Ms. Vanderwel's Room

 Here's a peek at our week.... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This week in languge arts we have been focusing on learning our long vowel sounds and looking for the clues in words that tell us if a the vowels make the long or short sound. We watched on video on "Magic E" (a.k.a. silent e, King E, bossy E etc.). The students learned that when /e/ comes at the end of a word it makes the vowel say it's name (eg. same, lake, note etc.).  In Gr. 2, the students have been focusing on the vowel teams (ai, ea, ee, oa, ue etc.) and learning to decode those sounds. In writing, we began creating the plan for our fractured/twisted fairy tales. The students picked a fairy tale we had already read and changed the character, the setting and maybe the problem a little bit. For example, in the story "The Little Red Hen" no one will help the hen to make bread, but in the fractured fairy tale the character might make cake or build a h...

 It's all about the hearts this week! Take a peek!  --------------------------------------------------------------- In language arts we learned about poetry. We watched a video explaining the parts of a poem and some of the techniques poets use when writing them such as, rhyme, repetition, onomatopoeia and other forms of figurative language. Then we wrote a poem for Valentine's Day. This poem used repetition to create/build expectation in the reader. Unfortunately, I forgot to send them home so they kids will bring them home next Tuesday.  In math, we learned about using a number line to 20 (Gr. 1) and an open number line (Gr. 2) to subtract. We also learned about subtraction as comparing or telling how many more there is of one thing than another. In this type of subtraction problem, nothing is being taken away we are simply looking for the difference between the two amounts.  In science, we began a new unit on Energy. We began by learning about sound and going for ...

Happy Friday! Here's a look at our week : )  ----------------------------------------------------------------- This week we began retelling and writing a twisted or fractured fairy tale. We choose "The Enormous Turnip" as our template. We decided to make ours about an enormous potato. We changed the characters to an ant, ladybug, caterpillar, spider and worm. We set the story in a forest but the problem was the same-- the potato is too big to pull out. So far we have used loose parts to tell the story and we have written the beginning and the first two events in the story.  In math, we have started learning about subtraction and some strategies to help us when solving subtraction problems. We learned that subtraction is taking away, part-part-whole and as a comparison. We played a math game about part-part-whole, built collections of counters and practiced taking away an used counters to practice taking away. We have also been learning a math routine called Splat! Student...

Hello and Happy Friday! I hope you have had a lovely week. We have been very busy working on a number of different projects. Here's a look at our week : )  -------------------------------------------------------------------- REMINDER:  Report Cards are available for viewing in Powerschool. Please log in to your MyCBE account to access your child's report and see their progress. -------------------------------------------------------------------- In language arts we have been reading fairy tales and fractured fairy tales. A fractured fairy tale is a story in which the original story has been changed in some way. Maybe the characters or the setting or even the plot of the story have been changed. The students identified how the fractured story was the same and different from the original.  Then they practiced retelling one of the stories using loose parts. Loose parts are just a collection of different objects that can be used to sort of dramatize the story as they retell i...