- We have a new set of spelling words this week: his, is, an, and, can, all, call, land, small, have, are, and hand. You can browse the spelling section of this website for information on how to practice these words at home. Students brought home their first spelling test on this past Friday, and everyone did their very best work!
- Our art field trip to St. Albert is coming this Wednesday, September 30. We will be leaving Millgrove on the bus bright and early at 8:50. Thanks to the people who have will be joining us at St. Albert Place! I believe I've provided information to all of the volunteers, but send me an email at [email protected] if you didn't receive the map and meet-up directions for some reason.
- Parent teacher interviews are coming up next week on Wednesday, October 7 and Thursday, October 8. Parents should have received an email about booking their time at https://millgrove.schoolappointments.com/. I look forward to speaking to you and your child about the progress they've already made this year!
- Individual picture day will take place this Friday, October 2, so students can come in their photo-ready attire and hair-dos. We will do our best to keep them intact before the pictures take place!
- Students are thrilled that the milk program at Millgrove starts this Tuesday, September 29, and the first hot lunch will be delivered this Friday, October 2 if your students have ordered.
We don't quite have the go-ahead to send out class updates via email, so here's another post about the week ahead. We're looking forward to our first field trip to the pottery studios at St. Albert Place on Wednesday morning!
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Now that we’ve learned some beginning information about Saskatoon, Iqaluit, and Meteghan, the students made some important decisions this past week regarding where to plan their imaginary trips across Canada. We talked about the job of a travel agent, and each student chose one of our three communities of study and a season to visit that location in. They thoughtfully planned what they would pack, what mode of transportation would be most appropriate, and what activities they would most enjoy in their community of choice. They were very expert travel agents!
We are wrapping up our focus on increasing patterns in math this week. Increasing patterns are a brand new concept in grade two, and can often prove to be tricky, but the students in 2B have worked hard to describe, reproduce, extend, and create increasing patterns over the past couple of weeks. You can practice increasing patterns by taking the link to the game below!
Since email updates to parents haven't started at Millgrove yet, I thought I'd post a few updates on the week ahead in 2B. It's been great to see the students settle into classroom routines and form new friendships in the classroom, so I'm sure this will be our best week yet!
This past Tuesday, we celebrated Dot Day in 2B. Dot Day is based on the book "The Dot" by Peter Reynolds about a girl named Vashti who initially believes she can't draw, but later discovers that everyone can make a mark in the world. Each table shared their own unique ideas and art skills and made their very own dot, and it was neat to see how each table developed their own plan of how to design their dot. You can see the students' artwork and the book "The Dot" below! A big highlight this month in 2B has been the start of our unit on magnetism in Science. We've been exploring what materials are attracted to magnets and which are not, and observing the effects of magnets on a variety of items. In this unit, we will be learning:
Later in the unit, students will be asked to construct a toy or game that uses a magnet at home. Stay tuned for more details about that project, and for our further learning about magnets! We have begun a new unit in Social Studies in 2B about life in three communities in Canada. One purpose of this unit is to help your child appreciate the diversity and vastness of Canada’s land and peoples. The specific communities we will study are:
Students will learn about the weather, geography, language, history, daily life, and economy of these three Canadian communities. There will also be opportunities to make connections to Alberta and Spruce Grove. You are invited to be part of our unit in a variety of ways, for example:
The students already have a sense of the geographic and weather differences between the communities, and are becoming experts at the communities where Zenia (Saskatoon), Kenojouak (Iqaluit), and Jean-Louis (Meteghan) hail from. We’re looking forward to an exciting unit! Today we learned about the art of Henri Matisse, a painter who was very important in the style of fauve art where artists painted with wild colours. We watched the videos below about Matisse’s art, and used his style to make our own self-portraits. The students did a wonderful job of imitating Matisse’s style, and their choices of pastel colours were lovely! We now have a very colourful set of class portraits. We have been patterning up a storm here in 2B! Patterning is one of our first units in math, along with skip counting and word problems. This past week we worked hard on repeating patterns, and will soon learn about increasing patterns.
The Learning Goals for this unit are to:
You can help your child achieve these goals by using some of the following activities at home
2B has already started our Daily 5 and CAFE adventure! This is the reading and writing program implemented in our classroom.
Daily 5 is the structure we will use to plan our morning. Children will be busy completing meaningful literacy tasks. The choices will be:
Right now, we are focusing on increasing our stamina to work independently during Read to Self. Within the next few weeks, the other choices will be introduced. While the students are completing their literacy tasks, I will be meeting with small groups and conferencing with individual students. Daily 5 is how we schedule the reading portion of our Language Arts time. CAFE is what we study during this time. CAFE is an acronym for the four major components of reading. They are:
The students will learn reading strategies within each category. These strategies will become tools for the children to use to help themselves become better readers and writers. You can ask your child what strategies we have been focusing on from week to week, and I will periodically send home information about strategies we are learning about in our weekly email newsletter. (Don't worry if you haven't yet received an email--we are finalizing the lists of email addresses that we already have permissions for.) You can see that the students are off to a great start with their reading stamina, and have set very ambitious goals about how long we will be able to stay focused on our reading as a class. I believe that 10 million hours was a recent suggestion, and if any class could achieve that goal, I am certain it would be 2B! AHS has sent our schools some information about the recent Pertussis outbreak, which you can read below.
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Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three 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. Archive
April 2024
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