What is Empathy?

Today we spent a lot of time talking about the word and concept of Empathy. We started by reading a great book called "Stand in my Shoes" where the main character Emily learns about empathy after her sister yells at her for bugging her while she is trying to study. Emily then tries to pay attention to the people around her throughout the day and works to make a positive difference for others.

We then talked about 5 steps that students could show empathy 

1. Watch and Listen (How is the person acting? What are they saying?)

2. Remember (When did you feel this same way?)

3. Imagine (How would you feel in this same situation?)

4. Ask (Find out how the person is doing? How are they feeling?)

5. Show you care (Let the person know you care by your actions and your words)

Students worked in groups to role play different scenarios and we discussed as a class how we could be both empathetic and helpful in these situations. We will continue to work on this tomorrow and upcoming weeks to help us support each other and identify feelings in others. 

Book Fair and Conferences

This week we have the Scholastic Book Fair at school! Students will have an opportunity on Wednesday morning to go and look at and hear about the books that will be for sale. Students can write down a few things they are interested in and the price. Then on Thursday students that bring money can visit the sale and buy items. It will also be open in the evening for the student-led conferences and on Friday morning as well. There are still quite a few spots available to come visit the classroom Thursday or Friday that you can sign up for online. Your child will share some of their recent learning with you!

We just finished up some beautiful art projects that students have created to represent various regions of Canada. They are also working on written pieces to describe what makes the Arctic, East Coast, and Prairie regions unique.

In math we learned a new game Mancala (it's actually a very old game that originated in Africa) that helps develop logic and spatial awareness- students love it! There are actually quite a few strategies that students are beginning to recognize as they play it more. This game is easy to recreate at home and your child is eager to show you how to play at our conferences!

Big Box of Cards

Every student brought home a big box of cards today- some had a hard time fitting them into their backpacks but I think most of them managed! . They are $33 each and you can send cash or cheque back to the school- if you do not want the box then please return the box with all of the cards still inside. If you would like to have additional boxes (if friends are family are interested in buying) just fill out the order form and include how many boxes you would like. The money raised will go directly back into the school!

Don't forget to sign up for Student led conferences next week (Thursday Feb. 2  evening, or Friday Feb. 3 morning). Just sign into your My CBE account and you should see conference manager listed in there. If you would like to arrange a meeting at a separate time just let me know.

Blizzard Soccer Day and Character Checks

Today we had a special guest today from the Blizzard Soccer Club. Each class had a chance to work with Andy in the gym learning some basic soccer skills. He gave every student a card that had the information for registering for outdoor soccer. It looks like registration starts in February.

As our school year goes on we continue to modify and improve things to work better for everyone. One area that we have fixed up a bit as a school is our Character Check. We have been working on developing "ambassadors" that show HEART to improve themselves and others' around them experiences around them. As a class we discussed examples of these characteristics and what they would look like and sound like. All kids (and adults) make mistakes in how we handle situations at times-  mistakes are how we learn. These character checks are reminders and learning opportunities for students to reflect on their choices and understand how their actions can impact others or themselves. The class has been really great so far and very few character checks have been needed. If your child brings one home please go through the back side with them and sign and return to the school. It is a way for us to document and communicate issues that have arisen as well as letting you know that we are working on these skills of problem solving, etc. Take a look at the school wide document we use. Ask your child to explain how they understand HEART- we will go deeper through these characteristics in Health throughout the year. We've also had many discussions about how  "making it right" might require more than an apology- as we know sometimes actions can be more meaningful than words.

January 23

What a fantastic day today! Students worked so hard on writing their good copies of their Nunavut land write ups. These will accompany their Arctic artwork on display for upcoming events at the school. In social studies we have been looking more specifically at the maritime provinces of Canada. The class has noted some key differences between Alberta, Nunavut and the Maritimes. Ask your child to describe what they have discovered so far in regards to the landforms, animals, and climate of these Atlantic provinces and how they compare to Alberta and Nunavut.

In Science, we continued to talk about the water cycle. Students watched first hand what happens to water when it is heated (by a kettle) and we discussed the concept of evaporation and steam. Everyone thought it was hilarious when they watched my glasses fog up but it also allowed them to better understand the process of condensation. We also held up a pot lid for the steam to condense on and students were surprised that the steam then turned back to liquid and started to drip back down like rain (which helped in our understanding of precipitation). With a partner, students looked through and read a variety of books on the water cycle and shared some of their interesting findings with the class. For example, Sarah shared that over 151 000 litres of water evaporated back up into the sky every year. Ethan noted that precipitation can come in the form of snow, sleet, rain, hail and fog.

Math was super enjoyable for the students today. We continued to work with place value using numbers up to 100. With a partner, students played Race to 100. This is a game they could even play at home (they would just need to draw pictures instead of using the manipulatives). One person rolls the dice and then gathers the units (ones) that would match. Next person does the same thing. Once a person has 10 or more units, they need to regroup them into a rod (tens). They learned that each place value can not have more than 9 as a digit. It took some practice but students really started to understand as they played. This element will be crucial when adding and subtracting numbers because the regrouping principle must be concretely understood before they can accurately do it in their head or as an algorithm. Here are some pictures of students at work:

Don't forget to sign up for the student led conferences on February 2nd and 3rd. There are spots for 4 families at a time and Thursday night is filling up fast! You can also schedule a time separately from that if you would like to discuss anything in a more private or uninterrupted way. If you would like to meet with me at a different time please email me at ljstewart@cbe.ab.ca and we can arrange a time.

Reminders

Tomorrow (Thursday, January 19) is learning commons day! Don't forget to bring back your learning commons books and please try to bring them back in their ziploc bags to keep them protected. Also Friday is an early dismissal day! We dismiss at 11:30. Students will be doing a large Art block to show the landscape of Nova Scotia that morning so don't wear your nicest clothes!

Absorb or Repel??

Well this is definitely a good week to explore the water cycle! We are going to jump (haha pun intended) into learning the vocabulary of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation in the next week. Students have already done a great job of recognizing the beginning states of matter of water such as ice (solid), water (liquid), and steam (gas) but will now go a bit deeper into recognizing the cycle they follow and what happens when this cycle is interrupted or impacted by other issues.

Ask your child what absorb and repel means (in the context of liquids) . Hopefully they can explain their observations and conclusions to our scientific experiment. Every single partnership collaborated so effectively to move around the room testing a variety of materials to determine which ones would absorb the water.

Wax Paper- This was a fun one for exploring how liquid can move

Plastic Bag 

Scientists recording their observations while they are testing and observing

January 16

Tomorrow (Jan. 17) and Wednesday (Jan. 18) are Toonie Treat Popcorn Days! These have been such a great fundraising success for the school and the kids love the popcorn!!

Fun Lunch is next Wednesday Jan. 25. Please order online by Friday if you would like your child to have this lunch.

Math
In math we have been working on deepening our understanding of place value concepts with numbers up to 100. Place value plays such a critical role in math. Recently students have explored how it makes a difference in even and odd numbers as well as supports them in accurate addition and subtraction.  As we are in the process of building students concrete understanding of these concepts, we are learning how to use a variety of manipulatives to help us.

The hundreds chart has been helpful throughout the year for students to recognize patterns between numbers and how they are connected. Today in our "number talks" we looked at how the hundreds chart is organized in groups of 10. I would hold up a card that had a hundreds chart partly shaded and students would use their ability to subitize (recognize a group of numbers without counting by ones) as well as their skip counting by 10's to figure out what the number represented was. We were able to get some great conversations going and students shared unique strategies of figuring out the number.
This also led us into some 2 digit addition equations as students described the shaded and unshaded amounts.

For example, after the class decided that this first 100's chart had 60 shaded squares (because there were 6 rows of 10) Ethan commented that he thought there were 40 unshaded squares because he said "60+40 should equal 100 just like 6+4=10"  After our discussion, I introduced "base 10 manipulatives" and we discussed the vocabulary that describes these tools. We will continue to use them this week to practice identifying, building, and combining 2 digit numbers and describing their tens and ones.

Swansong Storyteller

We had an amazing opportunity today to listen to a Metis storyteller named Denise Miller. She was so engaging and the students loved listening to her traditional stories about the animals and land. Denise told us stories about a rabbit, an eagle, and even led us in some singing to accompany her drum. It was a perfect introduction for us into storytelling as we will be beginning to write legends about a animals and the land in several of our unique Canadian provinces.  Ask your child to retell you the story about why the wind is important and the lesson that the grumpy, selfish character learned.

Reminders:
Jan. 13- Book orders are due (I can extend this until Monday if you email me and let me know)
Jan. 17+18-  Popcorn Toonie Treat Days
Jan. 20- Early dismissal 11:30  and last day to order fun lunch for following week.

Field Trip

What an excellent day at the Glenbow Museum! As this was the first time at the museum for most of our students, there was high energy and excitement as we explored a wide variety of exhibits. As part of our program, students learned about some key players in the establishment of our community of Calgary and why the city is located where it is. They had the chance to examine some artifacts by touching them (using special museum gloves to protect the items) and discussing the importance of the artifacts in helping people with ranching, farming, building, or mining (the 4 main jobs in that time period). It was great to see how they used special gloves to handle artifacts and they learned quite quickly how to move around the museum respectfully and to be careful with our bodies and pencils to ensure we preserved the exhibits. We split all the grade 2's into 2 main groups and did the same things but at different times.

Students explored ancient civilizations and looked at weapons, armour, and uniforms used in different time periods and places around the world. They also discovered some beautiful gemstones in the Rocks and Minerals exhibit and unique paintings and works of art in the gallery. One of the most popular areas at the museum today was the Blackfoot exhibit- students got up close and personal with a large tipi and found some ways that the Blackfoot people used buffalo to meet their survival needs from bones used as tools and hides/fur used as shelter and clothing. Overall it was a great experience for students. I think there will be many tired kids (and teachers/parent volunteers) tonight after our fun, interesting adventure.

Upcoming Info

Our field trip is this Wednesday!! Despite the predicted cold weather continuing, this field trip will only be cancelled if there are complications with the busses or if we are missing any volunteers. At this point we have exactly enough. If you were unable to volunteer on this trip but are interested in doing so in the future I would suggest you apply for your police clearance now (if you don't already have it). Apparently this process can take up to 6-8 weeks but it is good for 5 years so it would be all ready to go if you are able to help out in the future. We have 2 more planned field trips in the next few months as well as swimming lessons in the late spring. 

For this trip, students will need to bring a lunch with them in a smaller bag. We are leaving our backpacks at the school due to limited space for storage at the museum so they will just bring their lunchbags with them. Also please ensure that students do not bring money or other personal items like toys with them. Photos are not permitted so please leave personal electronic devices at home so that we don't have to worry about losing items. I'm hoping we'll have an awesome trip!

Important upcoming dates:

Jan. 11- Field Trip to the Glenbow Museum (full day)

Jan. 12- Storytellling Guest Speaker- Denise Miller 

             - Learning Commons Books Due

Jan. 13- Book Orders are due 

Jan. 17+18- Toonie Popcorn Treat Days 

Jan. 20- Last day to order Arby's fun lunch

Jan. 25- Arby's Fun Lunch from Healthy Hunger

January 6

Another Fun Lunch coming up!! Don't forget to order. 

If you didn't get a chance to return the field trip forms by today, there is still time to bring them on Monday. I apologize that there were so many different spots that a signature was required! 

Scholastic Orders and Learning Commons

So I finally got my worksite location changed with Scholastic so I have sent home Book Order forms. Please don't feel pressure to purchase books from these orders as it it completely optional. If you would like to order anything from these flyers, please return your order form and money by Friday, January 13. There is also an option to order online with credit card. Extra bonus bank dollars will be used to buy new books for our classroom library. Thanks

Also just a reminder that Thursdays are our learning commons days so please bring back books to school tomorrow to sign out new ones!

Field Trip forms due Friday, January 6th- Field Trip happening on January 11th.
Report Card envelopes to be returned

Happy New Year!!

Well here we go again! A brand new year but still the same freezing cold weather! I hope you all had a great break and were able to get some relaxation and family time in over the past few weeks!

Field Trip forms for our trip to the Glenbow Museum next Wednesday went home today. Please return the white portion by Friday, January 6th. If you are interested in volunteering and have your police clearance, you can also return the bottom of the purple sheet with your best contact information.

Hopefully you all received your child's report cards right before the break or today if your student was away that last day. If you haven't already please sign and return the white envelope to the school so that I know that you have received it. We will reuse those same envelopes for the June report card as well.