January 27 - 30, 2025

Family Literacy Day at St. Gabriel- Monday, January 27th:

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 27th. Students in our class are invited to 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.

Lunar New Year 2025

The Lunar New Year is celebrated by many East Asian communities around the world, including Vietnamese, Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, and people from the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, among others. This year it is observed on January 29. It is a 15-day festival that begins with the new moon that occurs between January 21 and February 20 according to Western calendars. Festivities last until the full moon. The term Lunar New Year originated because the dates of celebration follow the phases of the moon. The Spring Festival was originally a day to pray to the gods for a good planting and harvest. People also pray to their ancestors. During the celebrations, people honour their ancestors and hold traditional ceremonies. People get together and welcome the new year with customs that will bring good fortune, happiness, wealth, and prosperity. In class, we will learn about some of the history and traditions of Lunar New Year. Wishing all of our families who celebrate the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year a very happy new year!

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 describe 3-D objects here

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

Language

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). This week, the students will look at examples of some of these features in texts and learn how they can be used to help us find information.

Spelling and Phonics: This week, the students will bring home UFLI homework to reinforce the learning from last week's phonics lesson about the _ce ending (for example in words such as rice, trace, twice, space).

In phonics this week we will learn that the letter G can also say /j/ when it is followed by a silent E, like in the words page, age, and huge and also words such as cage, stage, and strange. The E at the end of the word does not make a sound so we say it is "silent" ("silent E" or "bossy E"). 

This week's new heart word: use

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, they, their, were, talk, walk, could, should, would, or, for, who, by, my, one, once, *use.

Important Dates:

Jan. 27 - St. Gabriel celebrates Family Literacy Day (See Link here)

Jan. 31 - P.D. Day: No school for students