For our new unit of inquiry: Sharing the Planet, we have begun by checking in with our prior knowledge (what do we already know about the topic?) and the students were able to share their understandings by creating a brainstorming map. From there, we came up with a shared definition of habitats. We have been reading through the many topic books which will support our learning and research – the students are very excited about this unit! The students have been able to make connections between our previous learning from Where we are in place and time where we researched biomes around the world.
In literacy, we have practised letter patterns: -ight and -ire to make new words. We have written in our personal journals, trying to express our feelings by showing, rather than telling. We have worked with irregular verbs making them past tense (write – wrote, sit – sat, etc) With our current timetable, we have been able to have independent reading time, particularly exploring our unit of inquiry books and also practise our handwriting. As per usual, we continue to practise correctly pronouncing English works when we are speaking and also projecting our voices to be heard when offering ideas or answering questions.
We have just begun learning about non-chronological reports, an example of a non-chronological report would be a fact file about a certain topic, place or thing. The students have listened to a simple report about tigers and then used scaffolded organisers to retell the facts.
During maths this week, we have continued to practise finding sums and differences mentally, building our fluency in knowing place value and their relationships within a problem. We have reviewed hour and half-hour which was learned in Grade 1 and are moving on to reading and writing time to 5-minute intervals with analog and digital clocks. During your day at home or when you are out, you can practise time with your child by looking at a clock (analogue rather than digital) and noting the time. Duration of time is a complex concept for children so you could talk about how long it takes to cook something (or doing any other activity) by writing down the start and finish time.
Please see photos here.
Next week:
Library: Thursday
Literacy:
- working on non-chronological reports
- handwriting
- phonics study
- guided reading
- independent reading
- listening and speaking activities
Maths:
- mental maths: count within 1000; skip-count by 2s, 5s, 10s, and 100s
- differentiate between a.m. and p.m.
- connect counting by 5s on a number line to an analog clock
- connect their understanding of minutes, and hours to the movement of a clock’s hands
UOI:
- research a chosen animal and its habitat
- introducing a variety of habitats, who lives there and how these habitats meet the needs of the animals lives there