Below are some photos from the week, including our field trip Friday to the Science Centre! More detailed information will be posted later this week. Please send these to school with your child by Friday 4th December in a named bag so that the clothes can be easily returned to your child if misplaced. The clothes will be stored in the classroom for our dress rehearsal and will be sent home again with your child on Friday 11th December ready for the performance in the evening. Boys - dark trousers or shorts, and a blue, white or red top Girls - either a blue, white or red dress or a dark skirt with a blue, white or red top Please email me if you have any questions. Thanks, Ms Luttrell
0 Comments
It seems like we haven't had a full week in such a long time. We were able to finish up our last unit of inquiry by sharing our Google Slide presentations with a partner. The partner filled out 2 Stars and a Wish, thinking about two things their partner did well, and one thing they could do differently next time. This peer feedback was then taken into consideration and some students made final changes to their presentation. We started our third unit, How the World Works with a thinking routine called Zoom In. We had a large picture, but it was covered with different pieces of paper. Slowly certain pieces were revealed and students were asked to share their thoughts and ideas. It was interesting to watch their thinking change, depending on which parts of the picture were revealed. Eventually the entire picture of the mood and Earth was revealed and students made the connection to our new unit. Many also made the connection to time, as we are focusing on this in math, explaining that part of the Earth was lit so it must be daytime and part was dark so it must be nighttime. We also took some time to paint our ideas of our central idea: How we live is a result of the Earth's journey through space. There were a range of different ideas painted and then students used sentence strips to write explain their painting. During Daily 5, we worked on revising and editing our instructional writing. Then students wrote their final, published copy. Mr. Gallagher worked with the students on using the iPads and an app called "Explain Everything" where students took pictures of each step and recorded their voice as the explanation. These will all be uploaded to our YouTube channel by next week. We've started exploring time in class and there are many questions about the history of time, how it was inveted and who made the first clock. We watched a short video to help get us thinking about these questions. We will continue investigating time next week. Next Friday is our field trip to the Science Center. We will be leaving around 9:30 and returning to school for lunch. Thank you to those families who have returned the permission slip and money. Please do so by next Wednesday if you haven't already. We look forward to another exciting week. Have a fabulous weekend. Ms. Luttrell This has been an exciting week, as we ended our second unit, How We Organise Ourselves, with a trip to the Maritime Museum. Students also completed field trip reflections and will be presenting their finished slides to each other on Monday. They will then be added to their digital portfolio. Pictures are below, along with some student thoughts from the week! "I liked going to the Maritime Museum, especially seeing the camel statue." - Advay "I liked the red lion, because the eyes lit up at the museum on the boat." - Alik "I liked when we went to the museum for our field trip, because it was Jasmine's birthday and we got to play the drums." - Carmella "I liked the homework, because of the brain teaser. I also liked the drums at the museum." - Emilia "When we went to the museum, I learned a little bit more about the Silk Road." - Lizzie "I liked that we went to the Maritime Museum, because I got to more about the Silk Road more." - Marin "I liked going to the Maritime Museum, because I liked playing the games, but they didn't work, but I liked seeing the crystals. I liked the crystals." - Tudor "At the museum, I learned that the boats were the cheapest way on the Silk Road and the easiest way to trade so more people would be on the boats." - Odemar "What I liked about the Maritime Museum is that they told us a lot about what was the museum and I liked how the head of the ship moved." - James "I also liked it when we played the game Survival in class, because it was fun." - Carmella "There are lots of things in the museum about the Silk Road." - Alik "I also liked the ship that looked like a viking ship. I liked the part when the angry lion roared." - Advay "I liked what I saw and I was interested in everything, and the I saw the lion's eyes turn." - Lizzie "I loved seeing the big ship that they used for trading. I wished we could go inside it." Tudor "I liked using the Chromebooks and finishing our work from this unit." - Emilia "I liked using the Chromebooks too, because I got to put in lots of pictures and I like putting in pictures, and also because we got to do Raz Kids and I love reading." - Carmella Please remember to send your child to school with reusable cutlery. They can keep it in the classroom and wash it or take it back and forth each day. Have a wonderful weekend, Ms. Luttrell We had a busy week reading, writing, working on math and continuing to investigate exchange systems. In math, we explored the concept of rounding and related it to money. Most students grasped this concept quickly, but still aren’t sure when or where we would use rounding. We will continue to review this throughout the year.
We practiced some reading strategies to help us sound out unknown words: stretching the word out and blending the sounds together. We are also working on looking at the punctuation as we read to help us read with more expression. In writing, we continued to write instructions and worked on adding detail. We read a fantastic book, called Boxes for Katja, written by Candace Fleming. Ask your child about this story and how it relates to our central idea: Exchange systems help our community. Students have continued to document their thinking and learning on their Google Slides, and this will be added to their online portfolios shortly. We will continue to open the Swap Shop next week, but then it will close as we move into our next unit. We will wrap up this unit with our field trip next Thursday to the Maritime Museum. Thank you for those who attended 3 Way Conferences on Wednesday. The students were eager to share their goals with mom and dad as well as their portfolio and slide show. The BEST part of my week was: "3 way conferences" - Marin "the swap shop" - Advay "library" - Jasmine "the swap shop" - Carmella "playing the game on the carpet" - Alik "3 way conferences" - Tudor "swap shop" - Kaya "PE" - Joe "PE" - James "the book fair" - Hakim "art" - Lizzie Reminders for next week: Students will eat snack in the classroom before leaving for the museum on Thursday. We will leave around 9:30 by bus. We will leave the museum around 12pm and come back to school to eat our lunches, both school lunch and home lunch. * If you have NOT brought back money and your permission slip, please do this by Wednesday. Please remember we do not have school Monday or Tuesday of next week. Have a great weekend, Ms. Luttrell We continued this week with our investigation of money, which ties in with our current unit, How We Organize Ourselves. We have been adding up coins to different values and some students are able to add coins to values over one dollar. Please help your child continue to count by/add in 5's, 10's, 20's and 50's, as this will benefit them when adding coins together. Next week we will explore rounding, in relation to money. Students also worked together to create a system/rules to help our Swap Shop run smoothly and effectively. However, only 4-5 students have brought items in to swap. We will be opening our Swap Shop on Monday, so students are encouraged to bring in an old toy or book or something they don't need anymore, or something they've made (of course checking with parents first!). Please talk with your child about the Swap Shop. We have been discussing value, and it is interesting to hear what students value and are willing to swap. We have been using the Chrome Books to record our understanding of the central idea throughout our unit. The students have each been working in Google Slides. This week we learned that information can be gathered in many different ways, and we listened to a Brain Pop video to help in our research of the Silk Road. Students recorded important information on sticky notes and then we worked together to answer these questions: * What was the Silk Road? * What things were exchanged on the Silk Road? * How does exchange help communities? * Is exchange always fair? We also finished up recording information in a table from our book walk, taking note on what kinds of exchanges were taking place in different books, both fiction and non-fiction. In writing, we have been exploring procedural writing (instructions). Students have examined their own writing, along with their peers', and created a list of essential elements when writing directions. Some of these include a title, putting steps in order, starting each step on a new line, using time order words and/or numbers. We will continue next week with mini lessons on adding detail and developing our ideas. Students picked their first Daily 5 Cafe goal this week as we have been working hard to use various strategies in our reading. Some students decided they needed to work on comprehension, while others thought they should work on accuracy, fluency or expanding their vocabulary. Next week, 3 Way Conferences are on Wednesday. Please sign up for a time slot if you have not done this already. Remember, children do not come to school for a normal school day. They accompany you to the conferences where they will share their goals and we will look at the progress they have made so far this year. A few reminders: Please help your child in learning to be responsible! It is their job to bring their bag to school, hang it up, and put their lunch and folder away. Please do not do this for your child, as they know and understand the morning routines, and are fully capable of doing this themselves. Please also note that even though snack time is not an explicit learning time, it can be a disruption when parents are popping in and out. Please send your child with healthy snacks to school. Candy, cookies and cake are not appropriate snack choices. Children benefit from healthy snacks such as meat, cheese, yogurt, crackers, fruit and vegetables. This type of food gives your child the energy they need and the ability to focus throughout the school day. Please help your child remember to bring something for the Swap Shop, opening on Monday! Thanks and have a great weekend, Ms. Luttrell On Math Day, we had to think a lot! We did Mathletics in the computer lab. We played a game about math. We needed to roll the dice and add the numbers. Whoever had the biggest number moved up the tower. Raffles and Newton tied with 20 points. On Math Day we did lots of addition and subtraction. We did math things in PE. We didn't have an assembly, because we had math games to do in class. We played a new game called Kaboom! - Grade 2.1
We did a pyramid game in PE. - James Yesterday in math we pasted paper coins in our journals. - Odemar We played math games. - Kento We did half and doubles and half for even and double for odd on the cards. - Joe In Mandarin, we practiced how to say our countries and then the teacher put on a song in Chinese. It was about countries and we needed to practice singing it with our groups. - Kaya Yesterday we do work on writing and today. - Alik In Daily 5, I read Dinosaurs Before Dark and read up until Chapter 9. - Advay In Library, we had a fire drill. During the fire drill, we were very quiet. - Emilia We skip counted with numbers and used the number chart to help us skip count. - Lizzie At school, we had PE. We used some hula hoops and put them in a triangle shape. We put dice in them and then we lined up in groups of our house teams and tried to get to the top of the pyramid to win. - Rajananta In Art, we are making Aboriginal art from Australia. We were making dots too. It was fun. - Marin We had Library yesterday and we read a math book. - Hakim We did money. - Joe In Art, we painted Aboriginal paintings. - Carmella We had Library, and we read a book about Math. We heard a fire drill. It was a practice. - Jasmine As a reminder, please continue to send cutlery with your child for snack/lunch. We are trying to reduce the amount that is thrown away each day. We will continue investigating money, and many students wanted to bring in money from their home or other countries to show their classmates. Have a fantastic weekend, Ms. Luttrell In math, we started the week with some work on Mathletics. Please remember to keep practicing at home, as there are sometimes assigned tasks based on student need. We explored doubling and halving. Students looked for connections between the two concepts. We also played several math games, which reinforced these concepts and reviewed odd and even numbers. Please continue to work with your children at home on doubling and halving. This will be important as we move into money. Students participated in the thinking routine called, 'Chalk Talk'. There were 4 tables, each with a different question or statement. Students worked silently to respond to each other's questions and comments and then recorded their own ideas in their math journal before sharing with the class. Students responded to: * Money is... * Money is important because... * Questions and wonderings about money * How does money connect to our new unit of inquiry? We also looked at various coins and recorded our thoughts about what we noticed. Next week we will continue examining the value of coins and work to create equal amounts. In literacy, we continued exploring complete vs. incomplete sentences and recognised sentences could be long or short, but needed to have a subject and verb. Students went on a work hunt to locate verbs in books, and then used these verbs in their own sentences. Next week we will look at verb tenses, as well as simple vs. complex sentences. Most students are able to identify the needed components for a complete sentence; however, many students are unable to apply this knowledge consistently in their writing yet. When investigating our central idea, groups worked together to use a dictionary to find the definition of a certain word: exchange, systems, help or community. We learned that dictionaries can help us learn how to spell a word and they can also help us learn what a word means. Students used the Chrome Books and Slides to capture their thoughts and ideas about the central idea. We will continue to add to this project throughout the unit. Students also participated in a 'book walk', exploring various books that connected to our unit. They identified pictures, words and topics that they thought might relate to our unit. As a part of our Unit 2 Inquiry, we are exploring exchange systems. We will be having a "Swap Shop" in late October. Over the holiday break, we would like for students to bring an item or two that they might like to swap with another student. Items that be brought in are ones that don't get played with anymore or don't seem to have a use anymore. They could also be things the student has made. We ask that the students bring their item(s) by 26th October. Thursday afternoon, we practiced the parade of nations in preparation for International Day on Friday. Friday was filled with fun, as the middle and high school students worked to share information in fun ways with the students through various workshops. We also rotated through classrooms where we learned about Japan, the United States of America, and Greece. It was a fun filled day, which ended with the fabulous food buffet. We will not be giving homework over the holidays, but please continue to read with your child. When we return to school after the holidays, our first day back is on the 21 October (a Wednesday). World Maths Day is on Friday, and as we will be doing various math activities on this day, our normal routines for this first week back may be altered - Words Their Way will begin again the following week on the 26th. Please remember to send your child to school with cutlery, as we are working to save the plastic and recycling the containers. Students who have a decent amount of lunch left over are being encouraged to take it home, in case they want to finish it later or share with their family. We also ask that students bring in their own headphones or earbuds, if they haven't done so already. These can be kept in their cubbies and used when we need sound on the Chrome Books. Have a relaxing break, Ms. Luttrell It's been a busy week playing catch up from last Friday, as well as trying to manage being inside all day! It's hard for Grade 2 students to not be able to run around outside, but they made the best of it, really showing their creativity by making tickets and putting on a play for other students. Others chose to play board games, make masks and things out of paper and build with blocks. We used GoNoodle and some other dance videos to get the wiggles out throughout the day. We now have a set of Chrome Books for Grade 2 to share. These computers will be used for math, reading, writing, listening to reading and many unit of inquiry tasks. We had one lesson this week with Mr. Gallagher about proper handling and care of the Chrome Books and then students uploaded a piece from PE to their portfolio. We are asking that students bring in their own headphones or ear buds to keep in their cubby for individual use. This way, they are able to be responsible for their use and care. You could also label them with a piece of tape/students name around the cord. Grade 2 has started to notice the amount of waste each day with school lunches. The plastic lunches from school are often just thrown away at the end of lunch, rather than recycled. We have started rinsing them out in order for them to be recycled after eating. Another way we can help save materials is by using our own utensils for lunch. We are asking that Grade 2 students bring their own cutlery to school if they are eating hot lunch. They can rinse and wash these items at school for use the next day, or bring them each day, whichever they prefer. This would cut down on a great deal of waste. We will be keeping track of the amount that are not used, as this will definitely add up! In math we have been reviewing skip counting by 2's, 5's, 10's and then some other numbers like 3's and 4's. We've practiced counting forward and backwards, starting and stopping at different numbers. We reviewed doubling and identified it's form and function. When doubling, we used a doubling diamond. Ask your child if they can show you this helpful trick. Next week, we will begin to explore money. Students finished writing thank you notes to the Grade 9 drama students who came a few weeks ago to put on some short plays for us. We will send these through inter-school mail. The thank you letters students wrote to Dr Chris, thanking her for Skyping with us and teaching us about sign language, will be mailed on Friday. Hopefully the haze will be low enough, so we can walk to the post office in Ion. We continued working on summarising when reading stories, as some students are still having difficulty identifying the main/most important ideas. This week we didn't have Words Their Way, as we were spending time looking at complete vs. incomplete sentences, as well as verbs. We will continue our investigation into present, past and future tenses next week. We also revisited our old Words Their Way words and used them in different activities. We took apart the letters of some longer words and tried to see how many different words we could make with those letters. This might also be something fun to do at home. We started our second unit: How We Organise Ourselves this week. Students began by unpacking the central idea, identifying words they knew, didn't know, and felt were important. We will look at these words more deeply in the dictionary next week and take a picture walk through various unit related books. Our student council members, Emilia and James, had their first student council meeting on Wednesday. We are excited to hear and see what Student Council does this year! We ended the week with PE, Mandarin and our assembly on Friday. Hopefully the haze will be gone next week. Remember, next Friday is International Day! Have a great weekend, Ms. Luttrell Notes: Please send your child to school with reusable cutlery if they have school hot lunch (and home lunch), and please send them with headphones/earbuds for use each day at school. We spent Monday morning looking at how our class communicates with parents, via the blog and Twitter. We responded to some comments on our blog and also discussed why someone might choose to send a letter rather than an email. We continued finishing up our unit of inquiry this week with a trip to the Botanic Garden where students were in groups and worked together using different forms of communication. On Monday, students will complete a summative assessment task where they will to different scenarios and describe how they might communicate in order to build relationships. In language, we reviewed recounting/retelling and also continued to explore summarizing. We watched a 'short film' and practiced summarizing using a graphic organizer. The key words we have to think about when summarizing are: somebody, wanted, but, so, then. When reading with your child at home, you can ask them to summarize a story using these words! We watched this short story to help us summarize. Grade 9 students visited us this week and put on a performance of different stories from various countries. We heard stories from Korea, Indonesia and Russia. The high school students had practiced putting on different plays for our specific age group and did a fantastic job. We watched (and even participated) in three short plays. It was fun interacting with the older students and our Grade 2's were eager to help be trees when the characters needed to walk through a forest. They also gave advice to a man and a giant, and helped another character make an honest decision. Ask your child for more information about these plays. This afternoon tied in nicely with our unit about building relationships through communication. Our math warm ups this week have involved skip counting. Please practice this with your child, starting both on odd and even numbers. Many students are struggling with this, yet it is a concept that should be consolidated. We are starting at different numbers - some students are using two digit numbers and others are using three digit numbers. For example, start on the number 64 and ask your child to count by 2's. Or start at 110 and ask your child to count by 5's. We continued exploring the language used in addition and subtraction problems and many students brought in sticky notes with addition words and subtraction words. We will continue with this next week, as well as doubling.
We worked in the computer lab on student ePortfolios. Students had inserted a picture a few weeks ago, so they finished up writing a little about themselves. We also practiced adding in a GoogleDoc. Students will have an ePortfolio for digital work, including photos and video and some typed work, as well as a hard copy portfolio that will be kept in the classroom. This will include written work, stories, reading, some math activities and UOI written work. Students selected their first UOI piece in hard copy and wrote a reflection about why they were proud of it. Wednesday was the most exciting day of the week, as we had our Grade 2 field trip. Thanks to all the parent volunteers that were able to come. Unfortunately with the haze, we ended our trip about an hour early, However, students were able to partake in 3 of the 4 planned activities. They worked together using both verbal and non-verbal communication to complete various tasks. Below are some comments from the students when we returned: "We learned about communicating with somebody and doing games and helping each other." - Joe "I liked the activity we did with the cup stack, because we couldn't talk but we used gestures and everyone understood what we wanted to say. It was difficult." - Marin "We learned how to communicate in different ways when working in a team and using pointing and so much of other things." -James "I learned how to do gestures and sign language and how to communicate and building our imagination." - Odemar "It was so fun and we walked from the Tanglin gate and on the way we spotted a squirrel. In the water we saw two swans, and then I saw a chipmunk while playing my games." - Advay "I liked playing the games, because it was so fun. When I was in one group we were running." - Jasmine "I had fun when we were in Mr. Hugh's group, because we got to work in teams and I like working in teams." - Carmella "I liked it when we were making the blocks, and I had fun discussing with my group." - Lizzie Thursday was no school and we weren't at school on Friday due to the haze. Hopefully everyone stayed inside to stay healthy! See you Monday, Ms. Luttrell Everyone was excited this week, as Sports Day was Friday! With the haze so unpredictable, we were hoping the weather would be okay, and thankfully it was perfect! It was so fun to watch the Grade 2 students participate in the track and field events, as well as the running races. They worked so hard in the heat and also cheered each other on. Congratulations to everyone for trying their very best! More pictures of Sports Day will be coming on next week's blog post.
Earlier in the week, students spent some time investigating addition and subtraction story problems. We are beginning to look at the language used, in order to help us identify if we will need to add or subtract. Students also are beginning to pick out the important information and identify the question that is being asked. We worked together to solve different problems and spent several days exploring and explaining different strategies - using number lines, hundreds charts, counters, fingers, tally marks, drawing pictures, etc. Students are remembering to show their work and were able to explain their thinking to the class. At the end of the week, students worked to write several different story problems (some simple, and some more complex). Here are just a few of the many that were created: We have 99 glue sticks and 74 people. Someone buys 6 more glue sticks and 5 more people by 4 glue sticks. How many glue sticks do we have altogether? Joe has 6 glue and I take 5 away. How many glue sticks does he have now? Marin had 48 cookies. Marin gave Kento 23 cookies. How many cookies does Marin have left? I had 15 chips and I gave away 4. How many do I have now? I had 54 cookies. Then 2 people ate 4 cookies each. How many cookies do I have left? We have 99 marshmallows and we give 10 to Ms. Sue. How many marshmallows do we have now? Carmella had 26 fish. Then Advay ate 5. How many fish are left? During Daily 5 and 'Work on Writing', we looked at the form and function of letter writing. Why do we write letters? How do we write letters? What needs to be included? Why might we send a letter instead of an email? After looking at different picture books, students identified the five main parts of a letter: * date * greeting (Dear _______,) * body (all the stuff we want to say) * closing (from, love, sincerely) * signature (name) Students then wrote a letter to Dr. Chris, thanking her for taking the time to Skype with us and teach us about sign language. We will be mailing these letters in a few weeks. Our first unit of inquiry is coming to a close, and we spent some time looking into cross cultural communication. Several moms were able to come in from the other classes and share with all of grade 2 about their culture and how they communicate, both verbally and non-verbally. It was a fascinating afternoon and the students were eager to share what they had learned after visiting the different classrooms. If you are still interested in sharing this with our class, please let me know and we can find a time for you to visit. Next week is a somewhat short week. We will be going on our field trip on Wednesday. Please remember to send a packed lunch with your child, as we will be eating at the Botanic Gardens. We will be leaving about 8:30 and returning around 1:30. There is also no school on Thursday! Lunch menus for October will be going home on Monday. They need to be returned Tuesday. I'm sorry I couldn't get them out earlier, as it was a short day on Friday and students were picked up from the field. There will not be new 'Words Their Way' words next week, as we will spend the time reviewing our past words and spelling patterns. More pictures will be uploaded next week. Have a fantastic weekend, Ms. Luttrell |
AuthorWe are 7 and 8 year old students who live in Singapore. Our teacher, Ms. Luttrell, will be helping us write blog posts throughout the year! Archives
June 2016
Other ISS SitesMr. Pinchbeck - Principal Blog Categories |