Week 12 - November 25th, 2017

Please take some time to log onto power school this week as I have updated quite a few assignments on there.  If you have trouble logging into your account please contact the office.

This week in math we are back to focusing on numbers to 20.  We played a subitizing bingo game where I showed students the numbers in a variety of ways (10's Frames, Tally Marks, dice, dominoes, fingers) and they had to identify the same number in dots.  I told them this was "Mental Math" and they weren't allowed to count the dots, they just needed to look at the dots and decide what number it was.  They loved this game and we played quite a few rounds.  Students had to have great listening ears and pay close attention to make sure they had the best chance of getting a Bingo!

We also worked on counting groups of objects and identifying whether groups were bigger or smaller than one another.  We talked about the words "most" and "least".  Next week we will be moving on to "greater than", "less than" or "equal to".

In our Language Arts blocks we started a new program that we call "making words".  Students get select letter tiles and need to make words with them.  This helps with both their reading and their writing.  When students make new words they also write them down in the word work book.  

We also continued to work on our sight words this week in some different ways.  The students liked this crazy shape writing to practice their new yellow words.  

We also started a mini study on Owls.  We are going to do some research and studying about Owls over the next couple of weeks.  

We celebrated the 50th Day of School with another visit from Zero the Hero!  He left us a little treat and a fun booklet to work on.  We did a hidden number activity, a writing activity and practised our skip counting by 2, 5 and 10.

The students really loved our Science Experiment this week.  We learned about making predictions, listing materials needed, and asking questions.  We used coloured washable markers and put large dots of colour in the centre of a coffee filter and sprayed them with water.  We predicted what would happen and then we tried it out.

They were so excited to see all of the different colours that came from the black markers, and of course when the primary colours started mixing they were equally amazed.  When done, students wrote down their observations.

Congratulations to Layton for being 1B's Student of the Week.  Layton is so fun in 1B, he is always helping his friends and doing his best work.  He is an awesome reader and is learning to spell new words everyday!  Layton loves Grade 1!!!

Week 11 - November 17th, 2018

We had a jam packed week in 1B again this week.  

We completed a whole unit on 2D shapes in Math.  We went on a shape hunt, we made shapes with the geoboards, and we drew the shapes and labelled them.  We will keep practisng the shape names and characteristics going forward, but 1B is excited about shapes!

Next week in Math and until Christmas we will be focusing on numbers to 20.  We will be learning some new math games, and working on our number sense. 

In Language Arts we are still practising our daily listening games working on phonemic awareness.  In easy-to-understand terms, phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, think about, and manipulate sounds in spoken speech.  Phonemic awareness is actually a critical skill that is a precursor to reading.  We want to ensure that children have a solid understanding of the sounds of speech.  We really love our listening game time, students are focused and dedicated to understanding how words are formed.  This will help them so much in their reading.  

We also wrote our first letter to our pen pals this week.  I have a good friend that teaches Grade 1 in Grimshaw, Alberta so our class has become pen pals.  We read a few stories about what it means to be a pen pal and it ties well into our Social Studies curriculum where we learn about different types of communities.  We sent them some information about Devon, and our School, as well as a picture of us with all of our names.  Students came up with some questions for them, and we gave them some interesting facts about ourselves.  They were very excited!  We will send letters back and forth all year!  

We continue to work on word families during part of our mornings as well.  Students are excited to spell and read new words each day.  

On Thursday we had Teachers Pet in for an In-School Field trip.  The students listened to legends and learned three new games, as well as made a beautiful dream catcher.  I wanted to keep the Dream Catchers for a few weeks at school, but the students were too excited to bring them home!  The students did an excellent job listening and following instructions, they were pretty tricky to make, but we had a group of amazing parent volunteers to help us!  Thanks so much for helping us.  

On Friday we worked a bit more on our Science topic Colours.  We did some paint experiments with mixing colours, and making colours lighter and darker. We also talked about the differences between manufactured colours and colours found in nature.  Students generated lists of words of colourful items that are found in nature and items that are man - made.  Next week we have a couple of colour experiments planned!

Over the last two weeks we have started our daily reading groups in Grade 1.  Students are divided on reading readiness into 4 groups and go to a different room each day at 11:25 to work on targeted reading strategies.  It is so awesome because the Teachers working with each group can plan activities specifically for each groups level!   

Cecil was 1B's Student of the Week on Friday!  Cecil is so fun in 1B, he is a good friend and is working hard at persisting with difficult tasks!  He is a master at computers and often shows me how things work!  We love having Cecil in 1B!

The school was donated 2 cases of bananas this week so on Thursday we had a banana break, and anyone who could eat a banana or wanted a banana got one!  

Enjoy your weekend!  

Week 10 - November 10th, 2018

Well, November has started with a bang!  We have had a great week full of learning, for both me and the students.  I was at a workshop on Tuesday called "Empowering Writers" and I'm excited to start implementing it into our weekly writing program this year.

We have been doing so much work with our word families this week.  We finished the AT family and moved onto the AG and AP families.  Students have been practising making these words with letter tiles, spelling these words and matching them to pictures, reading them in stories, and searching for these words in word searches.  They are teaching the students about decoding words.  These word family words can easily be decoded by sounding out each letter sound, and we want beginning readers to sound out each sound to figure out words, rather than to memorize and guess.  The new books that we are using have no pictures so students are "forced" to sound out the words.  When reading with your child at home please remember to encourage them to use their "stretchy snake" reading strategy.  This will be a big focus of our Language Arts Program for the month of November.   I only had the chance to read with about half of the class this week and many students moved up a level in their reading books.  I will get to the rest of the class next week for sure.  Please remember to continue reading 15 minutes every night at home.  I can teach the students the strategies at school but I need the support from you at home to give them the practice each night.  Thank you to those of you who are doing this, it makes a real difference.

In writing this week we have been focusing on knowing that we can spell words on our own.  You will notice that as work comes home, I am not going to be correcting their spelling.  If students can re-read me what they wrote then I won't usually correct it.  Often students know the beginning and ending sounds of words and we have been practicing those middle vowel sounds so the words really will come.  You will see students range greatly with these skills and that is totally fine.  The main focus is to get them writing and confident to try spelling words on their own and I promise it will come!

 We read the book, The Peace Book, By Todd Parr yesterday and students came up with this writing.

We continued our colour unit with a couple other cool projects.  We had the "Tech Guy" in from Blackgold on Friday to show us how to work with Google Drawings, students learned all about opening tabs, the "undo" button or the eyebrow, how to minimize, how to make things large screen, they also learned the bunny tap, and the home button.  It was a great session and I think we all feel a bit more confident in using Chromebooks as a class.  Student made their own Colour Wheel's on the Chromebooks where they had to make their own shapes, fill those shapes with the correct colours and then label the colours.  They are getting so good with their colour words!

We also drew pictures of objects of each colour in nature, as well as made our own favourite coloured crayon.

In Social this week, students had a chance to present to the class about their family tree home project.  Students shared some interesting facts about their family and what made their family unique, special and different.  That line was the focus of our next activity as we made family houses.  Students first drew a picture of their family and then attached it to the photo that you sent in.  We talked about how all families are different and not one looked the same!

In Math we had yet another visit from Zero the Hero on the 40th day of school.  He left us a fun dice game where we had to roll two dice and colour the number it added up to on the paper.  The numbers were shown in a variety of ways, dots, number words, tally marks and numerals.  And then of course he left some Halloween Smarties for us to pattern with and eat.

We also finished off our Pattern unit with reading the Story "Elmer."  It is a story about an Elephant who is different.  Students then got to practice extending a repeating pattern, and labeling the pattern.  Students also had the chance to name their Elephant.

We had a great discussion about Remembrance Day yesterday and participated in the school ceremony.  Thomas's family sent us in some stories of his Grandpa's time in the war, and we shared a story about what it would be like to have a family member have to go to war.  

We also had to decorate the front foyer of the school with Remembrance Day art, so we worked on this project with our Grade 4 Buddies!  

We celebrated a birthday this week in 1B for Priya.  She brought in cupcakes for the students to enjoy!

Korie was also our student of the week last Friday!  Korie is a dedicated student who tries hard with every task she does.  She is also a genuine friend and is kind to all the students in our class.  Way to go Korie!

Thomas was also asked to carry the Wreath for the School at the schools Remembrance Day Ceremony.  He did an excellent job taking his work very seriously.