed these phonemes through group and individual work  on reading and writing CVC words. At the end of the week we worked through a short reading passage together, then students practic...

November 21 - 24th  I can make Predictions and test my predictions. I can discover the meaning behind surface tension and cohesion. I can mix liquids and discover that liquids have different densities.  Students worked through two different scientific inquiries this week involving liquids. The first experiment involved dropping water droplets on a penny. Students first had to make a prediction on how many droplets would sit on a penny before spilling over and then put their predictions to the test in 3 different trials to determine if they noticed a difference between the trials.  The second experiment involved adding different materials to water (water, food coloring, oil and soap) to observe what would happen. Students discovered that the oil and water separated when added together and then were excited to see how the dish soap affected the mixture.  Students were encouraged to try these experiments at home to show what they have learned.  I Can Add and Decomp...