I would like to wish all of you and your families a Happy Holiday Season ...............................and a safe and Happy New Year! .................................
Let's keep up the great partnership! 2010 will be a great year for 2C!

I regret to announce that I will be leaving early next week. Due to family concerns, I need to be in the US on Tuesday. The children will be busy practising for the Xmas programme and I have activities planned for the week. They will be in good hands and the substitute teacher will do a great job ! Looking forward to seeing you and your children in the New Year!

Our class Christmas Party will take place on Friday,December 18th! Each child should bring in healthy snacks or drinks to share! No school uniform on Friday! School ends at noon!

Our Junior School "Celebrations around the World" Christmas event takes place on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 2.00 pm ( 14.00). The children are quite excited about the event and have been practising very hard ! No school uniform on this day! Children should come to school wearing a green or red T-shirt. No other colors please!

We had a wonderful week working on our unit "From Field to Table'. Natalia's mom and Luisa's dad acted as our chefs and took us through the process of making waffles and Cascais butter cookies! You can see for yourselves by watching the slide show!The children were actively engaged in these activities and enjoyed the delicious treats! We continued reading about Miguel and his tomatoes and learned what happened to the tomatoes in the factory! This is our last week on the unit and next week we will start a new unit! Start saving plastics ( bottless, caps, lids, bubble wrap.etc), papers ( recycled Xmas paper works well), old socks, egg cartons, cereal boxes, and more...

This week we moved on to the sound of long /o/ and read the story Mr. Bones and Mrs. Jones. The children found the story humorous and easy to read. They found out that the /ow/ and /oe/ sounds placed at the end of a word say the name of letter O. The vowel combination /oa/ though appeared in the center of words. This confused the children a bit but they began to understand better when they noticed patterns in words. The long /0-e/ sound appeared in word families and the children found this easy to understand. The children have almost completed their shared writing activity with their partners! The children are making their book covers and will take turns sending them home to share with you once they are ready!

This week we worked on story problems with addition and subtraction facts. The children learned to pick out the important information in a story problem and discussed clues which helped them sort through the information. The children are gaining a good understanding of base ten and numbers to 20. This week we used a tens/ones chart, cube and number cards and constructed towers of ten and ones to denote numbers to 20 and then investigated how to make 30. Some children still confuse the teens but with reinforcement they are quickly grasping the concepts.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the trip to the farm! Take a look at the slideshow! We were able to see animals, a garden full of vegetables, an orchard with cherries growing on trees, and even a milking machine! Some children were interested in the vegetable and fruits growing in the garden and others were interested in the manure used as fertilizer in the garden! Of course we all liked the animals; horses, cows, donkeys, goats, ducks, rabbits and chickens! Each child was able to take a picture with my digital camera! Tala had an interesting Show and Tell. Her mom came in and showed us how to make Lebanese bread which looked as thin as a piece of paper. The bread was a mixture of corn and wheat. It was really good! We read the story 'Miguel and his Tomatoes', a story of how Miguel harvests his tomatoes and their journey to a factory and then on to the supermarket! We are writing our own versions of the story!

This week we reviewed the long/u/ sound and wrote stories about 'Sue and June'. We wrote on our student whiteboard and reviewed long/a/ and long/i/. We continued writing sight words and we wrote stories about a bird in a nest, using those sight words. The children enjoyed writing silly sentences with new and unknown words.

In maths, we investigated addition and subtraction to 13 and different strategies used to explore 13. We also looked at using different types of manipulatives used in problem solving and how to describe and explain mathematical processes. We worked with base ten and numbers to 20. We looked at patterns on the 100 number chart and explored patterns when couting by 2's, when looking at even numbers and doubles. We discussed weight and how heavy or light foods processed in a factory might weigh!

Pictures in Year 2C will take place on Wednesday Morning, November 25, 09. The children should be dressed in their school uniform.

However, our field trip to the farm is taking place tomorrow and children should come to school dressed in their P.E. uniform.

Due to the weather we decided to reschedule our field trip to the farm. We were all extremely dissapointed but we had to make a decision the day before and decided the weather could not be trusted. We were wrong but rescheduled the trip to the farm for this coming Tuesday, November 24th! Instead of going to an actual farm, we watched videos on different types of farms; fish farms, produce farms, dairy farms,etc. At the end of the day we had a picture of farms and processes that take place on the farm, at the market and in factories. We made investigations into different foods and worked on a timeline to show what happens at the different stages of food production. During 'Show and Tell' Bailey showed us how whole oranges could be processed into orange juice using a simple hand juicer!After a hard day's work in school, the juice tasted so great!

This week we enjoyed reading the story 'Sue and June'. The long vowel /u-e/ and /ue/ proved to be more difficult than the long /a/ and long/i/ sounds. We investigate the word families associated with long/u/ and the children discovered that the sound says the name of the letter 'u' but actually reading some long /u/ words can be a bit tricky. Take the word 'sure' for example! We will continue working on this sound and the spelling of words next week. Our story writing activity is almost completed.Wait until you read our story 'Waves'.We have 6 different versions! We are focusing on sight words associated with our upcoming field trip to the farm!

In Math this week we investigated addition and subtraction facts to 11. We explored different strategies for adding and subracting these numbers. The children recorded their answers on paper and had to explain their number sentences and the reasoning behind their stories. Most children understood the concept of doubles and discovered that doubles were also even numbers! We worked with the number chart and examined patterns. We reviewed the concept of counting by 2's and 10's. The children learned the meaning of capacity and weight.

Our field trip has been rescheduled to take place on Tuesday, November 24th. Monday and Tuesday are forecasted to be sunny days so we hope our luck holds out! Although class pictures are scheduled on this day, I have been assured that the pictures can be taken later in the afternoon or on Wednesday. I will inform you as to the situation with uniforms on Monday.

In our Unit of Inquiry from 'Field to Table' we visited a windmill in Alcabideche. Take a look at the slideshow. The children thoroughly enjoyed the activities! We learned about the different types of windmills and the purpose of a windmill! The wind wasn't blowing hard enough so the workers turned on an engine so that the huge stone wheel would work. We saw wheat crushed and turned into flour. We sieved the flour and kneaded the dough. Then we made bread rolls! The most exciting part was waiting for the bread to bake and eating it! We made paper ice cream cones in class and learned about the ingredients and the processes involved in making ice cream! Natalia's mom is going to class to demonstrate how ice cream is made at home and we will be able to taste it!. This coming week,Tuesday, we are going to the farm.
In reading and maths we reviewed work from the previous week. We reviewed the long /a/ and /i/ sounds and worked with the word families. In math we reviewed odd and even numbers!

In our new unit entitled `From Field to Table´, we will be looking at the processes foods go through before they reach our table. If you have a simple recipe you would like to share with us, please let me know. You can come and share your cooking ideas and skills with the children! We are looking at processes, so if you would like to show us different cooking processes and techniques, you are most welcomed into our class! It doesn´t have to be complicated, we like simple things!

As part of our unit of Inquiry ´From Field to Table´,we will be going on a field trip on Friday, November 13, 2009. We will be visiting a windmill and exploring how a windmill was involved in food processing.
On Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 we will be going to a farm. Please ensure that your child is wearing their P.E.uniforms on both days!.Depending on the weather we hope to have lunch at the various sites!

The children truly enjoyed our last Unit 'Me and my Body' and were able to talk about the body and reasons to keep it strong and healthy. It's time for a new unit of inquiry and our next unit is entitled 'From Field to Table' !The children will take their knowledge and investigate the changes/processes foods go through before they reach our tables. We will be cooking at some point in this unit! I will let you know when our cooking sessions will take place in case you would like to cook some simple foods with us!

The children enjoyed the story 'I like what I am' and had the opportunity to further explore the long/i-e/ and /ie/ sound.Next week ,we will be reviewing long/a/ and long /i/. The children are really excited about creating a book with their partner. They are writing words to a picture book and discussing their ideas together as a team. The children keep using strategies when writing as well as using newly acquired words and vocabulary.

Place value has proven to be a challenge. We've been working with cubes,sticks and recording our observations. A tower of ten, a bundle of ten, ten ones,1 ten, ones; the terminology can be a bit confusing ! Next week we will keep investigating place value, number bonds to 10 and we will be working on a number line and adding numbers to 20. In our new unit of inquiry, we will focus on measurement!

We are off on another fieldtrip to the Gulbenkian on Tuesday the 3rd of November. This is part of our Music/Art program. Full details were sent last Friday. Make sure you have sent in your field trip permission forms. Our last field trip was to the Art Museum at the Gulbenkian. We took a mini tour of the museum.(Pictures will follow soon) We learned about the paintings and the colors artists used in the paintings. The children were quite engaged with the discussions on colors and in all it was an informative and exciting field trip. The upcoming fieldtrip focuses on dance!

I will be away on Thursday Nov. 5, Friday Nov.6 and Mon. Nov. 9, 2009. I will be attending a PYP workshop. There will be a substitute teacher in class. Therefore we will have 'Show and Tell' only on Monday and Wednesday this week because on Tuesday we will be on our 2nd Field trip to the Gulbenkian.

Our Unit of Inquiry ' A Strong and Healthy Body is my Responsibility' is coming to an end. It has been an exciting unit and the children are telling me about decisions they have taken. " I told my mom to give me carrots for snack time", "I drank water all day long", "I haven't eaten sugar for 10 days!", " I went to bed at 8 o'clock ", 'I ran around the playground before school' even 'I rested my brain", are some of the comments I have heard children make this past week! This week, we looked at sleeping patterns and how sleep is important to our health. Children should bring in their sleep recording sheets to school on Monday!

Our story of the week in reading was 'Bike Hike'. The children enjoyed this story and were able to relate to it. We investigated the long /i-e/ sound with magic 'e' as well as the /ie/ vowel combination making a long /e/ sound. Long /i-e/ and /ie/ were a bit more confusing but we will review them again next week. We also reviewed the short /e/ sound to reinforce what we had previously learned. The children are beginning to expand their writing skills.They are being risk takers by stepping out of their comfort zone ;attempting to use new vocabulary and exploring decoding strategies with confidence. Many children are beginning to self-correct their mistakes and read over what they have written. Way to go!

This week in maths, we have started our investigations into place value. What is base ten?What does twelve mean and how can we make twelve? Where do we place 12 on our place value mat and what does the '1' and '2' mean? We are tackling a story problem per day and the children love story problem time! We are practising our number bond rhyme and we are getting good at figuring out each bond! It's fun!

This week, Thursday, we are off on a field trip to the Gulbenkian. This is part of our art/ music program. Full details about the field trip will be attached to your diaries. Make sure you have signed a Field Trip Permission form! We would like to thank Mrs.Balazs,our music teacher, for arranging this field trip!

This week in our unit of Inquiry ' Me and my Body', we wrote out the recipe for 'Ants on a Log', and completed making our fruit and vegetable people. We can now look at them and be reminded that eating fruits and vegetables are important for good health and affect parts of our bodies such as our heart, brain, liver and even lungs! We compiled information on exercise taken from our P.E.classes and we were able to tally our findings and graph them using different colors for different exercise.Which exercises were the favorites? Running and Jumping! Take a look at our video and watch us exercise in a Tae Kwan Do demonstration class. ( Sorry but the video is a bit short! Trying for the first timeto upload to the blog!)

Exercising is fun!

This week we learned about exercising in a responsible way. Watch us exercise and take part in Tae Kwan Do class with Ms. Theresa. She told us that this exercise was about using our mind and muscles to protect ourselves. Tae Kwan Do must never be used to harm people and animals. We can never use the Tae Kwan Do moves when playing as this might hurt our friends. Exercise is used to keep our bodies strong and healthy!

The children continued their investigations into the short and long /a/ sound. They enjoyed the story 'Dave and the Raft' and were able to recognize the long a sound /a-e/ and /ai/. When reading with the children, ask them to explain the difference between short and long /a/. Next week we will discover what makes the long /i/ sound. Children enjoyed writing the recipe for the 'Ants on the Log'. The children are referring to known words and exploring new words when writing creative stories.

This week in maths we continued our investigations to 20! We explored number bonds to 10. Ask your child to recite the poem about number bonds to 10! This is a strategy used for quick recall of number bonds. We reviewed the concept of more and less and played a game jumping forwards and backwards from any given number by 2's and 3's. This began our review of addition and subtraction concepts.

The children are enjoying our Unit of Inquiry 'A Healthy and Strong Body is my Responsibility'. This week we had a guest speaker, a tri-athlon athlete, talk to us about exercise. We warmed up and exercised in our classroom. Bailey's mom, who is a nurse, came to speak to us about our bodies and which vegetables are associated with our organs. She brought celery, carrots, raisins and cream cheese and showed us how to prepare a healthy snack called' Ants on a Log". Guess which foods were the ants and the log? The raisins and the celery! The children are enjoying making vegetable people out of paper. They must be able to tell me why they used certain vegetables and why these vegetables are good for healthy bodies.

The children investigated the long /a-e/ sound in the story 'Kate & Jake'. We explored the magical/e/ at the end of the sound and learned how the short /a/ sound is changed to a long /a/ by saying the name of the letter. It was even more interesting to learn that two vowels/ai/ work together to say the name of the first letter. Each day we write in our journals and write about our activities the previous day. We are also using our imagination to write creative stories and stories based on our bodies and healthy eating.

The children this week have enjoyed working with number bonds to 10 and exploring different strategies used when working with bonds. The children worked with manipulative cards to investigate vocabulary used when working with numbers to 20. When counting, how many different ways can a number be written? We reviewed ordinal numbers to 10 and looked at patterns when ordering numbers to 20; 4th to 20th are easier as they end in /th/.

The children are quite involved in our new unit 'My Body is My Responsibility'. They were very excited about taking home a meal chart to keep track of their meals from Breakfast to Dinner. We will discuss their charts when they are returned on Monday.
This week we investigated the food groups. We searched through magazines for different types of food; healthy and unhealthy foods and drinks. We sorted plastic food samples by shape, color and in pairs drew the five groups. We read fiction and non-fiction books and discussed the affects of unhealthy foods on our bodies. Next week, we will take a look at exercise and its' effect on our bodies! We have a variety of planned activities which the children will enjoy!

The Children are on board in language arts and very enthusiastic to continue their discovery of new words and sounds. This week the children were introduced to the long 'a' sound and we continued reinforcing the short 'a ' sound.We started reading Jake and Kate and investigated all the long 'a' sounds in the story. At this stage some vowel sounds may become confusing!Remember the short vowel sound 'a' makes the sound of 'a' in cat but the long 'a' vowel is special! It says the name of the letter A! The children investigated words such as lake, make and take and found a pattern! These words ended in 'e'. The 'e' at the end of these words is magic and actually made the 'a' sound say the name of the letter. What a tricky letter and sound!

In Math this week, the children investigated number bonds to 8. Next week we will continue finding bonds that make up numbers 9 and 10. We have reviewing writing numbers to 10 and found out that writing 'eight' is harder than writing other numbers to 10. We found a pattern when writing numbers from 10 to 20. The word teen appeared in many numbers and we will investigate this is in the coming weeks and months. What does sixteen mean and why is 16, 10+6? We worked on simple story problems and strategies/words used to find out whether a problem is an addition or subtraction problem. Next week we will be graphing data taken from the P.E. class on exercise.

Our first unit of inquiry is entitled "A Healthy and Strong Body is My Responsibility". We have started off the unit by investigating the body. The children are quite excited learning about the different organs and their functions. Did you know that there are 600 muscles in our body? We have a model of the body in our class and the children have enjoyed taken it apart to discover the kidneys, heart, lungs, intestines, and stomach! Unfortunately, they couldn't take the esophagus out and some were quite dissapointed in this! We will now begin discovering which foods are healthy and the benefits of exercise. This week the children will do a survey of foods eaten at the dinner table at night. Our goal is to write a healthy menu for your family. If you have any old magazines with pictures of food and exercise would you please donate them to our class? Thank you!


In Language Arts, we have been reviewing short vowels, consonants and word families. We have been getting back into the swing of reading and writing creative stories as well!


In Math this week we have been reviewing numbers to 20, story problems, writing numbers in words, jumping forwards and backwards on a number line and the number chart to 100.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Hear all about it!

Just a few reminders

Please return the reading folders on Mondays only. At this time the books will be changed and new books will be sent home for the week. Please make sure you have signed and dated the reading log.

Library takes place on Mondays and Wednesdays. However, our librarian, Mrs. Czyzewski, requests that you return books and library bags on Wednesdays only. At which time the children will take out new books for

the week.

P.E. classes take place on Mondays and Thursdays. Children are to come to school dressed in their P.E. uniforms.

Recycled socks can be used for many purposes such as board erasers. Keeping in line with our status as an eco school, I would like to ask each child to bring in one (1) old ,clean, sock to use as an eraser to clean off their individual student whiteboards. This will save on the amount of paper towels needed when writing on the student boards. Thank you!

WELCOME BACK TO SCHOOL!
I would like to welcome all the children back to school. I hope everyone had a great summer holiday and that we are all energized for a new school year.I am looking forward to a great year teaching Year 2. I had the privelege of teaching some of your children in year 1 last year and I am looking forward to continuing on a new journey of discovery with new and returning children. Please feel free to come and see me at anytime. I am always available before and after school to discuss any concerns you may have.
Our goal at this time of the year is for the children to settle into routines and to work towards becoming independent learners. Our routine at the beginning of the day will be slightly different than in Year 1. The children will keep their morning and afternoon snacks in their backpacks. Please keep labelling the snacks, Snack 1, for the morning snack and Snack 2 for the afternoon snack. If not labelled the children may get confused and ask us which snack they should eat first. Please inform the school if your child will be eating the school lunch. If you decide to change your child's lunch status, please inform the school as well.
The children will be expected to empty their backpacks by themselves, take out their folders, open their diaries and place them in the appropriate box. Please allow them to do this independently. It may take time but it is part of each child's responsibility in Yr.2. It will also help us begin the day promptly and efficiently.
Please take note of the Yr 2C Schedule. The first 2 weeks will be spent on review and assessment. This year the children have P.E. and Library twice each week. On P.E.days the children wear only the P.E. uniform. Please ensure they have a hat and an extra bottle of water in their backpacks. Our new Librarian will inform us as to which day the children will change their books. Circle Time will begin in the 3rd week of School. It will take place from Monday to Thursday only. We will begin the at home reading program at the end of Week 2. I am in the process of assessing reading skills so that the children are placed in the appropriate level.
We are off to a great start and I am confident we will have a great year! I look forward to working with your children and interacting with all of you throughout the year.