Questions for Novel Study Books

This week students began reading novels as part of a novel study. Each week they will read a number of chapters and answer some questions. When they are finished the novel, they will have a choice of culminating task to show their understanding.

Here are the questions for this week (Week 1).

Characteristic of Good Presentations and How to Persuade

As part of our Entrepreneurial Adventure, today we learned how to create quality presentations that will get people's interest. We also learned about how to persuade others to get what we want. We learned that there are 6 basic principles to this. The below video is the one we watched in class.

Here is a link to the website we looked at which describes the elements of a quality presentation:

Quality Presentation

Joy of Read Bookmark Sale

Does reading bring you joy?  Does it take you on a new adventure to places you’ve never been before?  Wednesday, January 27th is Family Literacy Day, a day which encourages families to take 15 minutes to read together. ALL Saint Anne students will be able to wear pyjamas and bring a stuffie to school to celebrate this special day.  

The Grade 2 classes will be selling bookmarks to help raise money to buy books for families in need.  For one loonie, you can purchase one beautiful origami bookmark or two lovely ribbon paperclip bookmarks made by a grade 2 student. Please bring one dollar to school on Wednesday, January 27th and you can help spread the joy of reading to others.  

Entrepreneurial Adventure Progress

Today we started working on our entrepreneurial adventure program project by developing a business proposal. I helped students with this by giving them a template to start working with and we wrote part of it together using an imaginary company - Mr. Pouliot's Schoolyard Snack Shack!

Our goal is to hopefully finish the written proposals by Thursday, and then work on an oral/media presentation next week to present our proposal to our judges. We would like to choose our business by having a "Dragon's Den" style presentation from each group. So far, the business ideas sound really good!

Here is the template for the business proposal that we have begun in class. Once a business has been chosen, we will begin assigning roles to all of the students and begin developing our business ideas. 

Science test Wednesday, January 20th

Next Wednesday, our afternoon class will be having a test on everything we have learned about electricity in our recent unit. Students have learned a lot about this unit in the last couple of months, so I think they will understand most of what they need to know. Below is a link to some study notes for the test. The test will only cover items that are on the study notes. These notes were handed out to all students today in class, and I asked them to place them in their agendas. Please review these with your child so that they are prepared for our test next week. If you have any questions, please contact me at the school any time.

Electricity Science Notes

Our Entrepreneurial Adventure Begins!

Today Mr. Adam Barrett, a volunteer from BMO came to our class and helped us get started in our Entrepreneurial Adventure Program. In this program, our class will be starting a small business and then donating the proceeds to a charity of our choice.

We began today by gathering some ideas for a charity that we might like to donate to, and then students presented their ideas to the class by trying to "sell" their charity to the class. In the end, we chose to donate our proceeds to the humane society. All of the ideas from students were great and students were able to clearly tell why their charity was a good choice, even given the limited amount of time they had to prepare their ideas. Great work!

Our next step is to choose a business that we would like to start. Today students gathered and started brainstorming some ideas for businesses. Next, they are going to gather and develop a business proposal that they will present "Dragon's Den" style. Perhaps we'll call it the "Lion's Den"!

In the next couple of weeks, they will present their business proposal to the class and then we will vote on the business idea we think is most achievable and appropriate for our class.

I am very excited about this program, because I think it will tie together many concepts in math and language, as well as provide some valuable experience for students in a real life situation. I will be updating often to demonstrate student progress, as well as to demonstrate the links between the curriculum and this project.

January 27th is Literacy Day!

January 27th is Literacy Day, and students are being asked to wear their PJ's to school and have some time to get into a good book. On that day, I will be spending some time doing a read aloud which I hope students will enjoy, and then they will have a good amount of time to read a favourite book of their choice. We will be discussing what makes a good book in the days leading up to Literacy Day.

If you are interested in joining us to either read a special book to the class or simply read for a while with your child, please feel free to come to our class on January 27th to do so. We will be reading together from about 11AM until 12PM. All are welcome!