Ms. Midgley's Blog

Hello families,  This week we continued to learn about our daily language arts stations. We practiced "listen to reading" and learned about options for "word work." Next week students will start their daily rotations with each station. I wasn't great about taking photos this week but will share more next week! We reviewed the letters D and E and students sorted pictures based on their beginning sounds for n, e, d, b, o and c.  For listen to reading, please send your child with labelled headphones (regular aux plug in) to use with our iPads to ensure they can hear the stories being read loud and clear!   In math, we learned a couple of number sense games. The first one is called Spider Legs. All you need is 3 dice ( here are some virtual ones if you don't have any!) Ask your child how to play! The second game we played is called Make Ten. We watched this video to learn how to play but changed it a bit to work for 2 or more players. We also talked about all o...

Hello families,  This week we learned all about Orange Shirt Day and Truth and Reconciliation. We began by reviewing what it means to be Indigenous and learned about Residential Schools. We learned about Phyllis Webstad's orange shirt story and read various stories from different Indigenous authors. We focused in on the word "reconciliation" and learned more about what this means (trying to make up for our wrong-doings). With our big buddy class we read the story "Trudy's Rock Story." We made our own reconciliation rocks with messages and students were asked to either speak or think about their feelings towards Orange Shirt Day and residential schools before placing the rocks in our school's garden. In the story, Trudy uses rocks to help her process feelings and we wanted to do the same.  Here are some of the stories we read! I will add a Youtube link for Trudy's Rock Story and for When We Were Alone, as it is one of my favourites!  We hope that you ...

Hello families,  We've had a busy week! We packed a lot of learning into our four day week.  In literacy, we reviewed all of our letters from last week (S, A, T, I and M) by sorting pictures based on their beginning sounds. Grade 2 students (and any grade 1s who want to challenge themselves) were asked to try spelling 5 or more words. We also reviewed the letters P and O using our Animated Literacy Characters. Students have been working on drawing and writing words that start with these letters. Students are encouraged to slowly stretch out the sounds of the word and write what they hear. Here are a couple of examples! Some of the words were copied environmental print.  In math, we continued to work on patterns. Students created pattern art to show their understanding of patterns. We also started to look at patterns in nature. We learned about different types of patterns in nature and went out to the garden to see if we could find any of them!  This week we had a lot...

Hello families!  We made it through our first full week of school!  This week we started to review some letters and sounds with the Animated Literacy program. Since this is review for most students, we talked about the character and action that goes with each letter., rather than the full story and song. We've been doing a letter each day and this week covered: S, A, T, I and M. Students brainstormed words and drew pictures of things that start with these letters. Students then did their best to stretch out the words and spell them as best as they could. We also continued to practice building reading stamina with Read to Self, and Buddy Reading. On Tuesday afternoon we have a Back To School Blast virtual presentation from the Calgary Public Library.  In phys ed, we enjoyed sharing some of our gym time with Ms. Gierl and Mrs. Green's classes. We learned how to use the parachute and played lots of fun games. It was a blast! We have gym times on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday...

Hello families,  We had a great week in room 11! It has been fun getting to know each other better this week.  This week we learned a little bit more about our hermit crabs. We were lucky enough to see one of them molt today and got to see some of its exoskeleton. Ask your child what they learned about hermit crabs this week! We have two hermit crabs - Jimmy and Sheldon. Jimmy is named after a family friend that gave me the hermit crabs, and Sheldon is named after Sheldon J. Plankton from SpongeBob because he only has one eye (plus his lives in a shell so it's very fitting!) On Fridays we usually watch something during snack time so today we watched a Wild Kratts episode about hermit crabs.  In math we reviewed and learned about repeating patterns. We made patterns with our actions, built patterns, and coloured patterns. We also learned about some new practical-life work choices.  This week we also had our first fire drill! Students did very well. There was definitel...