Week 20

Odds and Ends:
Hi all! It has been a busy few weeks getting back into routine and finishing up the report cards. Those got sent home today in your kiddo's kanga pouch. Please sign the envelope and send it back to the school, you can enclose any comments within the envelope for me. If you would like to sit down and discuss anything after taking a look at the report card let me know and we can plan time! I am asking if you have any sort of recyclables at home smaller than a cereal box, paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, those odd craft items you aren't using to please send them to school for our Building Things unit. I sent home an order form for Pink Shirt day. For those of you that do not know Feb 28th we ask students and staff to wear a pink shirt to symbolize that we are against bullying.

Language Arts:
We have finished looking at the long A, and long E vowels. This has been tricky for the class, they have done a wonderful job at reading these words, but writing them independently has been tricky. We took down our social bulletin board and have now put up word families posters to try to get the children independently trying to identify some of those sounds. We have been also working hard at creating sentences independently. This has been a challenge but with the fun topics we have been writing about they are showing improvement in the independence of this.

Math:
We finished up our patterns unit and have moved on to numbers to 100. We have played a roll and color and a bump it game with a buddy. We just started our math centers yesterday and the students were very excited to get to work on these!

Science and Social: 
We completed the winter unit and have just started looking into the Building Things unit. We talked about the different tools that builders would use and what kind of tools we can use here in Grade One. We also talked about how to be safe when building. We combined this building introduction with social studies as we are building our own community. We had a vote and decided to name it Dinoville. Yesterday we each built our own home, today we came up with the ten rules of Dinoville as a class, I apologize now if they try to tell you that sleeping does not happen on the weekends 😄. We have put two big tables in the back of our classroom where we will be building this.

Gym: 
Last week in gym I started a dancing unit with the kids, they will be continuing on with this with Mrs. Derechey this week.

Happy New Year!

It was a long, cold first week back here in 1PB. It has taken us some time to settle back into our routine but by Friday we were doing much better! We have been practicing slowing down when we are working so that our work is nice and neat. Using the lines to print on and coloring with detail has been a focus in grade one.

Language Arts: We have started to look at the different ways in which a long A vowel can be presented. We learned about the bossy e and the rule 'when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." We will continue practicing this next week. We have also been working hard at building simple sentences with all the words we have learned so far this year. This requires a lot of independence and lots of students struggle. I suggest when practicing spelling words have your kiddo come up with a sentence using that word! We also read a new story called "Favourites" which sparked our journal writing activities for the week.

Math: We started the week with a review of all of the concepts we have worked with so far. We then continued on with centers, we had lots of fun making our own pattern on the computers, with stickers, stamps, and so many other ways!

Science: We are looking at the winter season, how is it different from Fall. What do animals do in the winter was a big interest for the class. We will continue on with this next week. We finished our week drawing a winter scene using oil pastels. The kids were not fans of the way the oil pastels made their fingers feel but they turned out quite beautiful!

Social: We spent our first few days back doing a big review. We talked about what a group is, groups we are part of, rights and responsibilities, what a community is, as well as the difference between rural and urban communities. We spent time looking at a map and identifying their city, province and country names. This was very tricky for the children but we will keep practicing! We also did some community map work looking at how to read a comprehend instructions on a map.

Merry Christmas!

I am so grateful this Christmas to have these eighteen tiny humans in my class. It has been a wonderful 2017. Thank you for making my job such a joy to come to every day. This week the kids worked very hard to get all our units completed. We had so much fun learning about Christmas celebrations in our country as well as a few other places. We hope that you all love the Christmas card and present that we made for you all. Luckily I was able to keep all ten of my fingers in the making of your presents.

Language: We have completed looking at all of the short vowel sounds. In the New Year we will do a review of that the first week back before going into the long vowel sounds. We also did some Christmas themed reading comprehension activities. We read a passage then looked at taking the information from what we had just read to answer questions. We did lots of Christmas writing between our daily Elf journals.

Math:We completed subtraction from twelve last week. We also started looking at Christmas themed patterns. We will continue on looking at patterns briefly in January before continuing on with addition and subtraction all the way to twenty.

Science: We had so much fun finishing our Christmas themed senses unit. We finished looking at each of our senses separately. Talked about how some work together. Ways that we protect our senses and how each sense helps to keep us safe. We learned about how animals use their senses. They wrote their quiz yesterday and they did awesome!

Social: We looked at Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and continued looking at ways we can be good citizens. This is also where we took a break and looked a bit at our own Christmas tradtions and how they were different from ones in other countries.

On behalf of Mrs. Cameron and myself, have a very Merry Christmas, enjoy your break and I will see you all in the New Year.

December 4-December 8, 2017

Odds and Ends
- Our Christmas concert will be next Wednesday, December 20 at 6:30.
-Ask your kiddo how their pencil crayons are doing, I went through our 'lost crayons' and returned to the rightful owner if their names were on it, however a good number of the students crayon collection is looking quite sad- still learning the whole pencil box/ sharpening pencils thing.

Language
We had a new visitor in our classroom, Mimzie the elf! Every morning we have been writing in our Elf journals about the trouble Mimzie gets up to every day. We have been working on the short O sound this past week. We have been looking at Christmas themed short stories and working on our comprehension skills.

Math
We have moved in from addition and have been working hard on our subtraction skills. We played "Hulk Smash" with play dough as an introduction to the concept. We also used a winter themed mitten manipulative to work through problems.

Social
We had another community helper come to visit us on Friday-firefighters! The children were so excited to see all of the bunker equipment and work on what to do in case there is a fire. We have been looking on what the students can do right now to be a 'community helper' until they grow up.

Science
We are working on our sense of smell. We watched a video on the way in which our nose affects our daily life. We did a smell test activity last week, we will be continuing on with this for half of this week before moving on to the next sense.

November 20-November 24

Odds and End

-No spelling next week

-Dental Health presentation Monday afternoon

-November 30 is wear a mustache/beard day

-No school December 1

This week we were very excited to welcome not one, but two new faces into our classroom! We had a new friend join us on Monday, we also have a new adult in the room. Mrs. Cameron will officially be with us Monday-Thursdays for the rest of the year. Also your child will all be coming home today with a book called "Good Morning Canada" that was donated by TD Bank to all Grade one students. 

Language

This week in language we worked completed our short e- work. The students played a rhyming game with short A and short E rhyming words. We also spent some time looking at a book called Apples. In this book we analyzed the words and the pictures to find words/items that started with a specific sound, then we used the words we brainstormed in a sentence starter and had discussions about 'making sense' when we are writing. We did a cut and paste activity that also went along with this. 

Math

We continue on with addition. We worked through more strategies, looking at drawing pictures, counting on and using a number line. The students loved playing I Spy having to find all of the addition problems that I hid around the room.

Science 

This week we focused on our sense of sight. We did a graph looking at eye colors in our class. We talked about the different things we use our eyes for. We also talked about near-sighted and far-sighted people, they were quite amused at testing me without my glasses on. We also looked at braille. We looked at some pictures that made our eyes play tricks on us-optical illusions. 

Social

In social we learned about the difference between rural, suburban, and urban communities. We discussed which kind of community Leduc is. The students did a writing activity describing their neighborhood and what their house looks like. We also started looking at what it means to be a community helper this week. We looked at the first community helper in our reader- a police officer.

November 13-17

Coming to you a couple days late, if you have had the luxury to hear the current state of my voice you would know why! Last week was a busy week, the class has loved to continue to develop our computer skills on various assignments on the Chromebook.

Language

We finished up working with the short A sound and introduced the short E. We did many rhyming activities, reading activities, writing in our writing notebooks, picture sorts, you name it! I also introduced the children to the website Starfall where they worked through at their various activities working on those two vowel sounds. 

Math

We have introduced addition to 10 last week. We will be only going up to ten here so that we can go through the various addition strategies with ease. We only practiced last week using ten frames and pictures. The students are doing wonderful so far. Next week (technically this week) I will be showing them different strategies in which to use during addition. My goal with my current approach is to ensure they are all confident before we move on the the bigger numbers in the new year.

Science

Time to learn about our senses. The children were introduced to the vocabulary and the parts of their bodies that they use in each sense. Last week we practiced hard at recognizing these new science words, for example how the word eye is not spelled like the I that we use in writing everyday.

Social

We finished looking at rights and responsibilities last week and introduced the concept of community. We defined a community as a place where people live, work and play. We will be continuing on with this concept this week. 

November 6- November 10

This week we had two special guests in our room. The division's tech coach Tarynne Angel came in to help the students learn how to work with their Chromebooks. They have picked it up quite fast! We also had Miss. Rachel come in again today to teach the students more about the Mind-Up curriculum. The students learned two different breathing activities to do when they are upset. We also looked again at the glitter jars settling and compared it to being mad/frustrated. We ended the session with a really fun Jelly Belly activity. I am really happy with how well the students are responding to the program so far. The kids were very respectful today during our Remembrance day ceremony. We still have had to have lots of conversations this week about being kind to one another and being 'hands off.'

Language

We worked on Raz-Kids listening to reading this week. We will be wrapping up out short A study on Monday and then be moving on the E. The children also got to explore the short -a activities on Starfall. We did readers that had us look at the short A sound, we did a matching activity looking at the -an, -at and -ap word families. We also got to work with and manipulate letter tiles in two different making words activities that worked with the short -a vowel.

Math

We wrapped up out number representation unit this week, finishing the unit with an assignment the student completed on Google Slides. We will be introducing addition to 10 next week!

Science

The students have officially completed their Creating Color unit this week. I had to have almost all of the students rewrite the exam today for not following the substitute teacher's directions. I am so excited to start our Senses unit with a Christmas swing on it. 

Social 

We have finished the "Belonging in my World" unit the students just need to complete a Rights and Responsibilities assignment on Monday then we will be moving on to "Taking Part in my Community"

October 30-November 3

Odds and Ends:
-You will see at the top I have added in a 'parent resources' tab for you all. There is math and language websites/apps there that may help you in getting in that extra practice at home.
-Winter is here! Please ensure you are sending your kiddos with everything that they need to play out in the cold.

Language: This week we started looking at writing and reading words that word with the short a vowel. We did a number of Halloween themed journal entries this week practicing using our color words. We also had a visit from Mrs. Rachel and see will be back every Friday for the next few weeks to teach our class the Mind Up curriculum. We looked about our guard dog(amygdala) and wise owl(pre frontal cortex) that live in our brain and what happens to them when we get mad. We looked how to calm our guard dog by smelling the flowers and blowing out the candles.

Math: This week in math we continued practicing working through math centers. This week they were Halloween themed which the kids loved!

Social: We introduced the concept of rights and responsibilities to the students. We looked through our big book and had many discussion on the rights we have and responsibilities that come with it. This theme fit right in with the hands off conversation we continue to have in grade one. We also started talking about the importance of Remembrance day. We discussed why we wear poppies and finished our week by starting our Remembrance day craft.

Science: Color mixing fun! The students had many opportunities to mix the primary colors together. They had to try to match a color that I created. It was messy but the children absolutely loved it! We will be finishing up this color unit hopefully this week.

October 23- 27

Happy Friday! We had a wonderful week again this week. We had a fire drill this week and they did amazing! Make sure if you have no signed the consent form for Tuesday that you log onto Power School and do that!

LA: We talked lots this week about good fit books, we used the acronym "I Pick"

I choose
Purpose
Interest
Comprehend
Know

We also talked about what to do if we do not know how to spell a word during writing time. We worked on reading and answering questions about Halloween themed sentences. We finished looking at the individual sounds (there is a phonics book in their kanga pouch you do not need to send it back). Next week we will begin looking more into the short vowel sounds.

Math: Still working on our 1-20 knowledge we have been talking lots about odd and even numbers. We also practiced working with these numbers by working through our math centers. The students are getting much better at doing their 'jobs' during center time and transitioning with ease between centers.

Science: We had our Fall quiz earlier in the week and finished that topic up. We switched back to looking at creating color. Many of the kiddos had a hard time identifying color words again so we spent some more time on that. We also looked at primary and secondary colors. We talked about mixing colors and next week we will get to do it ourselves. We used color paddles to look at mixing colors too and learned a fun song to remember the primary colors.

Social: We continued to talk about our groups by looking at how some of our groups fit into other groups we are part of. For example their family and our school are all part of the community of Leduc. This was an amazing realization to them.

Keep a look out this weekend I will be posting a page with their Raz-Kids passwords as well as some apps/ websites you guys could work with at home. Many of you stressed to me how difficult it is to get them to do work at home. Perhaps some of these apps and games could help ease that for you.

October 16-20

Odds and Ends

You will see that my blog has changed a bit, I had a technology guru come and help me in hopes to make it more functional and efficient for myself and for you all. If there is something you would like to see on here I am open to suggestions! At the top of page you will see a Kid Zone tab, this is where I will be putting links for the kids to click on and work with once we start with Chromebooks next week. Many of the links there will not work for you at home, if you would like some websites I will be putting a tab for you all up in the future. There is also a tab with the list for class party sign ups. If the date that I signed you up for does not work please let me know as soon as possible. Also if you are willing to fill one of the spots e-mail me to confirm I know many of you said you were willing which is greatly appreciated! I also added a spelling list tab which has the spelling words for the entire year! That way it is always there for you in case you cannot read it in the agenda(grade one printing is sometimes like solving a puzzle) or your kiddo was absent. 

Language Arts

We are still working on the printing and individual sounds each letter makes.We have also been practicing lots with taking CVC words, stretching out the sounds we hear and putting those sounds down on paper. I have completed their testings that I will be sharing with you at parent teacher conferences. If you have specific concerns send me a note in their agenda so that I am prepared with the best resources/answers I can provide you.

Math

We have been practicing our counting by 2 skills more this week and are getting much more fluent at it. We are still working to build our number sense for 1-20. We also practiced the rules and responsibilities for working in math centers with activities we are familiar with. Next week we will be continuing with new centers.

Science

We have wrapped up learning our the Fall season. Next week the children will have a quiz on their knowledge.

Social 

Still working on building our classroom community we read the story "What it Means to be Kind." We had scenarios that we worked through and had conversations. We brainstormed ways we could be kind to each other every day. The students also watched a Franklin video and had to identify the groups that Franklin was part of in the story, they also had to brainstorm groups Franklin was part of that may not have been in the story.

If you have not signed up for conferences next week please do so! If you cannot make it next week but another time in the future works please let me know. Thank you for all you do have a lovely weekend!

October 9-13

For a short week we were very busy here in 1P! We did a lot of informal assessments with week on their number sense as of right now, their letter recognition, sound recognition, and they did a Schonell spelling test. These tests really helped the students remember what 'Volume 0" is in our classroom as well as the importance of not yelling out the answers during 'tests.' We will continue looking at their current phonemic awareness next week with a few other assessments you will have a chance to see at Parent Teacher Conferences. We finished our week with a lovely scarecrow craft this afternoon. 

Odds and Ends

-If you have not done so please sign up using the link below

- Our school has popcorn Wednesdays! On Wednesdays please if you wish you can send your child with 50 cents to give to me first thing in the morning, and then they will get a bag of popcorn at snack recess. It is a fairly large bag of popcorn most of the students couldn't even finish one. 

-On Wednesday you do not have to send your child with a lunch, one of the parents is bringing in a pizza party to celebrate one of our kiddo's birthday!

- I will be away on Monday along with the other grade one teacher to go learn some things!

Home Reading

Thank you for committing your time to home reading! They are so exciting every morning to come in and read to me. A great strategy some parents have been doing especially with the level AA books is covering the pictures and making the child look at the words. A great progression would be to cover the pictures and look at the words, see if there are any words they recognize or can sounds out, then look at just the pictures and what they see. Then go on to looking at them together. Remember that it is hard for those little ones to sit for that long after a long day of work, maybe read a page then have them get up and do five jumping jacks. Make it fun for them then you will not be wanting to pull your hair out as well!

Language

As said above the kiddos did a few informal assessments this week. I assessed their individual letter recognition and sound recognition. We continue to look at practicing our phonemic awareness and practicing printing 'perfect lowercase letters' many of them still have a hard time with this concept especially for the 'loopy letters' such as S, J, G, and F. We also did an amazing job working through the first two centers of Daily 5. The children are really starting to get the hang of what the expectation is during Read to Self and Work on Writing. They loved using the whiteboards during work on writing to practice printing their number words. 

Math

The math assessment package I put together took us a lot longer to get through than I had anticipated. We were looking at putting numbers into a ten frame, how many a number is, recognizing the number word, and numbers that come before, after and between in the numbers 1-20. We worked more with partner work and flashcards looking at grouping the correct numeral, pictorial and written card. We have introduced counting by 2s and man is it tricky for us! We will be continuing on with this next week. 

Science

We continue to talk about Fall this week. We did some writing about "My favorite things about Fall." and built them into acorns! They are both adorable yet slightly creepy looking. 

October 2-6

What a beautiful Fall week it was! We were very busy this week learning. After being away last week the first couple days in 1P were getting back to our normal routine and expectations.

Odds and Ends

-We started our home reading this week. This is an excellent nightly practice to do with your children. As we are still working very hard to develop our reading skills it is not critical for you to receive a new book everyday. Please aim for fluency with the books. If the books your child is receiving seem too easy or difficult, put a note in the agenda and we can alter it to what fits your child's need. Most have gotten in the habit to bring up their duotang once they have completed a book, if you do not receive a new book I did not receive the duotang, just once again put a note in the agenda and I will ensure they take it out and get into that habit. 

-I put a notice in their kanga pouches today, please go on Powerschool and sign the permission form for them to partake in the Halloween parade at Salem Manor across the street from the school. 

-If you want signed up for your child to receive photo retakes those will be taking place on Wednesday

-The milk program and popcorn day will be starting next week!

-See below blog post to sign up for Parent Teacher conferences!

Language

We talked about why we celebrate Thanksgiving, then went to our writing notebook and completed the three sentences "I am thankful for my______." We continue on working on our phonics focusing on individual letter sounds. On Rainbow day we read some silly poems about eating a rainbow and a poem to remember the colors of the rainbow. We have also been practicing the skill of labeling a picture. This is a great way to introduce them to identify details that they see in an image. We are also practicing finding the right word for the specific item by thinking about the sounds we hear and matching it to the words in the word bank. We also introduced the skill of "Work on Writing" for our Daily 5 program. We will be working further on this later in the week. We had our spelling test this morning but it was my week teaching the gym so I will have them marked for Tuesday!

Gym

We have introduced basketball to the students! They have loved learning how to dribble, weave through pylons and shoot on the basket. Basketball is also a great way of talking about keeping our heads up and being aware of the people around us!

Math

We are still practicing our numbers to 20. We focused on looking at the 'teen numbers.' A very common mistake in grade one that we are working at is the children look at the second number and use that first (for example: the number 14 some will say 41 or just 40 and drop the 1 completely). I gave each of the children a number sign and we practicing lining up starting at 1, then starting at 20, we also started looking at skip counting by 2's(but this is still a work in progress, ask us about it next week!) We have been looking at ten frames for the numbers and working with flashcards to match the right number with the right ten frame card. 

Science

We took a break after our spelling test to focus on the changes in the Fall season. We went for a nature walk where we were on a mission. We did a checklist of clothing items we would/wouldn't need to go outside in the Fall. Then the next step on our mission was to find 2 different leaves and two pine cones. We started using the leaves to get an imprint of the leaves to put on our science bulletin board. You will also see the pine cones that we found on our walk now attached to their Thanksgiving wreaths we made this afternoon

Social

We took a break from looking at the various groups to talk more about kindness in the classroom/ to our classmates. We talked about what being 'frustrated' feels and looks like and how sometimes when our friends feel frustrated what is best for us to do. We also did a working together activity and practiced the rules for working with a partner. 

I hope that you all have a wonderful long weekend, Happy Thanksgiving. I am very thankful to have each of your kiddos in my class :)

Parent Teacher Conference 2017

On October 24-25 we will be having our parent teacher conferences. Each time slot will only be fifteen minutes and we will not be able to run over that time. Click the following link and sign up for a time that works best for you!

Parent Teacher Conference Sign up