November 4, 2013

Fun Friday Free Choice!

Some highlights from the past couple of weeks...

Fun Friday: You may have heard that the 2A and 2B classes earn behaviour points during lunch hour. Each point translates to one minute toward Fun Friday, which is held on the first Friday of each month. Classes can earn up to three points per day. For the month of October, 2A earned 18 points and 2B earned 19 points! Students enjoyed some free choice time in the classroom last Friday.

"Odd" House

Math: We built Odd & Even Street, with odd and even house numbers. There is a small display outside the classroom, but unfortunately, we didn't have enough room to put up all of the houses.

We participated in a national math competition on the SumDog website. The contest is open until November 7th, so please encourage your child to participate at home. As of Sunday evening, we had completed close to 1000 math questions altogether!

We learned how to represent two-digit numbers with tens and ones, using rods and cubes.  Students also enjoyed building their own numbers using the free iPad app, Number Pieces Basic and having a partner guess their number. The students in the photos extended their knowledge of base ten blocks by building three-digit numbers!

"Work on Writing" during Daily 5

Language Arts: We wrote autumn poetry (on display in the classroom) and completed a story starter about a scarecrow.

As of November 1, students have begun to track their choices for Daily 5 on a record sheet. "Work on Writing" has been a popular choice lately with students eager to design their own word search activity for the current spelling words.

Game Pass!

Every week, students are held accountable for making sure they have completed their home reading. The students in the photo are playing a board game they earned from their turn at Homeworkopoly.

Just a friendly reminder that every student currently has one or two books they have borrowed from the classroom library. Many students are choosing to read books from their personal collections instead. If this is the case, I kindly ask that you please return our classroom books, so that other students can borrow them.

The "Drawing Pad" app in action

Theme: Students used the iPad apps, Drawing Pad and Strip Deisgner to create a sea animal project. First, students chose an animal from a book, drew it on the iPad, imported the drawing into a comic template, and typed their names, a title, and a sentence about their animal. Students had free reign over the design elements of their projects, including fonts, colours, and text boxes. Strip Designer, in particular, is an app we will utilize often for quick projects.

A proud student shares his Pet Pal journal entry.

Edit: Thanks for all of the offers. Our Pet Pal now has a place to call home for the following weekend! Don't forget to email me to sign up for future visits.