Literacy Day Activities!

Today's Literacy Day was full of excitement. We started the day off in the gym for our monthly assembly where we saw several fun costumes and a lot of students in their Pajamas. 

 

All dressed in our pajamas and ready for the assembly!

 

  

We listened to the assembly about fairness.

 

 

Mme Wray's class read us a French book.

 

 We listened to a book read by news reporter Michelle Maluske.

 

We listened to a story read by LaSalle Viper hockey player, Connor Rosaasen, and got a special visit from their mascot, Vinny the Viper.

 

 

Vinny puts his hands on his head to show he is ready to listen.

 

The Vipers brought everyone a free game pass for any game this year! There will be one in everyone's mailbag tonight. 

 

Max gets his Viper hockey puck signed!

 

Vinny & Mlle Benneian

 

Vinny and the Vipers joined us for recess. How lucky!

 

We played "Hockey, Hockey, Viper!" (duck, duck, goose)

 

Uh oh! Vinny got tagged. Vinny is in the soup.

 

Then we played "Vinny says..." (Simon says)

 

Thank you for playing and reading with us Vinny!

 

We listened to a book read by guest reader Danielle Wade.  Danielle is a musical theatre performer best known for winning CBC's Over the Rainbow competition a few years ago. She portrayed Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz musical.

 

Local authors Ben Van Dongen and Christian Laforet read us their favourite children's stories.  They are the co-authors of the science fiction book "No Light Tomorrow."

 



 

We spent the afternoon reading and playing games with our parent guests.  Special thanks to all the parents who could attend. We had a great day!

 



 

We made book marks with Brady's great-grandma!

 



Writers at Work

This week we have been having many discussions in anticipation of our quickly approaching Literacy Day being held this Friday. We have been discussing our upcoming guest speakers by watching YouTube videos of Danielle Wade singing and discussing how Ben Van Dongen and Christian Laforet are authors. In our discussions about authors and how they write the words, the students became motivated to produce their own pieces of writing so that they can be authors too!  They have been working on posters, picture books, and books with only words. 

 As children develop these skills at different rates, we have been supporting them at their different levels of development. Your child may be representing their thoughts using scribbles, symbols or mock letters, random strings of letters, groups of letters, initial letters as labels for a picture, by copying words they see in the classroom, by using the first letter to represent a word, by using first and last letter sounds to represent a word, by using beginning, middle and end sounds in words, by writing only known sight words, by beginning to write phrases, or by writing full sentences.  At this age, reversals are quite common and are not concerning. All of these stages of writing demonstrate that your child is solidifying the idea that words are represented in print. You can help at home by asking your child to read you what they have written and by encouraging their efforts.  We often discuss letter sounds as part of whole group writing and reading activities. If your child is looking to write a word, we often encourage them to write what they hear either by slowly modelling how to stretch the word out (like an elastic) and slowly saying all the sounds as they write, or if they are more developed, encouraging them to sound out the words for themselves. Check out the pictures below of our young writers hard at work! 

Ice Inquiry

Last week we made predictions about melting ice. Will the ice melt faster if it is in water than if it is not? Will the ice melt faster if it is in little pieces or if it it one big cube? Our interest in melting ice lead us to a new activity this week. We found some containers in the classroom. We filled them with toys, letters and glitter and then poured water over top. 

We noticed a lot of cool things and had so many questions! Some of the items floated and some sank. Why did that happen?

We decided to put some containers outside to freeze and we put the rest in the freezer. Which will freeze faster? 

There were 2 of each kind of container. We used small and large pie tins and small and large yogurt cups. Which ones will melt faster? Why?

The following pictures show our explorations in creating and melting ice. 

We had a lot of fun! 

Enjoy!

"We put the toys in the buckets and we were putting water in because we had to see which melted faster! We put it in the freezer and outside."-Paisley

"I'm taking a toy out of the bin. I put it in the cup!"- Marcus

"I am going outside to see if it's going to turn into ice." -Serein 

"It was not frozen because it was too warm outside. We put it in the freezer this morning."- Max

"I'm trying to take out one of the toys from the ice."- Yianna

"I found the letter O from the alphabet in the ice!" -George

"I am holding cinq marbles. Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq! I got one out of the ice by using the bottom of my paintbrush to break it open. That's how you get the toys out so you can play with them again." -Tommy

"I was breaking the ice because there was a little bit of ice left on the toy." -Isaac

"I was trying to get that out of there...of the ice! It was a toy." -Elijah

"I got a marble. I found it in the water." -Chhan

"I am polishing the dinosaur because there was ice on him." -Ehaab

Literacy Day

Dear Families,

Friday, January 29 is Literacy Day at Sandwich West Public School! On this day, the entire school will be involved in literacy activities.

In the morning, we will have a school wide assembly at 9:10 a.m. We invite you to join us for the assembly and welcome you, or another family member, to join us later on this day to read to and play with the children! If you would like, you may bring along a game which can be played with a group of children. Please join us between 2:00 and 3:00 PM. Please let us know through a note in the communication book if you or a family member will be coming. Remember to sign in at the office, as usual, and then make your way down to our classroom.

The children are also invited to bring one book to share with their classmates. Please make sure the book is clearly labelled with your child's name.

We thank you for your continued support!