Mrs. Page's Grade 1/2 Class

My apologies for not posting sooner. We’ve had a busy couple weeks finishing up our shapes unit and moving on to graphing. We also finished our story retells and have been enjoying some new classroom books. I’d like to thank our special friends who donated toys for all our students, which the kids received yesterday. My gratitude to all of you for your well-wishes and kind gifts. I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday filled with time together as a family. I look forward to seeing you all in 2020. All the best, Megan Page

You are welcome to come to room 155 this Thursday December 12 at 3pm to view our amazing structures!  We will present to you the 2d and 3d shapes we used. Please join us if you can!

On Thursday, your child will bring home their most recent writing assignment, a retell based on the book, “The Little Red Hen”. Please review the feedback I have provided and the success criteria as well. Below are two examples (a Grade 1, then Grade 2) of grade-level retells. These students have a received a B on this assignment and have met most of the success criteria. You can review these examples with your child as well. Next week, we will be doing our final retell where I will evaluate and assign a writing mark. Thanks for your support!

Hi Everyone, Sorry for the late notice, but the first spelling test will be on TUESDAY this week, not Monday. I hope you all had a great weekend!

We have been working on writing retells of stories we have read in class.  This involves retelling the important parts of the story, in order. Students need to use words such as “first”, “next”, “then” and “finally”. Please see the guidelines below that we developed in class. You can write a retell of one of your just right books or library books!

Grade 2 students are learning to identify edges, vertices and faces on 3d shapes. Check out the chart we made in class!  You can practise counting at home!

This week, we have been building 3d shapes using a variety of materials. We used toothpicks and plasticine or paper with tape, to create a variety of shapes. Can you spot the following shapes: cube, rectangular prism, pyramid, sphere, cone, cylinder, triangular prism?

Today, I introduced the students to the Prodigy Math Game. It has been recommended to me by several other teachers as a fun (and free!) way to keep math practise going at home. I am able to program the content of the questions for the students, so that it aligns with what we are focusing on at school.  Please see your child's homework folder for login and password information. As this is my first time using the program, please do give me your feedback! Please note that I am not asking you to buy a membership to the program. You can still enjoy Prodigy without paying anything, as far as I can tell.  I know the ads can be frustrating, but I think the kids will get used to closing them when they come up.  I did test the program myself, but only got a glimpse of the possibilities. Thanks and enjoy! http://play.prodigygame.com

As you know, we have been studying geometry in Math this month. We have been looking at all sorts of different 2d and 3d shapes. Recently, we looked at some examples of Islamic art and architecture that featured several geometric patterns. We love the symmetry and design in these pieces. We are currently creating our own ‘Tiles of Infinity’ project, inspired by the beautiful Islamic artwork seen in class.

Thank you to everyone who was able to make the time to come in and speak with me last week at the school.  It was a pleasure to sit down with you all and discuss your child's learning. We set some great goals for your children, and I am putting the plans in place that we discussed to help your child succeed! I am looking forward to continuing our work together! MP

We will visit the book fair tomorrow afternoon. If you would like to send money with your child, please ensure it is in the envelope sent home today. The book fair is also open after school this week, if you’d prefer to attend with your child and perhaps supervise their selections ;) it is located in the school library.

I always like to take the kids out for the first snowfall of the year, and yesterday was a great opportunity to make some shapes in the snow!  We made mostly 2d shapes, but created some 3D shapes as well.

Students will be receiving their report cards next Tuesday November 12. I will hold interviews to discuss your child’s progress on Thursday November 14, from 3:45-6:00pm and Friday November 15 from 8:45am-12:30pm (this is a PA Day). Please feel free to email me to let me know when you would like to come in. Megan.page@tdsb.on.ca Thanks!

Here are our new learning goals for the next 3-4 weeks.

Congratulations to our Grade 2 students who did an amazing job at skating on Tuesday afternoon. They all learned to skate and showed incredible perseverance. Well done!

Picture Day is tomorrow October 30!  Bring your big smiles!

The Grade 2’s will go skating with Mrs. Page and Mrs. Macnamara’s class on Tuesday November 5 in the afternoon. Please send in the permission forms as soon as possible. Grade one student will have a regular afternoon of programming with a supply teacher, while we are at the rink.

Halloween will take place on Thursday. Children may wear costumes, if desired. Please make sure that costumes do not include weapons. We will have a few Halloween activities available, but will otherwise continue our regular programming.

This week we created stamps of our animals to make prints. We also wrote procedural writing pieces about ‘How to Make a Stamp’. Friday was printing day and everything turned out great!

Check out our new Promethean Board!  We are using it to display and interact with webpages, documents and pictures.

Here is how to represent numbers using base tens. We are showing that numbers are made up of tens and ones:

Thank you so much to everyone who was able to come to curriculum afternoon it was great to see you all and I hope you enjoyed your visit to our classroom. I have included a digital version of my handouts here for you to access. Please contact me with any questions. Have a wonderful weekend and I will see you on Tuesday!  Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating. 

We are busy researching our animals!  We are using  PebbleGo  to learn information and find facts about our animals. The categories we are researching are: Habitat, Appearance, Life Cycle, Food, Human Interactions and Fun Facts. We can’t wait to learn all about each other’s animals. 

Please join us for curriculum afternoon!  Both grade 1 and 2 families are welcome! Details below:

Our curriculum afternoon, for both grade 1 and 2 families, will be this Thursday. I will send a note home to confirm timing. Thanks!

Next week (October 10), we will participate in the Terry Fox Run during school time. As a part of this initiative, we are collecting ‘toonies for Terry’ that will go to the Terry Fox Foundation and assist with funding cancer research. Please send in a toonie for Terry, if you can. Thanks!

Hello Families, My apologies for not yet getting the October calendar to you. I am expecting that our schedule will be changing in the next couple of days, and I am hoping to get this information before sending the calendar out. Thank you for your patience! In the mean time: Wednesday October 2: Music Thursday October 3: Media Literacy Friday October 4: Respect Assembly and Gym I will have information to you soon about curriculum afternoon, which will likely be next week. Thanks!

Monday is orange shirt day in the TDSB. Please read the post below, explaining the significance of wearing an orange shirt to school. We will be viewing some age-appropriate texts on Monday as well.   https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Community/Indigenous-Education/Resources/Indigenous-Days-of-Significance

We have found a few insects for observation in our terrarium. We searched the school yard and found a couple worms, some ants and a spider (we think!). 

Tomorrow after lunch, we will be heading to the back schoolyard to go for a short walk in support of the planet!  We have been thinking and talking about how to make the earth healthier. We will also be singing a short song with some other classes about how we need the earth, the sun and the rain.

We are currently exploring patterns in our math class. Thursday and Friday will involve painting some patterns, so please make sure that students dress appropriately (eg not in their clothes!). We will do our best to stay clean, but may get a bit messy :)

Students have been learning rhythmic patterns in music class this week. They are learning to hear a rhythmic pattern and represent it with sticks. What an amazing activity that combines creativity with mathematical process. Thanks Ms. Paulsen!!

We have recently begun our new subject area, “Inquiry”.  Inquiry involves asking questions and learning new things about the world around us. Most recently, we have been investigating our new equipment which we borrowed from the TDSB Science Department. Here are some photos of us using magnifying glasses and pocket microscopes. Tomorrow, we will be looking around the schoolyard for bugs and insects to add to our terrarium.

One of the ways that I encourage kind and helpful behaviour in our class is by recognizing it with a ballot. Students who are extra respectful or helpful, will receive a ‘ballot’. This ballot then goes in to the ballot box. At the end of each month, we have a ballot draw from the box and the four students who have their ballot drawn will win a prize. Each month the ballots are associated with the monthly character trait; this month is Respect. Go get those ballots!

Today we read a very funny book called, “I Just Ate My Friend” by Heidi McKinnon. We read the book and then discussed how to behave in the lunchroom. We decided to create a ‘good lunchroom’ of monsters and a ‘bad lunchroom’ of monsters. Can you tell what our monsters are doing below?  Which monster did you create?

The Terry Fox Club runs every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 8:15-8:45. Join us in the school yard for some exercise in honour of Terry!  Please make sure to sign a permission form on your first morning (parent signature required). Club is canceled on rainy days.

Every day we have an activity period where students can choose a classroom material to use, or finish up work that hasn’t been competed. Today, we enjoyed playing with our newly-made play dough!  Two students also built an amazing LEGO house using all of the bricks!  Great co-operation everyone!

We use these zones to describe how we are feeling. The zones help us to communicate how we are doing and help us to use strategies to get back to the ‘Green Zone’.  We will keep discussing these zones over the coming days.

Our class has established the following rules: - Always do your best work - Treat others kindly  - Follow instructions given by teachers Please see our drawings and words! 

Wow!  Look at this amazing pentomino puzzle created by one of our students! How many pieces do you think are in the puzzle?

Hello Everyone and welcome back to school! I can't wait to see you all on the first day of school.  We are going to have a wonderful year of learning together.  Please follow along with our blog for more information about our classroom and Grade 1/2 program.  I will also post photos of our work, curriculum updates and special event information.  If you have specific questions, please email me at megan.page@tdsb.on.ca I look forward to getting to know you and your family!