Happy New Year

Our first day back is under our belts! We are welcoming Miss Hierck to our classroom for the next two weeks. She comes to us from the UBC education program.

We jumped right back into routine today and kick-started a few new units. First off - basketball. This was met with a big cheer by students! Today we learned about the proper grip, stance, and how to pivot and dribble properly.

The next science unit will be Light & Sound. This is a terrific hands-on science topic to study. If you are able, could you please send a flashlight to school with your child? We will be using these over the next 2-3 weeks to conduct some experiments. In the past, our school set of flashlights has proven rather unreliable.

In writing, we looked at a rubric for IDEAS. Students were given a writing sample which they had to "grade" using the rubric provided. It is always interesting to see how hard they mark others' writing! We will be learning to use this information to help improve our own writing. This term we will be reinforcing the concept of using details and conventions (capitals, punctuation and spelling) as well as learning to ORGANIZE our writing.

Finally, in math today we began subtraction. I will be using the following rhymes to help students remember when they need to regroup:

More on top? No need to stop!

Numbers the same? Zero's the game.

More on the floor? Go next door and get 10 more.

You can continue to support math at home by practicing subtraction. Students have been taught the reciprocal relationship between addition and subtraction. They also will be continuing to practice efficient strategies such as counting up or down depending on the numbers (ie. 8-6 count up to 8 starting at 6; 8-2 count down by 2 starting at 8). Memorizing fact families is another way that students can recall facts quickly.
8, 7, 15 are a fact family because:

8+7=15
7+8=15
15-8=7
15-7=8