November 25-29, 2019

What a great week of learning in CSSI!  We have been busy assessing students since report cards and IPP's go home after the winter break. We allow students to show us what they know by using puzzles, manipulatives, and any other creative tools. We are thrilled with the success and growth that our students have shown since September!

As a part of our "All About Me" unit, we started learning about the names of all the different parts of our bodies.  We sang "Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" to help us correctly identify our body parts.  We also cut a part a paper body and correctly labelled and put it back together. In addition, we found an excellent website that helped further this learning.  

Check it out at home:

https://www.starfall.com/h/me/me-body/?

Finally, thank you so much for coming to parent/teacher conferences last week.  Consistency between home and school is so important for your child's overall development and learning.

November 18-22, 2019

We are looking forward to parent conferences this Thursday and Friday.  We will be sharing the great work and learning that has taken place. We are so proud of our students' progress!

In Language Arts this week, we cut and glued letters from the Alphabet.  The cool part was that each letter had a picture that represented something that we recognize from our everyday lives.  For example, L for Lego or M for McDonald's.  We also chose which letter and picture was our favourite! 

In math we have been focusing on common shapes and colours.  We did the most amazing math lesson that also had science embedded in it.  We took crayon shavings and sprinkled them on shapes traced on wax paper.  We covered the wax paper with newspaper and watched Mrs. Rowntree iron over top.  We were amazed to see the melted colours underneath!  We reviewed each shape and colour afterwards.  It was very fun!!

Wow! Learning is so much fun in CSSI!!

November 12-15, 2019

Even though it was a short school week, we did so much learning in CSSI!

One highlight of the week was that we received $500 from Ron Southerns' Parent Council to purchase some new sensory tools.  
We have all been enjoying these tools and they help us to stay regulated throughout the school day.  Staying regulated helps us to focus and learn.  As a class, we created an iMovie with pictures of the students in our program working with these tools.  The iMovie, along with a thank you card that we handmade, will be presented to the council at tonights' meeting.  We have the best school!

We also all enjoyed an obstacle course that our grade 4/5 students created in the gym.  What a great way to explore new equipment in the gym while strengthening our gross motor skills.  Thank you so much to our friends in grade 4/5!

We would like to remind all families to sign up for a parent/teacher conference next Thursday, November 21 and Friday, November 22.  A letter was sent home in your childs' agenda regarding these dates. We can not wait to show you all of the projects that we have been working on and the learning that has been made.

In addition, we post to Twitter each school day.  Please enjoy all of our fun educational adventures in CSSI!

November 4-8, 2019

With Remembrance Day coming on November 11, we have been focusing on Peace in our classroom.  A book that all students enjoyed reading as a class was Todd Parr's Peace Book.  Please see the link below to enjoy this wonderful book at home as a family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QklQ8fWXV8Y

We have been working through our "I am Unique" unit.  This week we learned a new poem that you can also practice at home.
Learning new sight words through rhyming is great early literacy practice for all children.

We also have been using an Augmentative Speech Device that we have on loan.  The speech application that all students have been learning is called LAMP (Language Acquisition Motor Planning).  We encourage children to use this device to communicate throughout the school day.  

In the picture below we are using the speech device to say our numbers 1-10:

This picture shows how we use the device to communicate during our "All About Me" centres:

We are learning so many new vocabulary words.  Well done, CSSI!

October 28-30, 2019

What a spooky week of learning we had in CSSI!  

We had so much exploring academic concepts with a Halloween theme.  One of our favourite math centres was picking "ghostly numbers" to practice our one-to-one correspondence counting skills. 

We learned some new Halloween vocabulary words by reading a Halloween poem.  Each student even had the opportunity to come up in front of the class and read the poem, with teacher support.

We did a Halloween Bingo game that had us matching pictures to our game card.  We all worked hard at matching and did very well.

In art, we made "cotton-ball ghosts".  This project allowed us to strengthen our fine-motor skills when using glue and cotton to cover our ghosts.  It was also good practice for us to get our fingers wet with glue and wait until the end to clean them.  The ghost looked great on our classroom door and lots of students said that they looked so scary!  

Lastly, we carved pumpkins, with full-adult support for our classroom on Halloween.  We all enjoyed watching the different coloured lights that were inside the pumpkin!

Have a safe Halloween and see everyone on Monday.

October 21-25, 2019

What a great week in CSSI!  One of the best parts of our week was practicing and presenting our "All About Me" bags to our Kindergarten friends.  We all used the classroom Communication Device to make "I like..." statements.  The device also helped us when answering "yes and no" questions about our items from the Kindergarten students.  We will be working closely with our Kindergarten friends to examine what makes each of us unique.  We will also be exploring and building an appreciation around each of our interests and gifts.  

Videos of this presentation will be posted to IRIS in the next few weeks.  We will let you know when they are up!
Here are some more pictures of our students building relationships with our new Kindergarten friends.

How wonderful it is to make new friends at Ron Southern School!

October 15-17, 2019

It was a short but very busy week in CSSI.  Each student continues to settle well into our program and we are building relationships as well as friendships.

We all enjoy our scheduled sensory time in the afternoon.  We were so lucky this week to have Ms. Herring make some new tactile sensory tools for us.  We thought we would include them in the Blog since the items all came from the Dollar Store and are easily made. More importantly, the students loved them!










We are on our third week of library time with Ms. Dorothy.  We read a variety of books in the library and have a lovely story time.  This week we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  All student were engaged and enjoyed the story.

Another very exciting part of our week was having the opportunity to explore the Kindergarten Centres, with our new Kindergarten friends.  We will be spending more and more time with these friends and have lots of interesting ideas planned for the entire group.

We also can not wait to see what will be brought back in your "All About Me" bags.  What a great way to learn about each other!