September 25- September 29

Another week in grade one, the students had a new experience this week-substitute teachers! As many of you know I was gone a lot last week, I was away at cross country, was at a teaching conference, as well as I had a personal emergency that resulted in me unexpectedly being away for two more days. From my messages from the subs the class had a challenging couple of days, which is very common with any sub. I'm sure you all remember the substitute teacher days. They did almost everything that I planned for them in my absence though which is fantastic! As many of you may have noticed the spelling test did not get done on Friday. With the excitement from their first long assembly, and the Terry Fox Walk it just did not happen. Which is fine I will do it on Monday no problem! 

On Wednesday prior to me leaving we had a very adorable talk as a class as we learned about Terry Fox. We looked at the difference between a superhero and a real hero. We talked about how Terry walked for us and that is why he is a hero in Canada. They also wrote in their writing notebooks about the real life heroes they have in their life. 

Math: We are still working hard on knowing our numbers to 20. They finished their number booklet and also did a cut and paste activity of reorganizing the numbers in proper order. They have also been practicing counting with buddies playing a few different math games I taught them. Knowing what number comes before any given number and after will be the focus this week. 

Science: We worked on a booklet called "Green, green what is green?" where they had to identify things in our life that are a specific color. The kids had their first science quiz this week after we have been really focusing on identifying color words. This was a good place to take a break in our creating color unit as we are going to turn our focus to fall this week.

Social: Earlier in the week the kids completed their "My groups" books. We then moved into looking specifically at our school community. The various people that work within our school, their job, their names. This week we will looking at the symbols that represent groups. 

Language: We continued looking at the "I Spy" story. The children reconstructed the story using sentence strips, they read it to their buddies, we read the story as a class, it has been great fun! We also read a version of "5 Little Monkeys" and then compared the two number stories. How were they the same? How were they different? The children also worked hard in their journal notebooks writing two different entries. One entry relating to science, the other was the heroes in our lives. They continue to work through a alphabet sound a day, as well as continue to practice which uppercase and lowercase letter go together. 

We will be starting home reading this week please keep an eye out for a yellow duotang, there is a letter to the parents inside. It gives you questions to ask your child about the story to ensure they are not just reading the story, they are comprehending what is being read. There is also a log in there to keep track of once your child has become confident in reading the story. I will try my best to have this out for Monday but it may have to get pushed to Tuesday while I get everyone organized and back to our routine. Thank you all for taking the time to read my blog and continuing to support our grade one journey.