Ms. Midgley's Blog

Hello everyone! Today we continued on with talking about our dreams for ourselves and we made Valentine's Day cards to send across Canada. I can't remember if I wrote about this already... but, we made 20 Valentine's cards with familiar Calgary landmarks and logos and used water colour paints. We are sending them to 20 different schools across Canada and then we will receive 20 cards from each of these schools. I will mail them this weekend and we will start to receive our Valentine's over the next couple of weeks. Here are some examples! At the end of the day we watched a story online about Groundhog day! Let's hope the groundhog doesn't see his shadow on Saturday! Report cards went home today!! Students have been asked to give the envelope to their parents and then parents can share if they would like to. I am hoping they will see your eyes first! If you did not read my last post about report cards, please do!!  Please note that because of our new onl...

Hello families! We had a great time with Clay for Kids this morning! Ask your child more about it! Here are some photos. In the afternoon we continued talking about dreams for our Salvador Dali art. I thought it was very sweet because I was trying to get students to think about dreams for themselves, before we start talking about dreams on a larger scale, but so many of them wanted to share dreams for their community and city. They brainstormed ideas using pictures and words in their visual journals. We also joined our buddy class for gymnastics!

Hello families! Today we enjoyed learning more about the Acadians by using books to do some research, working on our gymnastics skills, having music, and preparing for Clay for Kids Tomorrow. Clay for Kids Tomorrow students will be making both a stained glass and clay project! We will have Clay for Kids from 9:00-11:30. If you are volunteering, please try to arrive around 9 or just before! As we talked about today, I would suggest not wearing your favourite clothes tomorrow... just in case! In the afternoon we will share our PE time with our grade 3 buddy class so we don't miss out on gymnastics! February Scholastic Forms went home today! I only had a few flyers so there will be a bigger selection online if you'd like to take a look. They will be due Monday, February 11th. Have a great evening!

Hello everyone! This morning we had library and students were joined by a substitute teacher as I was in a meeting. We then chose our weekly words from the "-un" family and we came up with lots of challenge words! We then had Guest Reader and continued with our gymnastics unit. Please ensure students with long hair are wearing their hair up or bringing a hair tie. In the afternoon we had our literacy groups with Ms. Kassam and revisted our math problems from last week. I decided to slow it down and give one question to each student and work together on how we can best organize our work and show our thinking to improve our math communication skills! Here is an example! At the very end of the day we watched a video about the Acadians from National Geographic. We have a busy week coming up this week! We will be learning more about the Acadians in preparation for Wednesday's Clay for Kids visit, working on our Salvador Dali art and talking about our dreams for...

Hello everyone! Today the kids started their day with Explore and Play and music. During work period we continued with our addition from the other day, our Weekly Words and we started talking about word problems. Students were using a variety of materials and several students enjoyed working with the Golden Bead Stamps to record their work in their books. There were 4 different difficulties for them to choose from. In the afternoon we had our literacy groups and talked about PEI. At the very end of the day we started thinking of the question: What is a Dream?  The students came up with some really interesting answers! Here are some from both our class and Miss Ireland's. Tomorrow we will have a visitor come in to teach us about an artist and start us on an interesting inquiry around the idea of dreams. TOMORROW WE ARE SHOWING OUR SCHOOL SPIRIT BY WEARING OUR LAKE BONAVISTA SCHOOL T-SHIRTS. IF YOU DIDN'T ORDER ONE, YOU CAN WEAR A BLUE T-SHIRT INSTEAD! 

Hi everyone! Today we continued on with some of our work from yesterday and we began talking about Nova Scotia. Students struggled a little bit with their addition yesterday and our focus on place value but today we had a lot of moments of clarity which was great to see! I love to hear... "Ohhhh, NOW I get it!!" Here is a sample of what we've been working on. This student was using the Coloured Bead Bars to solve 2-digit by 1-digit addition. There was also an option of 1-digit addition and 2-digit by 2-digit addition. We worked on these tasks during a short work period in the morning and some work time in the afternoon. We did not have our literacy groups today as Ms. Kassam was away. Tomorrow students will have music in the morning and we are going to move on to the last province on our Canada Maps... Prince Edward Island!!

Oops! I forgot to actually post this yesterday... Sorry! Hi everyone! Here are our "-ub" words for this week! So far our gymnastics with equipment has been going very well - the students are being very safe and responsible! Today we were working on some review of addition and how we need to properly line up our numbers when adding. Students were using a variety of different materials to help them understand this concept and we will continue to practice! We are so close to finishing up our maps. We just have Nova Scotia and PEI left and then we will be confusing on the Acadians in preparation for our Clay for Kids visit. Clay for Kids On Wednesday, January 30th, Clay for Kids will be visiting our classroom and supporting us in a fused glass project. Forms went home for this yesterday. Please return the forms/money by Friday. The cost is $15 per student - Thank you to our amazing School Council for helping reduce this cost from its' original $20/student.

Hello everyone! Today we had a busy day! We had our last day of mat work in PE and next week we will be starting with the equipment. We also had a spelling quiz today! I let students know on Monday that we would have a quiz. This was a formative assessment check-in to see who is actually practicing their weekly words, who is choosing words that are too easy or too hard, and to see if our new word work program is working effectively! I was looking to see not necessarily that the words are spelled correctly, but if students could sound them out and get the beginning, middle or end sounds. I saw a lot of improvement from our spelling quiz at the beginning of their year. I think we will start doing spelling quizzes for the grade 2 students more consistently and for any grade 1s who would also like to participate! I feel it's important for students to have some experience with a quiz before going into grade 3 when they will be doing the provincial exams. We don't want this to be t...

Hello families, Today we continued working with counting-on, our weekly "-ip" words and our Canada maps. We talked about Nunavut today and watched some videos. We started talking about the language of Inuktitut and throat singing. There is a band called "The Jerry Cans" and they are a Inuit folk band from Iqaluit. We watched their Juno performance so the students could hear what throat singing and their language sounded like. There were a lot of mixed reviews - some students thought it sounded beautiful and others said creepy. We discussed how to be respectful of something we may not completely understand and that saying their singing is "creepy" doesn't show respect to other cultures. Check it out here - it's quite interesting! We are still continuing with our gymnastics unit! If your child has long hair, it would be appreciated if you can provide a hair tie for them to keep in their cubby during the month of January! Gymnastics HEAD T...

Hello everyone! I apologize for no Monday blog post this week - I had to rush to an appointment after school. Yesterday and today we have been working on words from the "-ip" family, practicing our writing, and working on the "counting on" strategy when adding. We came up with a list of things that make "good writing" and students wrote about their weekends. We will continue to work with "counting on" tomorrow and we will move on to the territory of Nunavut on our maps.  Today we also tested our insulators. We discussed what worked well and what did not work well and students will be able to use their Explore and Play time in the mornings to either fix or make new insulators. Our control ice cube lasted 3hrs and the most effective insulator slowed the process down to 5 hours!!  Please note that registration for the 2019-2020 school year is now open!  YOGA We very lucky to have a parent volunteer offer to share her yog...

Hi everyone! This morning students had music and during work period we were finishing up our jobs from yesterday. We also talked a little bit about directions and the compass rose and added this to our maps. In the afternoon we started back up on our literacy group time with Ms. Kassam. We are continuing to work on the 6 traits of effective writing, specifically focusing on ideas! We then continued our discussion about insulators. We made a list of insulators that we use often such as: - Jackets - Fridge/freezer - Coffee Mug (regular mug vs. travel mug) - Blanket - Animal Fat - Houses We started making our blue prints of our mini "freezers" based on the materials we have available at school. I noticed some students were struggling with their designs so we stopped for the day and watched a couple of videos and discussed insulators a little more. Some students may have brought home a sticky note with a material they were hoping to bring that they didn't see...

Hi everyone! Today we practiced our weekly words and created "word goals." This is sort of like a New Year's resolution. We brainstormed character traits that we might want to improve on and students chose one word to focus in on. They wrote about why they chose this work at two action steps they can take to reach their goal. We also started talking about hot and cold. Students could choose between a cut and paste activity of items that are hot and cold, which they then put into a T-chart, or drawing/writing their own items. In the afternoon we continued on with our map activity and discussed Northwest Territories. At the very end of the day we watched a Magic School Bus about hot and cold and insulation. We will be starting a task based on these ideas tomorrow! Again, if you have any materials (tin foil, styrofoam, plastic, etc.) that may be helpful in building insulators we would really appreciate them!! Make sure you check out the AARCS Calgary Faceboo...

Hello everyone! Happy New Year! We had a great day back at school today. The students were eager and ready to visit with their friends and get some work done! This morning we shared about our breaks, had library, and brainstormed words from the "-ay" family. Students brought their word lists home. We talked about the use of the word gay meaning happy!  In the afternoon students chose their words and then headed to music. At the end of the day we enjoyed some birthday cupcakes and watched a video about celebrations and traditions in Canada. I'm looking forward to our first week back! We are going to be starting a project about hot and cold temperatures and insulation. If you have any materials at home that you think would be beneficial in our building we would really appreciate you sending them to school! We will create a list of these materials as a class tomorrow and I will share that list on the blog. Thank you!