Thank you to all the parents who were able to attend our Parent Information Evening last night. I hope you found the session informative and helpful. Please do reach out if you have any questions about Grade 2. The presentation, as well as the Grade 2 overview is linked below.

Today your child has come home with their first home learning project for our current unit of inquiry. It’s a fun project that will allow our classroom community to find out more about each other, our identity and a little bit about our own cultures. The box used can be any small box, about the size of a shoebox. Please see the link below in case the sheet didn’t make it home.

This is a gentle reminder that ALL students need to have headphones which they can leave and use at school. We ask that you provide headphones which can be plugged in and not Bluetooth ones. The headphones don’t need to be expensive, and the blue and red JBL headphones work well at school.

JBL JR 310 - Kids On-Ear Headphones (Red/Blue), Small

This past week we have been learning more about how we work in Grade 2, continuing to practise our routines and learning the timetable. As a class we have create our Essential Agreements and linked those to the Learner Profile attributes. We have begun exploring the apps we use on the iPads: Nessy, RAZKids and Epic. The students are still beginners in this area, but will become proficient very soon. The sites we use mainly support our literacy programme. Please do remind your child to log-in to RAZKids everyday to read for their 20 minute home learning time.

During our UOI and literacy time, we have worked on an All About Me quilt where the students wrote about themselves, some favourite things in their lives and what they would like to get better at. We also read ‘Chrysanthemum’, a book about a character who finds out how absolutely perfect her name is. We used this to find out more about our own names and I have asked the class to talk with their parents about where their names came from.

In maths, we have been establishing our norms of practice, as well as using our mental maths knowledge with place value.

Next week, we will be continuing to learn how to use the iPads for literacy. In literacy, we will be looking at fables and their characteristics. We will discover that they are short stories with a life lesson or moral which have been in our world for many, many years. This is connected to our current UOI: Who we are. The fables will be used as a foundation for our own writing. We will also explore our phonics programme and begin some handwriting. Next week, we also be assessing all the students writing ability to diagnose where we can best support each student’s learning.

In maths, we will continue establishing our norms, as well as, learning our maths routines: how learning centres work, where our maths resources are located and how they can help us solve problems. We will work on our numeracy mental maths and explore some activities which develop our maths strategy thinking.

Parent Evening presentation

Introduction to Grade 2 team and the curriculum

Shoebox Autobiography

See photos here.