It is amazing to me that October is here already! Where did the first few weeks of school go? It seems that every year of teaching goes faster than the one before. I am happy to say that even with the job action that teachers here in BC are currently doing, our school year started smoothly and everything in the classroom is moving along as always.

Friday was our Terry Fox Run at school. We walked over to a nearby park and did the run. If you don't know about Terry Fox, he is a true Canadian hero. His story is inspiring and we do a run in his honour each year. It is a way to pay tribute to him and also raise money in the fight against cancer. Check out this wonderful video about Terry Fox on youtube here.

With job action we were not allowed to collect donations this year so all families had to donate online. I hope that we did well with donations. Our school has a wonderful reputation as a big fundraising school. I hope that we have kept the tradition alive with this latest fundraiser to help find a cure for cancer.

After missing two days of school last week trying to get over this cold (I am still fighting it but am definitely on the mend) I forced myself to stay late on Friday to hang up our self-portraits. I was seriously exhausted after doing the Terry Fox run in the morning and having our first pizza day at lunch but I was determined! I finally finished around 6pm and headed home. It was a late day but worth it. They are so wonderful and add such a nice tone to our walls. I tried to put these into a slide show but for some reason my computer won't copy the video over to the blog. I finally gave up and uploaded all the self-portraits. Check them out. Aren't they wonderful?

I am missing one self-portrait for a student who came into our class after we made these. I will have to get him to do one this week.

In other class news, we are working on patterns and sorting. Tomorrow I am going to put more time into getting our math stations going. We have been doing lots of small group activities but I have yet to have them practice the actual routine of doing the math stations. This week my goal is to get the math stations up and running. I am using my previous methods for teaching math combined with things I have learned from Laney Sammon's Guided Math books and the book Math Work Stations by Debbie Diller. I have very high expectations for my math program and know that this class will quickly figure out the station rotation and get to work. Wish me luck!

I will be using the book The Button Box on Tuesday for our Math & Literature lesson. I created a couple of worksheets for the students to use after we have worked with real buttons sorting them by different attributes. If you would like to have a copy of the assorted buttons click here. The kids will get to decide on the attribute they will use to sort the buttons. Shape, colour, design etc. I will post some pics when I have them!

I have been teaching the grade 1's their first Social Studies unit. Twice a week, we group all the 1's together with me while the 2's go to the other two teachers in our pod. The grade 1's are learning about Canadian symbols. So far we have learned about the maple leaf and Canadian flag. We have also learned about some Canadian animals. This week we will be learning about hockey. I expect that most of the kids can teach this part! I am sure that they know more than i do about the sport!!!!

Here's to finally getting over this cold and having a good week!

Ms. Hughes