Nov. 2

 Hello everyone!

We got a new friend in our class yesterday so we were busy making sure our new friend felt welcome and understood how our class worked. 

We practiced using Bubblegum writing (stretching out a word) as a whole class, and then with a partner yesterday. Today, we added an extra step by adding a bubblegum sentence to our journals. We looked at some journal examples that Ms. Byrne created and rated them 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then, we each got our journals out and tried to write our best sentence. Some of us added a colour word to our sentence for an extra challenge! Yesterday, we looked at all the letters for our second set - m, n, s, z, l, r, w, h, u, i. We looked at each letter and practiced the sound. Today, we focused on the letter m and completed our printing book page about m. 

In math this week we are focusing on ordering numbers. Yesterday we practiced ordering numbers 1-10 that were scrambled on the SmartBoard. Then, we learned about "greater than" and "less than". We used < and > to show which number was greater. We added some teeth to our arrows to make them look like crocodiles. The crocodile always has his mouth open towards the bigger number because that's the one he wants to eat! We practiced this with pairs of numbers up to 10. Today, we practiced 3 questions up to 10, then 3 with numbers 10-20, and then 3 with some bigger numbers for a challenge. We talked about how to tell which number is bigger when it is a 2-digit number (ex: 21 and 12). We also talked about using the = sign if the numbers are the same. 

During science today we started a smell test experiment. We are using our sense of smell to guess mystery objects without using our other senses. So far we have smelled: brown sugar, coffee, and lemon. We have some more mystery smells to test out tomorrow!

In social studies this week (connected with our previous science unit about Fall Changes) we have been looking at Fall through Indigenous ways of knowing. We have a giant medicine wheel in our classroom now! We each made a fall leave art project to add to the Fall section of the medicine wheel. We talked about our connection to the land during Fall and why this time was/is important. Today, we learned how to say Fall in some Indigenous languages. We discussed that there are many different groups of Indigenous people with different languages, cultures, and traditions. We learned that takwakin is the word that some Cree people use to refer to this time of year and that it translates to "gathering." This is because this time of year is when people, and other animals too, were gathering food and supplies for Winter. Especially when Indigenous Ancestors were alive (before grocery stores!). We also learned the Blackfoot word O'ko, which refers to this time of year as well. We labelled our medicine wheel with these words. During this discussion we were able to talk about working together as a community as well, because it would take a lot of working together to prepare for Winter a long time ago!

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne