On Tuesday we set up our weather stations and on Wednesday we were very excited to check our weather stations. While setting up and checking our weather stations we had a few questions. Xavier realized we needed to know which way was North, East, South and West so we could properly place our weather vanes. We used the compass on my phone to find out which direction is North, and next week we are hoping to find some compasses for everyone to use. We also discovered that our anemometers had fallen over and don’t seem to be working properly so we decided we need to do some further research to find out how to fix them or how to make better ones. We also wondered how the anemometers are supposed to tell us how fast the wind is blowing. Nova and Hannah wondered how their barometers work and how it’s supposed to tell us about the air pressure. Next week we will have to do some further research to find out the answers to our questions.
In Math we started collecting weather data for Sohar and for a city of our choice. We also looked at the data we collected last week from Sohar and Saskatoon and started to look for weather patterns. We realized we needed some extra practice with number patterns so we practiced making number patterns by skip counting by 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s, 6’s, 7’s, 8’s, 9’s and 10’s. We then made some number patterns by skip counting backwards. We will continue working on number patterns and collecting data next week.
In language we read our last book “So Few of Me” for The Global Read Aloud. We then decided to compare ALL 7 books that we read by Peter H Reynolds. We knew “The Dot” was his first book, and we used clues from all the other books to find out which order he wrote his books in. We also used our observation skills and thinking skills to find text-to-text connections, and we found TONS. We organized our thinking on our wall in the library corner. Next week we will explore Peter Reynolds website to see if we can find any information to answer our questions and theories about his books.
We also started writing some Acrostic poems this week. We learned that an acrostic poem uses the letters in a topic word to begin each line and that all lines of the poem tell about the topic. Our topic word was WEATHER. We will continue writing different poems about weather to show what we know about our weather topics. Writing poems will also help us with our sentence fluency and word choice.
Last but not least we had our 3 way conferences on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning. It was great to be able to discuss and reflect on each student’s learning and set some improvement goals. Thank you parents for making time to come and talk with me, and with your child about their current progress in Grade 2. I think overall the 3 way conferences were very successful in allowing your children to acknowledge their strengths and areas in which they can improve their learning. Next week we will be discussing the student’s self-assessment reports and the student’s assessment of my teaching. We will then make some personal goals for ourselves and some class goals to improve student learning and teacher teaching.
Have a happy weekend!
