Friday September 26, 2025

Thank you to all of the parents who joined us today for our Orange Shirt Day Assembly. The Grade 3's did a wonderful job and they were so excited to have you see their performance! They have been working hard every day to practice for the event, and we are very proud of the leadership they demonstrated for the school. 

Coming Up: Inline Skating in the Gym!
We're excited to let you know that Alien Inline Skating will be starting a residency in our gymnasium for Grades 3, 4 and EES students starting Wednesday, October 1st.  This is a fantastic opportunity for students to build confidence, coordination, and have a ton of fun while learning to inline skate.

A few important notes for skating days:

• Students are encouraged to bring a CSA-approved helmet (bike helmets are best).  I will post the schedule so you know what days to bring in helmets. 
• Please do not send full-face helmets, football helmets, or hockey helmets.
• If your child does not have a helmet, one will be provided for them.

Since the gym will be used for skating, all PE classes will continue to be held outdoors next week, weather permitting. Please make sure your child is dressed for the weather and ready to move!

Important Dates:

- No school on Monday Sept 29th, or Tuesday Sept 30th

Recommended areas to focus on at home to help your child:

- Reading every night:

• focusing on fluency (can they read without stopping to sound out each word),  
• expression (changing their tone of voice to match the punctuation and dialogue of characters), and 
• comprehension (ask your child questions about the story while they read or after they finish). 

- Basic math facts:

• addition and subtraction, both with and without regrouping (this could be practiced using worksheets or card games like addition or subtraction war)
• skip counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, and 25s (a great activity to practice this is by counting coins)

- Writing:

• spelling (you could also practice this skill playing games like 'Horse' using a basketball, net, and choosing different words to spell). 
• printing mechanics (are the letters legible, is their a clear size difference with capital and lowercase letters, are their spaces between the words)
• punctuation 

Morning Activity:

- Grade 2 math review booklet to practice skills from last year. 

Literacy:

- We reviewed our knowledge of adjectives and made a page of examples and synonyms in our writing notebooks, we discussed how adjectives make our writing more interesting and that it helps readers visualize the details in a story. 

- We practiced editing and revising our work by working through a text passages that was missing its capitals and punctuation, we will continue to practice our editing skills throughout the year. 

- We learned how to write the letter d (both lowercase and uppercase) in cursive writing. 

- We reviewed our knowledge of digraphs at the end of words and practiced creating words through a word scramble game, word ladders, and dictations. 

Math:

- We continued learning about time and how to read the exact time on an analog clock. We also practiced saying the time of day in terms of quarter to and quarter past, this is a skill I would recommend praciting at home. 

- We have been practicing our basic math facts through our review booklet and playing card games such as addition war and subtraction war, these are very easy games to play at home and great for memorizing basic facts. We also taught addition war to our younger buddies this week!

Social:

- We looked at the different landforms throughout Alberta and made a visual journal page to showcase each one. We will continue to map out and explore the different landforms in our province and how they are formed. 

Science:

- Mrs. Coleman joined our class to teach a science lesson about different types of natural disasters and how they occur and shape our world, while I joined her class to teach them about Alberta's landforms. 

Art:

- We started our weaving project and designed landscapes using colour blocking. After we complete our landscapes, we will create a legend explaining what each colour of yearn represents in our landscape design. 

- We completed a folding surprise, guided drawing of a kid jumping into leaves to celebrate the first day of Fall. 

Our class has been working hard every day, not only to practice for our assembly, but also to show how hard working and responsible they are in class. They have earned all of the marbles in our reward jar, and they have earned a mini class party. They planned out the day for Oct 1st, and we will be having a "choose your own seat day", spending time in the morning in our schools computer lab, and we will be watching a movie (related to our curriculum, and broken up throughout the day).