Ms. Midgley's Blog

Happy Halloween! 👻 🎃 Don't forget that tomorrow is a PD day. See you on Monday! 

Hello families of room 13, This morning I was feeling as if the class didn't even need me! During Explore & Play time, one student was helping a small group on the pumpkin art that they missed yesterday, and another student was leading a Kids Art Hub step-by-step drawing of a witch. How self-sufficient! Before music, we added the labels to our pumpkin art. Here is an example of our finished Parts of a Pumpkin art! I sent them home with everyone today. Students went to music, and because some classes were using the gym to practice for their assembly, we did some Go Noodles in the classroom. During work period, students practiced their words, finished up their pumpkin art if they needed more time, and worked on a Halloween graphing activity. The question: How many more  pumpkins than ghosts? was definitely a challenge for a lot of students!  In the afternoon, we had mindful minutes and had time for a Halloween story before the assembly. Ms. Brown, Ms....

Hi everyone! Today we practiced our Halloween weekly words and began an art project to show the different parts of a pumpkin. We will add our labels for the different parts tomorrow morning. In gym we continued playing Halloween tag. In the afternoon we had some daily 5 literacy time and library. Next week, we are going to try doing 2 daily 5 stations each day so we can cycle through them faster which will allow me to meet with each group more often! Thursday Halloween Centres - Volunteers Needed On Thursday morning, we will be doing some Halloween centres with some of the other grade 1/2 classes. These will be our activities: Mr. Link - Spooky Smells Ms. Carroll - Slime Mrs. Green - Pumpkin Geometry Mrs. Ireland - Halloween Art Ms. Midgley - Halloween Just Dance In order for Ms. Carroll to run a slime station, she will need 2-3 parent volunteers. If you are available to volunteer from 8:45-11:40 on Thursday morning and you are comfortable making slime, please se...

Hello families! It is Hallo-week! I don't know how the end of October came so quickly! This morning, students were given some Halloween weekly words. They could choose one of the following lists and had to practice them once. Orange: boo, bat, cat, spell, moon, mask Blue: ghost, scary, trick, treat, magic, party Purple: witch, skeleton, cauldron, broomstick, jack-o-lantern, Halloween During snack we did our pumpkin seed taste test! Quite a few students had never tried pumpkin seeds before. We had a few students who were hesitant to try them, but once they saw how much the other students enjoyed them, everyone willingly tasted them. We graphed the data we collected about who liked the seeds and students described the seeds by considering their 5 senses. We also had time for daily 5 literacy time and guest reader in the morning. In the afternoon, we had mindful minutes, and did our classroom jobs. In gym, we played Halloween tag and then after reces...

Hello families! Today we read the story, "The Bad Seed" to start off our big seed-counting day. During work period, students practiced their weekly words and finished up any work from earlier in the week that wasn't completed. During our short Friday gym time, we played some freeze dance. We then got started on our pumpkin seed counting! We read a story called "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?" which gave us some hints about how many seeds there might be, as well as some counting strategies. The book explained that pumpkins that are darker in colour and have more lines, have been on the vine longer so they develop more seeds (for each line - there is a row of seeds) and that lighter coloured pumpkins with less lines are likely to have less seeds. The book also suggested counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s to count up all the seeds. Students made predictions and then started making their seed groups. It quickly became obvious that we needed some help, so I called up ou...

Hi families! Today we had a lot of fun with our pumpkins! This morning we read a story called "The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin." We practiced our "-et" words, finished colouring our mini-books, and each group came up to weigh their pumpkin. Our lightest pumpkin was 7.6 lbs and the heaviest pumpkin was 13 lbs. Students used their 4 senses (no tasting!) to describe their pumpkins and were able to design their own jack-o-lanterns. I knew the groups wouldn't be able to decide on a design so I printed 4 off and gave one to each group when it came time for carving. We also watched this video that taught us that a pumpkin is actually a fruit! It also helped us with knowing the different parts of a pumpkin. In the afternoon we carved our pumpkins! The students had a great time scooping the seeds and "pumpkin guts" out. We had parent volunteers to help us with the carving - Thank you SO much! When students finished, they worked on a cut a...

Hello families! I just wanted to share a quick blog with you today since we had a pretty exciting day! Today we talked about buoyancy  -  an objects ability to sink or float. If an object floats, it is buoyant, and if it sinks, it is not very buoyant. We brainstormed some objects that we know sink or float and had a few objects that we weren't sure about. About half our class thought the pumpkin would sink and the other half thought it would float. We talked about why a pumpkin floats (briefly talking abut density) and it was decided that a pumpkin has a lot of air inside which helps it float, even though it is large and quite heavy. Students were split into 4 groups for our 4 pumpkins. We talked A LOT about the importance of being able to work in a group, share and listen to other peoples' ideas, and compromise. I shared that even as an adult, you have to be able to work with lots of different groups of people, even sometimes people that you don't agree with...

Hello families! Today we started talking about pumpkins! We did a "KWL" chart and brainstormed things we know and would like to learn about pumpkins. Students also started colouring a "Growing Pumpkins mini book" when they were finished their work. We watched a couple of videos about pumpkins as well - Pumpkins for Kids & Pumpkin Growth Time Lapse . We also practiced our weekly words from the "-et" family. In the afternoon we had Mindful Minutes, Guest Reader, Daily 5 and library. Tomorrow we will continue working with the 5 pumpkins in our classroom and we will do different activities with them every day. If anyone is interested in coming to help carve pumpkins on Thursday afternoon, please send me an email! At the end of the day we had a chat about the proper way to care for books and what will happen if we are unable to care for them. I keep finding books all over the floor and tables after library and the same thing in our classroom...

Hello families, Today we had a busy Friday! Students were joined but a substitute teacher for a little while, while I was off doing some work, and practiced their weekly words and had snack. In gym, we played turtle tag. We then did a shape data collection and graphing activity, daily 5, guest reader, and had some free choice time. If you are interested in purchasing the Kidsburgh Cronicles story that students learned about yesterday, please send me an email and I can send an order form home with you next week. Just as a heads up - I will be away on Monday! There will not be a blog - but we have some pretty exciting stuff planned for next week! Have a great weekend!

Hello families, This morning we read a story called "Tally Cat Keeps Track" and talked a little bit more about tally marks. I was seeing that some students were struggling with the idea of tally marks but I think they are definitely understanding it better after today. We had a quick work period where students started working on their Weekly Word practice and did a short activity where they had to determine the numbers represented by tally marks. We talked about counting by 5s and how helpful this can be when working with tally marks! By the end of grade 1, we hope that students can skip count by 5s to 100, 10s to 100, and 2s to 20 and by the end of grade 2, we hope students can skip count by 5s backwards from 100, 10s backwards from 100, and 2s forward to 100.  Grade 2's will also learn to count by 10s, using starting points from 1 to 9  and 2s, starting from 1. This is a great skill to practice on a car ride! We went outside for gym today and afterwards, we had a pr...

Hello families! Today students had music in the morning. During gym, we practiced our balancing and played statue tag. We talked about Mastery and the things we want to get better at. During work period, students wrote about what they wanted to improve on and at least one way they could accomplish this goal. Students also chose a number from 1-20 and represented it in different ways - they could use a classroom material to solve the problems. Students really enjoyed our special classroom guest today and I enjoyed having my cousin observing for the day! We borrowed 2 mystery books from the library. Grade 3/4 students have designed new covers for these books and we have been using our imagination to try to figure out what they are. We will open one of them tomorrow! Tomorrow we are looking forward to a special visit from an author and artist. We will be having gym outside as I accidentally signed up for our author visit over our gym time... whoops! Author...

Hello families! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and long weekend! I am still feeling full of pie! Today the Lifetouch photos are coming home. You can send your order to the school by Tuesday, October 22nd or you can order online! A lot of the photos remind me of Chandler from friends - they have the cutest smiles until they get in front of the camera 😂 Photo retakes will be on Tuesday, November 12th if you need them! For weekly words this week, students could choose a list of Thanksgiving words. Since there are only 3.5 days this week, I thought I'd just give the word lists again and we'll go back to normal next Monday! This morning we also took a look at some writing samples and students shared what they liked or didn't like about the writing. We focused on things like: spelling, finger spaces, sky/grass/dirt letters, neatness, and effort! Students did some writing about their weekend and Thanksgiving and they definitely put in a lot more effort with th...