May 6-10 Update

Dear families,

Congratulations to all the students who received their First Communion at Holy

Name Church yesterday! It was a lovely celebration and all of the students were prepared and excited to receive the Holy Eucharist amongst their families and peers. I am very proud of you all.
In Language Arts, the students are generating ideas, producing rough drafts and editing their work as they embark on paragraph writing. Here is a list of the success criteria for writing a strong paragraph:

1.  Your first sentence is the topic sentence and should contain the topic and an opinion on the topic. Always indent your topic sentence.

2. Include three supporting sentences about your topic. These can be three supporting ideas, with facts, reasons or examples.

3. The last sentence should be a concluding sentence/closing sentence which reasserts the main idea of your paragraph.

We are off to a great start boys and girls! You all have creative ideas. Use theses tips as you write your paragraph for your 1930’s project.

As students create their 1930’s film posters they will be meeting the Media Literacy expectation focused on creating a media texts by using specific conventions, and techniques to attract an audience.  The students have been introduced to how text (size and form), images and overall appearance (colour, texture) attract different audiences for different purposes.

In Mathematics, this week’s focus is Division. A sample question that the students will be investigating is: “I have 15 stickers for 3 friends to share. How many stickers will each friend receive?”  For extra at home practice, students can create arrays at home and make multiplication sentences or find ways to divide and share objects equally among family members. There will be a quiz this Thursday on all of the concepts we have practiced at school so far: arrays, dividing equal groups and counting jumps along a number line.

In Science, the grade 2 students will begin a new unit on Air and Water in the Environment. Some of the big ideas of this unit are: Air and water are a major part of the environment; Living things need air and water to survive; changes to air and water affect living things and the environment; our actions affect the quality of air and water in the world.

The grade 3’s will explore Soils in the Environment. Some of the bid ideas of this unit are: Soil is made up of living and non-living things; Soil is an essential source of life and nutrients for many living things; Living things including humans interact with soils and can cause negative or positive changes.

As many of you know, Holy Name will be celebrating its 100^th Anniversary on May 25, 2013. Each class has been asked to create a display of important events, fashion, art and people for a specific decade.  Our class has been assigned the 1930’s.  Therefore, our visual arts lessons will be focused on designing our 1930’s display board.  At home project outlines were sent home last weeks. Students will select a topic of interest and design a component related to their topic (collage, structure etc). A paragraph should also accompany their work.

Have a wonderful week!

Sincerely,

Ms. Bertone

Important Reminders:

-         1930’s project due on Friday May 10th

-         Holy Name’s 100^th Anniversary on May 25^th

-  2-Minute math drill every Friday (a subtraction practice sheet was sent home today)