Friday October 30th, 2009.

Thank you to the parents who sent treats to school on Friday!! Thank you to Madison S's mom who sent candy apples and cupcakes. Thank you to Ben's mom for the bones and thank you to Jaden's mom for the cake eyeballs. The kids enjoyed the treats very much. They were all very fantastic and unique!!!

This week was a very short week for me since I was sick for most of it. Being sick isn't fun for anyone and we need to work together to keep our classsroom healthy. Please remind your child to wash his/her hands regularly. Children may bring hand sanitizer to keep in their desks. If your child is bringing a waterbottle to school, please remind them to bring it home so that you can wash it. Germs are everywhere and I am constantly telling the kids to keep their fingers out of their noses and mouths. If your child is sick, please keep them at home. We don't want to be spreading anymore germs. We will be reviewing proper handwashing techniques in the classroom and discussing germs and how they spread to make kids more conscience of their actions.

Next week is November. We are going to be starting a new unit on magnets and our new PWIM picture will be arriving shortly!!! The kids are very excited to see it...you'll see why next week!!!!

I hope that you all had a happy and safe Halloween.

Friday October 23, 2009.

Another week has flown by in the grade 2 room at Jack Mackenzie School!!!

This week we had two guest readers come read to us for Education Week. Jill Morgan from Global TV came to read to us on Monday. Kia Byers, our adopt an athlete, came to read for us on Thursday. It is is such a treat to have guest readers share their love of reading with us.

On Wednesday morning we watched the talent show. We performed Brainwave as part of a movement break in the assembly. The kids did an awesome job!!

We welcomed a new student into our class this week. Ask your child to tell you about him.

Mrs. Friesen came to visit us on Thursday afternoon. She is a teacher at Arcola School. She came to see what we are doing with PWIM and the Daily 5. It was wonderful to have another teacher come and see us! We love showing people what we can do!

We are continuing to build stamina. Our read to self is at 17 minutes. Our writing is at 12 minutes and our read to someone is at 10 minutes. We are all very excited and working hard on our reading!!

Check out the school website for things that are happening next week!!

Our PWIM Picture: Pumpkin Party

Friday October 16, 2009.

It was very nice to meet with you all last week at the Goal Setting Conferences. Together we are going to watch your children grow and bloom this year!!

This week we worked on our blogging again! Thank you to everyone for reading the blogs and commenting. Everyone seems very excited to blog and the kids LOVE reading comments!!

We picked the title for our new PWIM picture and it is called Pumpkin Party. Next week we will create our sentences and start paragraph writing.

Our reading stamina is now at 14 mins! Our writing stamina is at 7 mins and our read to someone is at 6 mins. (I am typing this on Thursday night so this may have changed on Friday.)

In math we worked on ordinal numbers. Everyone seemed to grasp the concept of first, second, third and so on. We will now move on to estimating.

Next week is Education Week. Our class will be performing a Brainwave Dance as a break to get everyone moving in the talent show.

Enjoy the nice weekend!

Why Are We Blogging???

Why did we create a classroom blog and how will we use it?

1. Document our growth across the year

2. Inform families of what we are doing

3. Expand our audience

4. Use another form of writing

5. Learn about writing for an audience

6. Document favorite events of this year

7. Integrate writing with other subjects

8. Write journal entries/book reviews

9. Respond to class assignments

10. Free choice writing

11. Develop keyboard skills

12. Communicate with each other

13. Post pictures of our work

14. To share PWIM with our families

15. To have fun!

Friday October 2, 2009.

Written by Mrs. Sanchuck and the grade 2 class!

This week we picked out new books for our book boxes.

We celebrated Jack Mackenzie's 82 birthday.

Every Friday we have Fun Friday.

We are doing a magazine fundraiser.

We are doing PWIM.

We are on 12 minutes of reading and 5 minutes of writing stamina. We learned a new way to read and that is called Read To Someone. We sit EEKK. That means elbow, elbow, knee, knee.

Have a great weekend!! Ask your kid what their intramural team name is. (Jaguar, Magic, Jays, Majors, Jazz, Matrix, Jets, Mustangs)