Big Changes this Week!

This week was very exciting. We welcomed our student teacher, Mr. Waters into our class.  Having an extra teacher in the class means that students can get even more extra attention. We are keen to teach him about our vocabulary 'Rev Ups,' show him how we have learned how to make our writing detailed, interesting, specific, show and don't tell!!! We hope he will be impressed by our writing! Mr. Waters will be with us until Christmas and then again early in the New Year.

Yesterday we had a visiting scientist. He is a geologist who showed us many cool rocks and minerals including real gold! He also showed us Fool's Gold that looked much more like gold! It was so interesting that Mrs. Njie forgot to take photos! Is this the real stuff? Ask your child!

Today was our first day with only 21 students in our class. We were very sorry that some students left us in order to make this possible but we know that they will really enjoy their very own small class. A smaller class will make it easier to conference with every student on a regular basis. This will help boost our learning even more. We will soon be doing a lot of mixing in grade three so we will get many opportunities to see our friends:)

Mrs. Njie has been conducting reading assessments. She has been asking us how often we read at home. A surprising number of students confessed that they only read once a week at home! This is just a gentle reminder that reading should be a daily homework practice. The following visual helps to explain why it is so important. There is a HUGE difference between the number of words read a year depending on whether you read for 1 minute, 5 minutes or 20 minutes a day. Apologies for the quality of the image but do take the time to have a good look. The difference between 20 minutes a day and 1 minute a day (let's say, once a week) is the difference between reading 1,400,000 words a year and 3,000 words a year. Imagine this over a few years!!

We talked in class today about how we can build in reading into our busy schedules. Some students read on the way to hockey practice. Some students decided that before school was a good time. Some students said they would try to read when their siblings were watching 'boring' shows on TV. Other students said they would read before gaming and that gaming would be their treat for reading. Please help your child organize their time so that they can be achieving the daily read at home expectation. Remember that if they read with you then there are additional benefits as you can ask them about what they have read and check their high frequency sight word recognition (the words like, when, what, who etc that they encounter lots of times on one page).

Besides, reading is such fun! You can be any one you want to be, you can go any place you want to go , you can do anything  you want to do!

Housekeeping:

Photo orders due
Consider bringing a donation for Remembrance Day
Uniforms are welcome for the Ceremony (Cubs, Brownies etc)
Thank you for sending in healthy snacks and leaving the Hallowe'en candy at home:)