Literacy Week Activities

It has been a fun week! It was great to see lots of students participating in the new event every day. We loved having a new teacher in our space to read to us. We were lucky that Ms. Dalton came to our classroom on Tuesday and read us The Balloon Tree. Ms. Adharsingh went to Mrs. Evans' Grade 3/4 classroom and read them the Antlered Ship. We also had a community guest, Constable Mark Enzie, show us his tool belt for work and read "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?"

On Wednesday, we enjoyed making bookmarks with our buddies.
Thursday was probably the most favourite day of all. We got a chance to dress up as a character from a book.






Everyday the students and teachers carried around a book just in case there was an announcement made to start DEAR time. DEAR stands for Drop Everything And Read! It didn't matter if we were doing math, playing in Phys. Ed or singing in music. Everyone in the whole school stopped the current activity and read for 10 minutes. Ms. Adharsingh loved getting 10 minutes everyday to read with us.

Literacy Week

Every year on January 27, ABC Life Literacy Canada hosts Family Literacy Day, the largest national family literacy event in Canada. Literacy organizations, schools, libraries and media groups will coordinate numerous literacy-themed events and activities across the country in honour of this special initiative.

Family Literacy Day® is a national awareness initiative created by ABC Life Literacy Canada in 1999 to raise awareness of the importance of reading and engaging in other literacy-related activities as a family. News Media Canada is a proud supporter of Family Literacy Day, distributing public service announcements and editorial resources from ABC Life Literacy Canada to our members.

All Week Activities: Admin to read to classes 
D.E.A.R. time (Drop everything and read, students and staff should be carrying a book all day, every day, you never know when it will happen!). 
Constable Mark will read with grade ½ classes.

Monday- Read my Shirt Day! (Please wear a shirt with writing on it, or a shirt connected to literacy in some way)

Tuesday- Reading with other classes (will be a 15 minute block, teachers will move to a new location, check your mailbox for a schedule later this week)

Wednesday- Book Mark Making 

Thursday- Dress as your Favourite Character! And Literacy Week Assembly!  

Mystery Settings

This week, we continued our work with settings and using juicy words to describe them. Students were all given a different picture of familiar and unfamiliar places. After the students had time to write about their pictures, we shared them with each other trying to guess the places that was described. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out the clues.

For example,

" I saw beautiful mountains ahead. The water was blue. I heard two little birds chirping. I felt water splashing on my face. I smelled fresh air. I tasted fresh water."

After a great adventure in the woods in the distance I saw a beautiful giant thing. It was very large. I went inside! It was shiny! There as gold everywhere. I smelled delicious chocolate. Over the hill sat  lot of corn growed so much that I couldn't even count how many there was. I noticed a dark brown bear eating some berries. There was wine tangled to the large tower. I felt a mouse that was in the hallway."

Using our 5 Senses

Our focus this week in writing was to use our 5 senses to describe settings. We used photographs that were presented in class to write "juicy" words. The first picture was a photo of the forest in the Fall time. Then we looked at a winter picture of the Northern Lights. This time we used starter sentences to make our setting paragraphs quite interesting.

We listened to the words that described the setting in the book called Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. Ms. Adharsingh read the first and second page and our job was to sketch a picture in our author's notebook that we imagined in our minds. She read the pages multiple times while we continued to sketch.

Creating Number Lines

This week we started addition and subtraction. Our goal by the end of the unit is to learn that addition and subtraction is connected and we are able to communicate our thinking through pictures, numbers and words. The students first task was to create a number line on the floor with their group. The first step was counting by 5's to place on the number line. Students did an exceptional job of making equal spaces between the numbers. Then each group used their bodies and feet to move forwards (+) and backwards (-) depending on the given equation. Finally, they had to find the pairs of equations that were related or connected. We called a Family!

Next week, we will use our own personal number lines to solve new addition and subtraction equations.