Don't forget that Tuesday, March 29th is Toonie Tuesday to help raise money for the Japanese earthquake/tsunami relief effort. Many students at Clairlea, including EK (above) made paper cranes out of used paper last week so that every student can bring home a paper crane as a symbol of hope for Japan. Thanks to Cassie who brought in her entire jar of pennies she's been saving up. We're a class of big-hearted students and families:)This week we'll be working on the following:
Reading/Writing:
- We will begin wrapping up our poetry unit and moving into Recounts. Students will learn what a Recount is and will learn how to write a personal recount. They will write a recount of pop artist Andy Warhol's life. We will be reading recounts in the form of biographies and autobiographies. Recount writing will be a very short unit as our student teacher Ms. Torres will begin teaching narrative writing next week. If it looks like we need to return to recount writing later, we may do so in May or June.
- I am making April "Penmanship Month." To get things rolling along, we'll return to cursive writing. I don't want to belabour it, but I recently met with an occupational therapist who convinced me that it's worth getting young students started on it because it's far more comfortable (and ultimately quicker) thank printing.
- Word Study: Grade 2s continue to work on consonant blends and the whole class will work on suffixes.
Math: Students will be given a short quiz on area and perimeter and we will be moving into capacity and mass.
Social Studies: Grade 2s will be moving into Features of Communities by comparing school life for children in India to their own experience of school life. Grade 3s will learn about handicrafts and food for early settlers in Upper Canada.
Homework:
Grade 2s & 3s will be given a new notebook as a weekly journal. They will be asked to write a minimum of 2 journal entries for the week, but are encouraged to write one each day. We will review what a personal journal is in class and instructions will be pasted into their notebook. Due Friday
Grade 2s and 3s will both be responsible for choosing a new spelling activity for their new word list. We didn't have our quiz last Friday, so we'll have it tomorrow. Due Friday
Grade 2s: In their Reading Response Notebook, they will answer questions they will be give about a selection of poems that they will bring home with them. Due Friday.
Grade 3s EQAO: Media Literacy pages 71- 73 and Reading Text #6 pages 62-63 "The Earth Speaks" Due next Monday. Parents, please remind your child to keep this booklet in their backpack every day because there are moments during the week when we can work on sections in class. Thanks as always for your support.
* As we are starting a new unit in Math, there will not be any math homework this week. Encourage your child to think about capacity by estimating how many ml of liquid will fit into various sizes of containers. If you're by a dollar store, buy a plastic measuring cup and let your child experiment with capacity even at bath time.
Thank you,
E. Hawkins
