December 16-19, 2019

On Thursday, your child will be bringing home a bag of work that they have completed over the last few months.  We would like to encourage that you review the work with your child over the break.  Consistent practice and revision with your child will allow them to show you what they have learned!

Happy Holidays,

S. Rowntree, P. Herring & M. Hamilton

December 9-13, 2019

With the busy holiday season upon us, here are some gentle reminders of upcoming events at Ron Southern School:

Thursday, December 12^th is our Winter Celebration at 6:30pm.  All families are encouraged to bring their child to the CSSI classroom by 6:15pm.  You will then be able to watch your child perform in the gym.

Next week, Ron Southern has holiday-themed days, as follows:

-December 16^th:  Christmas Sweater Day

-December 17^th:   Hat Day

-December 18^th:   Match Day (Our class will be wearing anything red)

-December 19^th:   PJ Day (wear your PJ’s to school)

We would also like to share some of the great festive websites that we have been exploring and using in ours classroom:

Gingerbread Math:

https://www.starfall.com/h/holiday/gingerbread/?sn=main

Reindeer Pokey:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2drf33

Find the Presents:

https://www.abcya.com/games/christmas_hunt

December 2-6, 2019

What a fabulous week in CSSI!  We are in the Christmas spirit and decorated our classroom for the season.   You will also notice some work coming home with a Christmas theme.  There are so many holiday activities that make learning fun!

One extra special activity that we introduced to our CSSI students this week was a snowflake sensory bin.  The exciting thing about this bin was that we filled it using real snow!  Students had to dig down to find snowflakes hidden at the bottom of the bin.  We then counted and sorted the snowflakes.  Our hands were a bit cold but it was well worth it!

Mrs. Rowntree teaches us music on Mondays in the classroom.  Many students enjoy the various music centres that we have set up.  We all liked a Smart Board music game called Incredibox and you can find it at:
https://www.incredibox.com/

Another area of music that we have been working on is our Winter Concert.  It is on Thursday, December 12th at 6:30pm.  The doors

will open at 6pm and students will meet in their classrooms.  We can't wait to showcase what we have been learning in music class.  Hope to see you then!

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!