It is so great to see everyone back after our Spring Break. We are diving right back into our learning with some great activities and new concepts. Here is what we have been up to:
Our Language Arts this week has been focused on stories. We enjoyed sharing stories of our adventures over the holidays with our friends. We used a story circle as a way to make sure everyone had a chance to share their ideas and then recorded our stories in our writing journals. The students are becoming more confident in their writing and can easily express their ideas in complete sentences that are easily read by others. They are also beginning to use more descriptive vocabulary in their personal writing.
We were also excited to meet with our Blackfoot Elder, Saa'kokoto, via video this week. He talked to us about the importance of the land and the tradition of giving thanks for the coming of Spring. He told us a traditional story, "Thunder". His stories are deeply moving and give us lots to think about. The students told Saa'kokoto that his story taught them several lessons including "Stand up for yourself", "Never give up even when something is hard", and "You need to have courage".
In Math, we continued to explore the concept of subtraction. Students are learning to make accurate calculations in subtraction using a variety of materials including a number line, counters, their fingers, and their beaded number line. Students are becoming more practiced at using counting backward to help with some simple subtraction.
We integrated our Science, Math and Art this week in our exploration of colour. We reviewed our primary and secondary colours and learned about colours classified as warm or cool. We then took what we know about patterns to paint two papers: one with a cool pattern and one with a warm pattern. Finally, we chose one of the colour pallet patterns to be our background and the other colour pallet became the animal in the foreground. The art pieces are quite striking.
In Gym, we began our unit on soccer. With the nicer weather, students are keen to play soccer during recess times, so we are using our Phys. Ed time to help students develop some skills for the game. We will also be working in the coming weeks on how to play a friendly game cooperatively so that everyone can have fun.
