Week 28 - April 7th, 2019

Just a quick update this week.  The highlight of the week was our trip to Golden Greenhouse.  The students learned how to mix the soil, how to plant the seeds using a seed machine, and learned about a variety of interesting plants.  The students loved riding the bus and listened very well to the instructors at the greenhouse.

In Language Arts, we have been continuing our study of Penguins.  They are very interesting animals and next week we will be doing some research on a few of the different types of penguins. We are also still continuing to work daily on our new spelling patterns, new rainbow words and making words with new letter combinations.  

In your child's agenda, I am sure you are also noticing that we are spelling the agenda messages on our own now.  Students are very excited about this!


In Math we have been continuing with our addition unit but moving onto higher numbers. We have also started going onto a computer program called Mathletics to help us practice these math skills once or twice a week.  I will attach your child's log in information to the front of their agenda next week in case you would like to let your child use the program at home.  Our School Council/Fundraising committee pays the fees for this program all year.

We used mini erasers this week to practice the strategy of counting on.  We also practiced this skill with a number line, hundreds chart and 10's frames.

In science this week, we started two new units.  We discussed the season of spring and started our very first acrostic poem.  We also dove right into building things by reading a few stories and starting a list of building materials and fasteners.  We are excited to get building things next week!

In Social we have been discussing the difference between Urban and Rural.  To understand this concept we divided the class in half and made two different murals.  One urban and one rural.

We also read the book "Follow that Map" which inspired us to create our very own map.  Students could make a map of their bedroom at home or one of our classroom.  They were very creative and detailed.  After making their map we worked on labelling our maps too!  They were very motivated to spell all of those words correctly.

We celebrated Brooklyn's birthday this week!

Thomas's family sent in Banana muffins this week!  

And TJ was our Student of the Week this week.  TJ is such a fun addition to 1B.  He makes us laugh everyday!!  He has also been teaching us some French words!  Way to go TJ, keep being awesome!!!

Week 27 - March 23, 2019

We had a lot of fun celebrating the first week of Spring.  The students are excited for the week off (and so am I)!

I talked to the students about the bird feeder project.  This is totally optional, just do it if you want.

Check out some of our pictures this week!  We are learning about where exactly we are on the map and worked on a project showing us this concept.  This can be a bit tricky to understand but we talked about how we live in Devon, in the province of Alberta, in the Country of Canada, on the continent of North America.

We also finished up our Addition to 10 unit this week.  W?e learned about flip flopping equations where even if we switch the numbers around the answer is still the same.  We also learned about the equal sign, and how two sides of an equation can be equal even if they don't exactly look the same  5+1=3+3.

We have also been studying and researching a bit about penguins this week.  It is a pretty cool topic!

We finished off some writing this week about our Leprechaun traps.  We used a game called "no go words" where students were given a word(another way to say go) and had to write how they thought the leprechaun escaped from our traps using that word!  These turned out great!

We also celebrated our last two unbirthdays this week.  Ramsay and Ava!  

Week 26 - March 17, 2019

Horray for beautiful weather this weekend!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We had another fun filled week in 1B!  We have been covering a lot of curriculum these days as the students are really cooperating and working hard on all of our projects.

In Phys. Ed this week we had an athlete in from The Edmonton Lacrosse Association.  We had a 40 minute tutorial with him and by the end of it the students knew how to pick up a lacrosse ball, run with it, and shoot it in the net.  It was really a fun experience.  Huge thank you to Ms. Starostecki who plans and organizes all of our gym activities.  Also in Phys.Ed this week we have a Latin Dancer named Leo hired to teach us all how to dance.  On Wednesday, next week our whole school will be putting on a performance.  Mark it in your calendars, because all parents are welcome to watch.  Wednesday at 1:45.

In Math, we continue to add to our addition strategy skills.  We have been focusing on solving addition word problems and right after Spring Break we will be moving onto higher numbers. We will also do a big review of numbers to 20 and skip counting.  Practising skip counting by 2, 5 and 10 at home would really help as we try to master this skill before the end of Grade 1.

In Science we finished up units on the 5 senses and winter.  We missed our winter walk this season, but I think we made up for it with our snow painting and snowshoeing.  We will head down to the river valley again in the spring, which is getting much closer!  At the end of each unit we do some science picture journaling by adding a class photo and pictures and words that we remember learning about in that unit!  It's been a great way to see how much the students remember about our activities and discussions.

In Social Studies we also finished up our unit on the Community of Devon.  Students did an excellent job writing to their pen pals about the town of Devon, completing their community scrapbook, and mapping out our community.  You saw both of these projects at student led conferences.  We also covered what it means to be a good citizen for a Grade 1 student.  They came up with many great ideas of how they can start to be a good citizen in our school community and the community of Devon.

In Language Arts we continued our routine word work and reading tasks each day and worked on our writing about how to Catch a Leprechaun.  Most students are really focusing on sentence formation (trying to keep one idea in each sentence) and spelling words by listening to the sounds they hear.  I just love watching their writing progress and change.  The leprechaun traps really got them excited about writing and next week we will write about how they think their leprechaun escaped.

Check out some pictures from our trap building.  Thank you so much for sending in so many fun supplies, we had a great afternoon of building and creating.

We also learned about Rural and Urban areas this week when the instructors from Teacher's Pet came in to help us paint our pictures.  The pictures will come home this week for sure.  They turned out great, but we may add a few details with our sharpies to make sure the lines really show up.

We had two unbirthdays to celebrate this week.  Korie and TJ!  Thank you both for the special treats! Since there are no real birthdays in the month of March we are celebrating all of our students with birthdays in the summer.   We love celebrating our classmates.  Check out all the cool things the students said about each other!