All the colours of the rainbow...

In science today we talked about colours, light and rainbows. 

We discovered that light is like waves and that white light from the sun is made up of the colours of the rainbow- Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet -commonly remembered by the mnemonic ROY GBIV. (We joked that is like someone's name.  We decided that, that someone was a unicorn as there is some silly folklore that unicorns make rainbows.)

We watched a little video with a character named Billy Blue Hair, that talked about how rainbows are made.  If you want to check it out again, it can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhG-7XmzMVg .

We used a prism before we lost our sunlight to make the white light of the sun refract and display a rainbow on our wall. Then we created our own suncatchers.  We are hoping our class will be filled with rainbows tomorrow. 

Remember that tomorrow is the deadline to send in food for our Scare Hunger campaign.
School Fees are due by the 16th of November.
We hope to see everyone tonight at our Celebration of Learning.  The children are super excited to show off their Ozobots.

Building a Community

Today we started discussing building our model of a community. We started by brainstorming things that are needed in a community. Students worked in groups and then shared. Afterwards we agreed upon a list of goods and services that will be needed.

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After creating our list. Students began drafting a plan for the community. We talked about where the parks should be (close to houses); how the roads need to connect; where emergency serviced should be located; etc. Our next step is to assign students' jobs to do in creating a community.We'll have a roads crew, architects, engineers, and many other important community members. We can't wait for our finished product.

        

Ozobots and Assessment

Today we had another opportunity to explore the Ozobots. Students are very excited to share what they have learned with these little robots - we can't wait to show you on Wednesday at our Celebration of Learning - 6:30 - 8:00pm

These are examples of the lines and code students have drawn with the markers.

As teachers, we are always thinking about assessment and reporting. For students, this a learning process. Today we talked about our report card and how we have a 4 level system. We talked about our accomplishments based on a 4-star system, which makes it more visual for most students. Today we created a rubric together to show the different stars of drawings - 1Star, 2Star, 3Star, and 4Star. Each student can assess their work against an exemplar and decide what they can do to improve their work. This is a great way for students to start taking responsibility for the work they produce. It also allows them to go back to their work and make improvements based on personal feedback and the posted rubric.

Writing Development

Today we practiced our writing skills by writing about our favourite part of the book. The above pictures are examples of grade level work by a grade 1 student and a grade 2 student (respectively). At this point in the year it is important that all students are correctly forming their letters, using capitals at the beginning of sentences and periods at the end. Finger spaces are also important to ensure the work is easy to read. One way students become better at writing (like all skills) is by practicing every day. Some things you can do at home with your child to practice their writing skills are:
- making a grocery list
- making a wish list for an upcoming holiday/celebration
- writing about their school day
- writing letters to family and friends
- playing hangman

Remembrance Day Assembly

At CJP we will have an in-school assembly tomorrow to recognize Remembrance Day. Each child will receive a poppy to wear for the assembly. We will accept donations tomorrow if you feel this is important to you.

Zones of Regulation

The Zones of Regulation is a curriculum geared toward helping students gain skills in consciously regulating their actions, which in turn leads to increased control and problem solving abilities. Using a cognitive behavior approach, the curriculum’s learning activities are designed to help students recognize when they are in different states called “zones,” with each of four zones represented by a different color - green, blue, yellow, red.

We have been working through the 4 four zones of regulation since of the beginning of the year - it is a big part of our health curriculum. Today we looked at the yellow zone and talked about the feelings associated with this zone. We talked about how it's ok to be feeling silly, frustrated, excited or upset but it is important to know how to get ourselves back to the green zone where we are calm and ready to learn. 

We talk about different strategies to help us get back into the green zone, such as deep breathing, taking a walk, finding a quiet space alone, etc. It's important for young children to be recognizing their own feelings and taking control of situations in the classroom. Have a talk about which strategy works best for you child and practice these strategies at home whenever things start to escalate and your child starts to feel overwhelmed, silly, upset, etc.

Happy Divali!!!

Happy Divali,

We started our day by looking at a non-fiction book about Divali.  3 students in our class celebrate Divali. We learned many of the customs practiced during this celebration are very familiar to all the students and they are similar to other celebrations.  Ex. Eating special food with family, dressing up, receiving presents, lighting candles and decorating our homes and communities.  There were several Hindi words in the book, so the Glossary found at the back helped us with some specialized words like diya (or divas): meaning small oil lamp or candle used at Divali.

Today we kicked off our study of patterns by looking at beautiful Rangolis.  These beautiful symmetrical pictures are created with coloured sand or rice in entrance ways to welcome visitors during Divali!  After reviewing some AB, ABB, ABC, AABB patterns we looked at these complex designs for the patterns they contain.  We even watched some videos showing the artists at work. 

During last period, children worked on creating their own Rangolis in four different ways.  We coloured templates, used a dot matrix to draw our own, used pattern block and we even tried using sand!  The sand was super tricky.  It gave us appreciation for how intricate the sand Rangolis we looked at are!