A Great Trip!

How lucky were we? The sun came out, the temperature rose and the wind died down. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had a great time out at Boggy Creek. A huge thanks to 18a's mom who helped us out on this trip. Also thanks to all the families who made sure their children were dressed appropriately for a winter trip. I feel it is very important that Saskatchewan children learn to appreciate our wonderful outdoors and with that comes learning how to prepare and dress for our weather. We saw all kinds of animal tracks and learned a lot about how animals live in the winter. We had a lot of fun playing the animal hunting game. There was lots of interest in the beaver lodge and dam as well as the two "beaver's kitchens" that we came across. Around the beginning of March we will begin a study of beavers.  I wanted this trip to "pique" their interest in beavers.  

Here are a few pictures of our trip.

Thursday's Trip

Please send your child to school prepared to go on Thursday afternoon. To be honest, I think it will be cancelled. Looking at the forecast it looks like it will be on the borderline of whether we are allowed to go. I would prefer to make the call at lunch time. I imagine if we do go, the weather will be quite chilly. We may not end up staying outside the whole time.

New Button and Kidblog

I have put a new button on the blog so you will be informed by email of any new posts I put on. This way we don't have to keep writing "Check Blog" in our agendas. Please fill out your email.



Our class is starting to blog on the Kidblog site this week. Each student will have their own blog that they will be writing on. They can also access it at home. As we learn more about blogging we will also be putting comments on other students' blogs. I will be a link to Kidblog at the top of our class blog so it is easily accessed. You may want to bookmark it for your child.

100 Nights of Reading

Congratulations to 24t for reaching the 100 nights of home reading goal. He has worked hard and it really shows in his reading.

Best Gym Ever!

Our Friday afternoon of crazy carpeting was so much fun! A special moment for me was when three different students told me it was the first time they had ever done that and they were smiling from ear to ear!  I was also terrified when they sent me flying down the hill. I envisioned going over a bump and breaking something! I survived and passed on a second turn.

Since we have a short week this week we will not have a spelling list. We have finished with the long vowel sounds and the various spellings of each long vowel sound.  This week we will review and practice using all of these sounds.

The students have really been enjoying the L.A. unit on folk and fairy tales. So far they love the "fractured" tales and are really aghast at the cruelty and violence in some of the traditional tales (think of Hansel and Gretal.) I love that these tales really got the kids thinking, evaluating, comparing and connecting. We will end this unit with a look at some versions of folk and fairy tales from other lands.

The students have made great improvement in their use of strategies for adding basic facts. This week we will work on subtraction. Our goal is to get the kids "thinking and using strategies" not just counting.  In Grade Two students should know the subtraction facts under 10 without having to count up or count backwards. For those students who are not yet able to apply the strategies, I do practice  counting up and counting backwards.

Just a reminder that we have an outdoor field trip on Feb. 5 that your child will need ski mitts/gloves and long socks for.

Reading and Math

First of all, congratulations to 7m who has reached 100 nights of reading! Yay! Keep up all this great work Grade Twos!

We have been working very hard on our math facts. Wow! We are really able to do a lot of mental math now. The card game shown below is a great way to practice adding. This week we are working on strategies to add up more than 2 numbers. When adding up a list of four numbers we look for teams of 10, doubles, or we add the largest numbers first.  

Spelling this week is focussed on the long u sound.

Math Fact Strategies

We have been working hard learning all sorts of strategies for adding math facts to 20. I would like to explain some of them here so your can see if your child either knows those fact families or at least knows how to use the strategy. This is the stage where I am teaching the children how to figure out addition facts without simply counting. As far as subtraction goes, it is the goal that once the students learn the "fact family" by memory, they will recognize the difference by knowing the fact family. For example, the children now know their addition doubles by memory so in turn are starting to recognize a "doubles fact" when they see the reverse in subtraction. I can say 14-7 and they know the answer is 7 because "I know 7+7=14."



These are the strategies we have been working on.

1. Doubles- I think all the kids know these by memory.

2. Teams of ten- the various combos of numbers that add up to 10. It is expected in grade two that all kids know these by memory.

3. Near doubles- using either double plus one or doubles minus one for a fact.ex 7+8  is 7+7 +1  or 8+8-1

4. Make or use a ten- this involves +9 or even +8.. Any number adding 9 we pretend the 9 is a 10, so       add 10 then take away 1. Or said another way, 9+7    just borrow 1 from the 7 to make a 10 with the     9, then you have 10 + 6=16.

5. Use a known fact- Sometimes certain facts just stand out for kids. If your child has 4+7 memorized        then they use it to solve 5+7.

 

We have other strategies as well but these are the important ones. All this great brain work is called mental math. Thursday I taught the kids a type of solitaire card game which involves adding numbers. See if they can show it to you at home. It is a really great game for practicing number facts.