September 21st - 24th - Week at a Glance

Hello and happy weekend to the students of room 17! I hope you are enjoying your long weekend as on Friday the teachers were busy preparing for upcoming events during our Professional Development day activities. 

This week, the students were busy working on writing about using their 6 Senses (including feelings) to describe the season of fall. They were trying to create pictures in the minds of their readers by using a variety of descriptive words to talk about what they can see, smell, touch and do during this season of fall. We will continue to work on this next week and also discuss the importance of editing our work to create a finished product that our audience is looking forward to reading.  

We have also been working on understanding the importance of Literacy Centres where the students work on a variety of literacy skills within the classroom while the teacher is working with a small group on Guided Reading. The students are being instructed on what tasks they need to work on and allowing the teacher to interact with those students on reading comprehension and decoding strategies.  

In Science, we had a chance to do a nature walk to the front of our school and see the various insects that are still busy making their way around our natural world. We saw lots of ants, flies, a mosquito or two and a spider during our walk. Students have also been talking and diagramming the life cycle of a butterfly and discussed the metamorphic change that they go through on their way to becoming an adult.

In Social Studies, we have continued to reflect on the vastness of our country of Canada and the location of the various communities we will be studying this year - Iqaluit in Nunavut, Meteghan in Nova Scotia and Saskatoon in Saskatchewan. We have started to talk about landforms and waterways that vary in the communities and compare them to what we see in and around our city of Calgary too.  We will start to look in depth at pictures and video of each community to see how the geography effects the people in that community.

A few reminders for parents about next week. Remember it is Photo Day on Monday and students need to be in their formal uniforms. Also on Wednesday, September 30th is Orange Shirt Day.  This day encourages communities to recognize and support reconciliation events and activities. Students are encouraged to wear an orange shirt for this day with their navy pants/shorts/skirt or under their tartan dress.  It is NOT a casual day but rather just an opportunity to wear orange with our uniform.

Thank you and I hope that people continue to stay safe and healthy to start the school year!

The homework package for this upcoming week can be found on the HOMEWORK link page and you can download it from there. The homework will be due by Thursday, September 24th. Thank you!

September 14th - 18th - Week at a Glance

Hello Room 17! Thanks to all of you for a wonderful week here at Le Roi Daniels. We have started to settle into the routine of being back at school and trying our best each and every day! The students have been spending time reviewing our single letter graphemes and working on our printing and understanding of the various sounds that are associated with the letters. Students have also discussed and practiced their roles as writers who are there to create a clear picture for the reader with the words they choose to use. We have also talked about the various Brain Pockets we all have - our Memory, Fact and Imagination Pockets that we use depending on what type of writing we are trying to express to our readers. Along our writing journey, we will also be looking at when we need to use upper case letters, periods or other forms of punctuation within our sentences. In Math, the students have been exploring patterns and what makes up a complete pattern. We have discussed the various attributes that can change within a pattern - colour, size, shapes, direction and thickness or thinness of a shape within the pattern. Students also are looking at how numbers form patterns and understanding how to count by 2's, 5's and 10's while examining a hundreds chart. In Science, we have talked about the various jobs associated with being a scientist and what the students will have to do while participating in our science classes to be an effective scientist. Our first unit we will be exploring has to do with Small Crawling and Flying Animals, notably various insects, spiders and slugs or snails that we find in our community environments.  Also this week, the students participated in the Terry Fox Run on Friday and thank you to all the students who participated and also for many of those who were able to bring in a donation to put towards cancer research. All the students came to have a greater appreciation of the courage and perseverance that Terry Fox showed us in doing his Marathon of Hope and trying to support research in finding a cure for cancer.

A few reminders that the homework will be posted on this Blog page on Sunday night and that Monday is a formal uniform day. Almost all the students received their homework books and communication folders on Friday and they were given a colour (red, blue or yellow) as their assigned colour in which they need to complete this level of homework. The homework will be due on Thursday, September 24th as Friday is a school wide PD day.  If you have any questions about the homework, please do not hesitate to email me to discuss it.

Thanks and have a safe and relaxing weekend,

Mr. Hakes

 Weekly Reminders - September 17th and 18th notes:

Hi there Room 17! I hope you have had a chance to check out Mr. Hakes' blog page and have seen the various pages found here.  A few reminders for the rest of the week - Thursday we will be going to the Learning Commons to exchange our books so please remember to put your child's Library books in their backpacks to be returned tomorrow. They will then be able to get TWO new books to take home for the week.  Secondly, on Friday we will be holding our Terry Fox Run and students are invited to wear casual clothes that are comfortable to run in as we will be doing our run during Friday morning.  The final reminder is that the students will be coming home on Friday with their homework books and their communication folders. Inside each homework book, there will be a colour (either red, blue or yellow) and that is level of homework I would like to see your child work on from the homework package. The homework will be loaded onto my blog page each Sunday and will be due either on or before the following Friday of that week. Remember that students need to do approximately 10 minutes a night of homework and that they are also strongly encouraged to be reading on a nightly basis as well. In each homework book, I will have the students glue their usernames and passwords for both Raz Kids and Mathletics that they can access from home. Thanks and see the students tomorrow!

 Welcome Back Week

Hello to room 17 students and parents! I am so glad to be back at school and see your smiling grade 2 faces once again! The week was very busy and starting with our Ice Cream Social on Monday, the students arrived for classes on Tuesday, ready to begin their learning journey once again. However, this year features a lot of safety protocols because of COVID and the students arrived with masks on and were amazing at following the rules that have been put in place to protect everyone at Le Roi Daniels.  A reminder to make sure that each of your child's masks gets labeled with their name as the ones being handed out to them at school, there are a lot of masks that are the same and we don't want them mixed up! The week was very busy, as we all got to know each other a little better after such a long time apart. There were lots of opportunities to get to know their new classmates, see old friends and make some new friends as well. We also had the chance to connect via Google Meet with the parents who were able to join us on Thursday night for the Meet the Teacher and Introduction to Grade 2. For those who were not able to join us, I have put the link to my Powerpoint on The Grade 2 Items page as well as Mrs. Taylor's Welcome Back video. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to email me with your questions. As for now, enjoy the rest of your long weekend and we will see the students on Tuesday morning!  Thanks again for a great start to the school year!

Mr. Hakes