2B was a flurry of building and experimenting this past week as we built and unveiled our magnetic devices for our grade one buddies. It was neat to see the variety of ways in which magnets can be used practically, and the students did some excellent scientific problem-solving in the creating of their devices. The highlight was when the grade one students visited our class to test out our creations. Needless to say, the students of 1V had lots of fun with all the toys and games! Check out the video above to see the students’ creations.
The students were thrilled this week to play golf in PE! We practiced our mini-golf skills and also swing skills in a small-scale driving range. For our Play Parkland field trip, we got to go swimming and then play some movement games on one of the outdoor fields. We had lots of fun and lots of learning in all of these alternative activities this week!
We've been working on estimating in Math this week with Miss Rebecca, including talking about how our estimates need to be informed and logical but not perfect, using referents (a smaller group of objects) to make an accurate estimate, and comparing our estimates to our counts. We also used grouping by 10 strategies to more accurately and efficiently count large groups of items. There are some great number sense and estimating gurus in our class!  Our most special guest for Read In Week was Spruce Grove's Mayor Stuart Houston! He read us two Thanksgiving books, and answered our questions about what responsibilities he has as our city's mayor. It was especially helpful given our recent learning about elections, and the mayor was a very entertaining and informative guest reader.
 We are extremely lucky to have welcomed the wonderful Miss Rebecca to our classroom this past week! Miss Rebecca will be with us until December 16 as she completes her final practicum for her Elementary Education degree at the University of Alberta. It's been great to have two teachers in our classroom, and Miss Rebecca's warmth, thoughtfulness, and great teaching have already been a great asset to our class. She's already started teaching some of our math, and the students are now experts on ordinal numbers thanks to her teaching!
We've been busy with numbers up to 100 recently in Math, whether we were skip counting with money (a big highlight), investigating even and odd numbers, counting toothpicks like Raymond from Rain Man, and using ordinal numbers to describe objects (such as first, second, 3rd, 4th). The students were expert money counters, and felt quite prepared to spend their pretend money! If you'd like more practice at home with numbers to 100, the linked games below are focused on some of our learner outcomes for this unit.
The writers of 2B have been goal-setting to hone their skills this week, and every day they've been assessing their daily writing. Each student has a writing goal that they are working on, and I check in with them to see how their progress toward that goal is going. In our writing mini-lessons recently, we've been working on descriptive writing with characters who move and speak, telling stories bit by bit, and including information about what our characters think and feel. In reading this week, we've been learning about how to figure out tricky words using strategies like looking for smaller words inside a word, using context and pictures as clues, and recalling the different sounds that vowel teams like "ea" and "ou" can make. A few students even got to perform reader's theatre for us when we had some wonderful volunteers help out in our classroom. In the upcoming week's reading lessons we'll be focusing on determining the meaning of unfamiliar words, self-monitoring when reading, and reflecting on the author's intention. For writing, we'll be learning how author's make their writing special and how to use pop-out words .
Our first Play Parkland visit was a huge success as the students of 2B (and our friends in 2S) had a great time and learned a ton about gymnastics. We had very knowledgeable coaches and the students really enjoyed getting to use the equipment at the Aerials Gymnastics Club. The students haven’t stopped asking when we get to go again!  In Science this week, we explored different magnets’ north and south poles, which materials are transparent to the magnetic force, different magnetic devices, and examined magnetic fields. The students enjoyed making a temporary magnet with a nail, and used various devices to view the effects of invisible magnetic fields. Stay tuned for our upcoming magnetic device project |
Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade two teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. 
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