Happy New Year!

Welcome Back! I hope everyone enjoyed a  wonderful holiday with much needed rest and relaxation!

Mrs. Ridsdale is replacing Mrs. Wallace who is now on maternity leave, so she will be teaching gym, health and science to our class.

Congratulations to Ava Rolling who received a character award in December for always being caring towards others! Well done to Leah and Tehya who have read through many provinces in our "Reading Across Canada" home reading program!

The following outlines some of our curriculum for January and February:

In Literacy, we are continuing to work on making inferences while reading a variety of texts. Students have been reading poems which require them to infer what object is "speaking" in the poem, and then explain their thinking in a written response using clues/evidence from the text. For example, in the poem entitled "Fear of Frying", students had to infer that a potato was speaking based on clues such as "I was born dirt poor in the richest soil", and "my life took a turn for the worst when I first saw those golden arches". Students will also have an opportunity to create their own poem that the other students will have to use their inferring skills to determine what object is speaking.

We will begin procedure writing using language such as first, second, next, then, finally.

In oral language, we will be working on some impromptu speaking on a variety of topics.

In math, our number sense unit continues with a focus on addition and subtraction with regrouping, as well as problem solving. All students should practice quick recall of addition facts to 18. We will be learning some different strategies for adding and subtracting, including estimating by rounding numbers and checking if our answer is reasonable. Students should also practice counting forward by 1's, 2's, 5's, 10's, and 100's to 1000, from various starting points, and backwards by 2's, 5's, and 10's from 100. For extra at-home practice, please visit the Nelson Math website at www.mathK8.nelson.com and click on "student centre". The "Try it Out" option for Chapter 4: Addition and Subtraction, has questions that relate directly to our unit. Our Measurement unit will follow.

In Social Studies we continue to learn about Ontario. We will have a quiz in the next couple of weeks so duotangs will come home shortly for studying.

I wish everyone all the best in 2015!!

Mrs. Hale