January 29 - February 1, 2024

Family Literacy Day at St. Gabriel- Monday, January 29th:

Family Literacy Day takes place every January 27^th to raise awareness about the importance of reading and engaging in other literacy activities with family. (See Link here) At school, we will have a St. Gabriel Literacy Day on Monday, January 29th. Students and staff are invited to wear their pajamas, bring a stuffy, and bring their favourite book to school (or borrow one from school). The whole school will "snuggle up" with their books and celebrate this important day by participating in follow-up literacy activities.

Our Learning

Math

In Grade 2, we will continue to explore how to sort and classify 2-D shapes using their geometric properties (e.g., sides, corners/vertices, angles).

Grade 2 Parent letter Explaining How to Sort and Classify 2-D Shapes

In Grade 3, we will continue our exploration of how we can describe, sort, and compare 3-D solids, including their properties (e.g., faces, edges, vertices, angles, congruence). 

Grade 3 Parent letter explaining how to sort 3-D objects here

Language

This week, the Grade 2s will bring home UFLI homework to reinforce the learning from last week's phonics lesson about the -all, -oll, and -ull spelling patterns.

Reading/Spelling: This week, our UFLI phonics lesson will be about the -ck sound. We have already learned that the letter C and the letter K can say the same sound, /k/. This week, we will learn that the C and K sometimes come together to make this same sound. That is, the grapheme CK says /k/.

We will learn that when we hear the /k/ sound at the end of a word after a short vowel, we spell it with a ck, like at the end of the words duck, rock, black, sick, quack, stick, clock.

Our new heart words for this week will be: goes, says

Please have your child practise the heart words we have learned so far in class: the, I, a, said, to, do, of, see, he, be, me, from, you, what, have, look, book, are, was, your, want, go, no, so, *goes, *says.

We will also continue to develop our reading comprehension strategies. We will work on how to reply to comprehension questions about a text we read. We need to be able to understand the deeper meanings in a text and respond to questions without the "answer" always being directly written out in the text. This is called "inferring". We also need to be able to respond using proof and support from the text and our own connections. 

Important Dates:

Jan. 29 - St. Gabriel celebrates Family Literacy Day (See Link here)

Feb. 2 - P.D. Day: No school

 January 22 to 26, 2024

Our Learning

Math

In Grade 2, we will continue to explore how to describe, sort and classify 2-D shapes using their geometric properties (e.g., sides, corners/vertices, angles). 

Grade 2 Parent Letter Explaining How to Describe 2-D Shapes

Grade 2 Parent letter Explaining How to Sort and Classify 2-D Shapes

In Grade 3 Math, we will continue our exploration of how we can describe, sort, and compare 3-D solids, including their properties (e.g., faces, edges, vertices, angles, congruence). 

Grade 3 Parent letter explaining how to describe 3-D objects here

Grade 3 Parent letter explaining how to sort 3-D objects here

Language

Reading/Spelling: This week, we will finish our UFLI Phonics lesson from last week. The focus is on the -all, -oll, and -ull spelling patterns. We have learned that sometimes, when LL comes after the vowels A, O, and U, the LL changes the vowel sound. Examples:

-all: ball, call, fall, hall, mall, small, stall, tall, wall

-oll: poll, roll, toll, troll

-ull: bull, full, pull

Our latest heart words are go, no, so.

During our reading comprehension lessons, we will continue to develop our knowledge and understanding of non-fiction text features (e.g., table of contents, photographs, captions, labels, glossary, index, headings, special font, diagrams, text boxes, maps, cut-outs/closeups).

We will also begin to learn how to reply to comprehension questions about a text we read. We need to be able to understand the deeper meanings in a text and respond to questions without the "answer" always being directly written out in the text. This is called "inferring". We also need to be able to respond using proof and support from the text and our own connections.

Next week, we will begin to use a visual of what we are looking or when students give a written answer to a reading comprehension question after reading a text.  APE:

Science:

This week, the Grade 2s will extend their learning about the water cycle, with a focus on the specific stages of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation in our Air and Water in the Environment unit. Ask your child about our water cycle experiment (hint: it contains blue water and is hanging near our classroom window!). The Grade 3s will continue to learn about the importance of decomposers in soil in our Soils in the Environment unit. Ask your Grade 3 child why worms are so important to our soil!

Important Dates:

Jan. 24 - Bell Let's Talk Day

Jan. 29 - St. Gabriel celebrates Family Literacy Day (See Link here)

Feb. 2 - P.D. Day: No school

 January 15 - 19, 2024

United in Black Day Monday, January 15, 2024

On January 15th, the schools in the OCSB are participating in the third annual United in Black Day (formerly Black Shirt Day). Students and staff are invited to wear black and use the opportunity to raise our  awareness about anti-Black racism (and racism in all its forms), raise the profile of the systemic barriers that Black people have faced and continue to face within our school communities, and to speak up against racism wherever it shows itself. Your child is encouraged to wear black on Monday. 

Our Learning This Week

Math:

This week, your child will bring home their Assessment Portfolio with their addition and subtraction assessment task in it. Please have your child show you their work, then please sign it and return it in the folder. We will begin our geometry units in both Grade 2 and 3.

The focus of our unit in Grade 2 will be on 2-D shapes (polygons). We will explore how to describe 2-D shapes using their geometric properties (e.g., sides, corners/vertices, angles). 

Link to Parent Letter Explaining How to Describe 2-D Shapes

In Grade 3, the focus is on 3-D solids. We will be exploring how we can describe 3-D solids, including their properties (e.g., faces, edges, vertices, angles). We will also examine the meaning of the term congruent (congruence).

Link to Geometry Vocabulary To Know for Grade 3 here

Language:

In Writing, we will continue our learning about descriptive writing, with continued focus on adding details and adjectives to our writing. Our reading comprehension focus continues to be an exploration of several features of non-fiction texts (e.g., table of contents, and we will learn more about headings, special font, photographs, diagrams, labels, captions, text boxes, maps, cut-outs/closeups, glossary, and index.

Reading/Spelling: Our next UFLI Phonics lessons (Reading and Spelling) will focus on the -all, -oll, and -ull spelling patterns. Last week, we learned that we use LL to spell the /L/ sound after a short vowel sound, like in the words fell and will. This week, we will learn that sometimes, when LL comes after the vowels A, O, and U, the LL changes the vowel sound. Examples:

-all: ball, call, fall, hall, mall, small, stall, tall, wall

-oll: poll, roll, toll, troll

-ull: bull, full, pull

This week's heart words are go, no, so.

**We will not have UFLI phonics homework this week.

Science:

This week, the Grade 2s will learn about the water cycle in our Air and Water in the Environment unit. The Grade 3s will learn about the importance of decomposers in soil in our Soils in the Environment unit.

Important Dates:

Jan. 15 - United in Black Day: Wear black

Feb. 2 - P.D. Day

  January 8 - 12, 2024

Wishing you and your family a blessed, healthy, and happy 2024! I hope you had a restful and fun holiday with your loved ones.

Our Learning

Religion:

January 6th was the Feast of the Epiphany of our Lord. That will be the topic of our Religion lessons this week. We will learn about the three Magi who followed the star to baby Jesus, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. What gifts can we give to Jesus? 

Language:

In Writing, we will review the criteria for recount texts while writing a recount of something we did during the holidays. We will also continue our learning about descriptive writing, and set some goals for using descriptive vocabulary and details to improve our writing.

To help with our reading comprehension skills, we will continue with our exploration of several features of non-fiction texts and how they help the reader identify important ideas and information. We have been looking at examples of table of contents, and we will learn more about headings, special font, photographs, diagrams, labels, captions, text boxes, maps, cut-outs/closeups, glossary, and index.

In Reading and Spelling, we will also review the "-flsz rule" during our phonics lessons this week. The -flsz Rule (or "Floss Rule") reminds us that in a one syllable word, if a short vowel is followed by an f, l, s, or z, then the consonant is doubled. For example, in the following words: off, sniff, staff, doll, bell, dress, grass, pass, buzz, fuzz, fizz. NOTE: There are a few rule breakers or exceptions to this rule: bus, if, as, plus, this, chef, gas, us, pal.

We will not have UFLI phonics homework this week.

Math:

In Grade 2, we will finish up our learning about adding and subtracting numbers to 20 by exploring and practising fact families.

Link to Grade 2 Parent Summary letter here

In Grade 3, we will review the strategies for adding and subtracting 2-digit and 3-digit numbers, including using the standard algorithms with and without regrouping.

Link to Grade 3 Adding Larger Numbers Parent Summary letter here

Link to Grade 3 Subtracting Larger Numbers Parent Summary letter here

We will also practise the problem-solving steps and strategies we were working on before the Christmas break. An important skill is for students to be able to understand and solve word problems.

We will have an assessment of our 2- and 3-digit addition and subtraction skills in the next week.

Our next unit in both Grades 2 and 3, will be geometry.

Grade 2 and Grade 3 Math Homework:

Memorize doubles addition facts to the sum of 20 (e.g., 4+4, 5+5, 6+6, 7+7, 8+8, 9+9, 10+10), as well as the related doubles subtraction sentences (e.g., 8-4=4, 10-5=5, 16-8=8, etc.). 

Important Dates:

Jan. 8 - First day of school after Christmas break

Feb. 2 - P.D. Day