Peeking into Division 10: We've Been Busy!

The last few weeks have been a busy time in our classroom! We spent Thursday morning working in small groups capturing some of the highlights. Here's a snapshot of what we have been learning and doing.

Respect for You and Me
Once we had our classes set we brainstormed what a good classroom looks like, sounds like and feels like. After we had all our ideas written on sticky notes we put them into groups of things that went together. Mrs. Betts then introduced us to the word respect. We talked about what that meant and then came up with three big expectations that we wanted to follow in our class. Respect for self, respect for others and respect for this place. We talked a lot about what each would look like if we were doing it. For example, respect for self means getting lots of exercise (trying our best during our fit breaks), getting lots of sleep, eating healthy food and drinking lots of water. Respect for others means using kind words and gestures, including others in our play and listening to what others have to say. Respect for this place means cleaning up after ourselves.

We practice these everyday! Mrs.Betts says we are doing a fantastic job!

Our Busy Brains!
During our reading times we have been learning what good readers do when they read. We learned that our brains are very busy while we read. The first thing we talked about was how we make connections to the stories we read. We read two books and made connections to the big ideas in the story. The first book we read was called "When Sophie Gets Angry, Really, Really Angry," and the second book we read was called, "The Invisible Boy."

We had many connections to this book. We were able to talk about a time when we were angry and what we did to solve the problem!

This story was about a boy who felt lonely and sad. He was new at school and the other kids weren't including him at recess or lunch or during school time. Many of us have felt this way. The story ended with the boy making 2 new friends. It was exciting to hear that many of us have made new friends this year too.

Patterning!
Check out what we have learned about patterning!

We spent some time making patterns with a variety of materials. This was a lot of fun. Then we met as a group and brainstormed for all the ways we made patterns.

Next we learned how to find and circle the core of the pattern and label a pattern. We know that a pattern needs to repeat 3 times. When we learned to name patterns, we discovered that the pattern doesn't change just because you use different shapes or colours, or pictures!

We LOVED working with the stickers in Draw and Tell to make patterns, circle the core and name them!

Have you ever used Draw and Tell to show your Math thinking?

Word Work
Look at how many words we can spell! We are learning about word families . . . we know that if we can spell "at" then we can spell . . . . cat, that, brat, flat, hat,chat and oh so many more words. We also learned to spell words in the "an" family. Mrs. Betts couldn't believe all the words we thought of . . we came up with fan, tan, Chan's (our local vegetable store!) plan, planner, banner and more!

Spelling words in the "an" family

How do you practice words in your classroom?

We Have a New Class Name!
This year our class is called "The Huskies." We have been busy learning all about the Husky. We know that. . . .

We also know that. . . .
-they have a bushy tail like a wolf
-they have special markings on their face
-they have either blue or brown eyes, or one of each!
-they have pointed ears

Check back soon because we want to find out where they live, what they eat, how many babies they have and other interesting facts about them. Once we find this out we will let you know! We also had Mrs.Metz come in and teach us how to draw a husky. We haven't finished them yet but will post them as soon as they are done! They already look amazing!

Brain Break
Sometimes our brains just need a break! To help us stay in shape . . .

Every day we have fit break. Our goal is for each person to run 3 laps around our school. We can't wait to see how far we have run in the month of October!