Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe time trick-o-treating tonight! This week is also spirit week at St.Anne.... Monday - Orange and Black Day Tuesday - PJ Day Wednesday - Crazy hair and hat Day Thursday - Storybook or Character Day Friday - Sports Day Students are encouraged to bring in a one time donation for their participation in this weeks events (all money raised going towards the United Way). Thursday our class will be participating in Scientists in Science. Our focus will be on Simple Machines. If you are able to volunteer, please consider doing so as we cannot make these days work without our amazing volunteers.

Weekly update

This week we began our new units in both Math and Language. In math, students began exploring 2D shapes. We discussed all the different ways we can describe shapes and began exploring how to sort shapes based upon sorting rules. Students got into quiet a debate over the semi-circle. We cannot decide whether a semi-circle has one side and whether or not it has two corners. I wonder if students found any information to help us settle our debate! In language, students began their new unit on descriptive writing. We discussed the importance of rich descriptive words and how they help a reader visualize a text. We are working on a descriptive writing piece about our homes. If there are any pictures of their homes (inside/outside) that are easily available for student's to bring to school, they would be very helpful. Housekeeping: A message from Kingdom club - The Kingdom Club will be having its annual food drive for the Kanata Food Cupboard from October 24-28. We encourage you to bring in canned foods and non perishable food items [things that don't need to be refrigerated]. Other non-perishable items such as diapers, wipes and toiletries are also much appreciated! Our goal this year is 1,500 items, which is about 3 items per person in our school. This Halloween, help us to scare hunger!

I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend surround by your loved ones. The students were all eager to share their Thanksgiving day adventures with the class. I look forward to reading all about their weekends in their final task for our recount unit. Next week, we will be starting our new unit on descriptive writing. Students have also be enjoying participating in the Global Read Aloud project. Last week, students explored the book 'Nana in the city.' Check out our hard work: photopeach.com/album/14i5640 In math, we will be wrapping up our unit on representing, comparing and ordering whole numbers this week. Students will be completing two assessment tasks to show their understanding of this unit. I am impressed at how well students have been using our anchor charts to ensure answers are complete. At home, students are encouraged to keep practicing how to write numbers up to twenty. Housekeeping item: School photos will take place October 20. Please remember NOT to wear green!

This past Thursday, our class was responsible for leading our grade 2 liturgy.  Our class did a wonderful job modelling respective behaviour and the liturgy ran smoothly.  Thank you to my student readers who did a wonderful job!

Our Thanksgiving Mass will be celebrated in the gym this Thursday at 1:15pm.

In math, our focus has extended beyond representing and comparing numbers to ordering numbers.  We have been exploring how to use base ten blocks and hundreds charts to help us order numbers from greatest to least and least to greatest.

In language, students are working on their media poster to help demonstrate what they learned through our digital citizenship lessons.  Ask your child what they learned about their digital footprint.  Our focus this week will be finishing our recount unit and launching our participating in the Global Read Aloud project.  It is an exciting project that will extend for six weeks and involves us reading a particular read aloud each week while over 800,000 other students do so around the world at the same time and complete a variety of tasks surrounding this read aloud.  Stay tuned to see what exciting connections and experiences we have participating in this project.

A few household matters:
1.  I sent home the homework calendar for October on Friday.  As the letter states, this calendar is a suggested home learning option.  It is not obligatory and does not need to be returned to school each month. 
2.  Friday is a PD day.  Hoping students and their families have a wonderful long Thanksgiving weekend.  School will resume on Tuesday.
3.  Laces!  Some students are having significant difficulty tying their shoes and as a result are becoming a safety concern especially when in the gym.  If your child has lace up running shoes for school, please encourage them to practice tying them.  Thank you for your patience and attention to this matter.