Week of November 17 - 21, 2025

This week at the OCSB has been designated as Bullying Awareness and Prevention Week to help promote safe schools and a positive learning environment. At St. Gabriel, we are committed to raising awareness and learning more about what bullying looks like, sounds like, and feels like, and how we can prevent it.

Bullying is defined as a repeated, persistent, and aggressive behaviour directed at an individual or individuals that is intended to cause fear and/or harm to another person's body, feelings, self-esteem, or reputation. Bullying occurs in a context where there is a real or perceived imbalance of power.  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/safeschools/prevention.html

Bullying can take different forms including:

• Physical - hitting, shoving, pinching, poking, chasing, stealing, or damaging property
• Verbal - name calling, mocking, teasing, threatening, making negative references to a person 
• Social - excluding others from a group, spreading rumours about a person, humiliating others with public gestures to put others down 
• Electronic (commonly known as cyberbullying) - using the internet, cell phones, email, text messaging, or social media to spread rumours or hurtful comments, intimidate, put down, or make fun of someone.
• Students need to know that they are not powerless and that they all have a voice to stop bullying and bullying behaviour.

• You can get more information at Bullying Canada

Curriculum Updates

Language:

In reading, over the next couple of weeks, we will explore how making connections to our prior knowledge, experiences, and feelings helps us understand what we read. In writing, we will soon begin our study of descriptive writing.

Our next UFLI phonics lesson will focus on the long o vowel sound as in the word open. The long vowel sound is the same as the vowel's name, O. 

The vowel o says its own name, o, when there is a silent E at the end of a word, like in the words home, bone, code, rope, and note. The E does not make a sound so we say it is "silent" ("silent E" or "bossy E"). 

Please have your child practise the heart words we have learned so far in class: the, I, a, and, as, is, 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.

Math:

We will continue our study of estimating and comparing numbers.  In Grade Two, we will continue to learn how to use place-value to order and compare 2-digit numbers. We will also learn how to compare and order numbers to 200. 

Grade 2 Parent Letter Explaining Lessons About Comparing and Ordering Numbers Using Place Value

Grade 2 Parent Letter Explaining Lessons About Comparing and Ordering Numbers to 200 

In Grade 3, our focus will be to learn how to use benchmarks, including multiples of 100, with and without number lines, to compare 3-digit numbers. We will also learn other ways to order numbers up to 1000.

Grade 3 Parent Summary Letter Using Benchmarks to Compare Three-Digit Numbers

Grade 3 Parent Summary Letter About Comparing and Ordering 3-Digit Numbers

Important Dates:

**November is OCSB Indigenous Education Month

Monday, Nov. 17 - Grade 2/3 spelling check-in

November 17-21: Bullying Awareness and Prevention Week

Thursday, Nov. 20: Parent-teacher interviews