Ms. Vanderwel's Room

 Hello Everyone! Here's a look at our week : )  --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In reading, we learned about some silent letters-- mb, wr, kn-- and practiced creating and reading a variety of words using those spelling patterns. We played some fun WordWall games online that help us listen for their sounds.   In writing we continued, talking and reading about persuasive writing. The students watched more 'Who Would Win' videos and selected which animal they believed would win. Then they wrote about and gave reasons for their opinion in their journals. It was also Support Staff Appreciation week. The students wrote some lovely notes to thank many of the support staff-- librarian, ed assistants, facility operator, secretary-- in our school for the work they do. In math, we continued with our work learning about equality and inequality. The students explored making equations balance by adding to or subtracting from one side of the e...

Hello! We had a busy week in Room 21. Have a look at what we have been up to : )  -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In language arts, we continued to work on persuasive writing activities. The students have been watching videos in which two animals are set up in a hypothetical battle. Each animal's appearance, size, habitat and other characteristics are described and then students must pick which one they think would win in a fight. Students then write about which one will win and give reasons from the video to support their answers. In math, we continued to learn about fractions. Students explored the concept of fractions of a set versus fractions of a whole. They worked on dividing sets of objects into groups to show either 1/2 (Gr. 1) or another fraction, such as, 1/3, 1/4 etc. (Gr. 2) Students also began to explore the concepts of equality and inequality. We used a balance to show if two sets of cubes were equal (balanced) or unequal. Th...

Hello and Happy Friday! Here's a peek at our week : ) Note: Gymnastics starts Monday. Please see school messenger sent on Friday for information about clothing, safety and expectations. Students that are not properly dressed may not be able to participate for safety reasons.            --------------------------------------------- This week we began learning about persuasive writing. We discussed what it means to persuade someone and the difference between facts and opinions.  They listened to the story 'Hey, Little Ant' and discussed whether the boy or ant did a better job of convincing them who was right, i.e. to squish or not to squish? The students then selected an animal they thought would make a good class pet and worked with a partner to come up with reasons to support their choice.  In math we finished up our learning on word problems. The students worked on solving more challenging questions involving more than one step and/or with more t...

Please note: For some reason my computer will only let me post certain pictures and not others. I have included what I can. Here's a peek at our learning this week... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This week we learned about some new letter sounds-- soft /c/ & /g/ and the /ew/ sound. We learned when to use the soft /c/ and /g/ sounds and the different ways that the /ew/ sound can be represented in our spelling (ui, ue). Students learned stories and songs to help them remember the sounds for these letters and built words using our moveable alphabet.  In math, we have been learning what word problems are and how to solve them. We have learned to look for important information and clue words that can help us to determine whether or not to add or subtract. Some problems require more than one step to solve so we have to think about what the question is really asking us and what we need to do to solve it. Kids worked in groups to solve a vari...