Christmas Break is near!

Hi everyone!  We are all getting very excited for the upcoming holiday and being able to spend time with family and friends.  The next five days of school will have special Christmas activities in Language and Math.  On Friday there will be some fun Primary wide activities for the whole morning, like we did for Halloween.  Also on Friday will be pajama day.  Feel free to dress comfortably.

I hope that you all enjoy your Christmas vacation and I will see you in the new year.  I can't wait to hear about all your adventures.

Inferring

Over the last 2-3 weeks, we have been learning to infer so  we can understand a variety of texts.  We have looked at various advertisements for toys, airline companies and cars to determine what the author of the advertisements were trying to tell us.  What is the hidden meaning of the text??  We have learned to use the clues from the text and our background knowledge to 'read between the lines.

We have also read two books that had no words and had to figure out what the author really meant.  They were so much fun to 'read'!

Comic Strips

We learning to turn our recount writing into comic strips.  Check them out this week when you come for parent/teacher interviews!

Simple Machine Inventions

Student worked extremely hard on their simple machine inventions.  They did a wonderful job.  One student incorporated 4 simple machines, how creative!  Way to go everyone!  Check out the pictures below.

Daily 5 and Recount Writing

Over the last week we have been learning how to choose our own Daily 5 Centres based on a few expectations.  We learned that we must complete our Work on Writing centre EVERY DAY and all the other centres at least once throughout the week.  We place stickers or dots on a chart to help us keep track of what we have done so we can make the appropriate choice.

We are finishing up with our recount writing and learning to edit with a partner to make our writing better.  Using the skills we learned on Halloween about comic strips, we will be transforming our recount writing into comics!!  Look for pictures of our comics to be posted on the blog.

RAZ-KIDS AND PRODIGY MATH

HI EVERYONE!  We have started back on Raz-kids for our Listen to Reading Literacy Centre.  This will be available at home again this year.  Also starting this week is a new online math program that I am testing out.

ProdigyMathGame.com is a pokemon themed math based program where kids get to build their own avatar and battle characters by answering math questions correctly.  This game is linked to the Ontario curriculum and progresses students along at their level and own pace.  We will take one period a week of our math to test out this program.  Feel free to access this free program online too. Just click on the link on our blog to access.  Students have been given a username and password to access.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Math Games!

Today we learned some math games.  We are beginning to talk about adding numbers together so we learned to play some games to help us.  Check out the pictures below to find out how to play.  All you need is some dice and a deck of cards.

Calm and Alert Learning

Discuss with your child how we can become calm and alert learners and how we can help others in their journey.

Patterns, Patterns, Patterns! And Recount Writing!

We have been busy learning about sorting and making patterns.  We can sort by colour, size, shape, texture and in more than one way!  Check out the sorting we did with leaves earlier this week.  We had fun just gathering them from the field.

Today we were learning about patterns and read "Beep, Beep, Vroom, Vroom".  This is from a great math series written by Stuart J. Murphy.

This is what we created using colourful links.

In Literacy, we have been learning about recounts.  A recount is telling about something that has already happened.  Today a student did an excellent recount of a book she read and used the sequence words (first, then, next, finally) to tell the order of the events in the story.  Please look for the Story Recount sheet to be coming home in the Homework Folder today!!!

Welcome Back!!!

Dare I say that school is almost here?  I am really excited to start the new year and can't wait to meet my new students.  I have been in and out of the school this week and have almost finished setting up the classroom. I have added a new Writing Centre by the Word Wall for students to use when they are writing.  This Writing Centre consists of my own teacher desk.  I figured, why not!  I never sit at it anyway so let's put it to good use.

Looking forward to seeing everyone!  See you September 2!

Summer Holiday!!!

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to say that I had such a great year with all of my students.  We did some excellent learning!  There was never a day that I did not smile or laugh at something going on in our class.  It was so sad to see my class walk out of the school yesterday, i will truly miss you all over the summer.  Please enjoy your summer and stay safe.  Remember to read and write every day.  See you in September!

Synthesize: to transform our thining

What is the author trying to teach us?  That is the big question.  We are digging deeper into our reading.  How does our thinking change from the beginning of the book to the end of the book?  Is the author trying to tell us something?

How much is 1/2?

We are learning about fractions.  Yesterday we were figuring out as many ways as we could to make 1/2.

Spring Community BBQ/Yard/Bake Sale!

Strong Samples of Information Report Writing

Hi everyone!  Yesterday we had a look at some strong samples of information reports.  These strong samples had great detail, the writer had used their own words and used some of their own knowledge when writing these reports.  See below to find out what we are striving for in our writing.  I will be sending home all the information reports that students have written so far so you can have a look.  We will still be working on this form of writing for about another week.  Remind you child to add detail and put things in their own words.

I was looking around the classroom this morning watching as everyone was reading with a friend.  I found the most exciting thing!  A Grade 1 student reading his very first chapter book on his own with confidence, understanding and enjoyment!!!  What a wonderful thing to see!  I am so proud of all my students and all of their achievements this year!  Keep learning everyone.

Have you seen all the self-regulation strategies we have been learning?  Every day we have been engaged in conversation about how to self-regulate to achieve our calm and alert learning school.  Be sure to check out our agenda's for more strategies.

Everything non fiction!

In language we have been looking at how to read non fiction texts. What are the parts of a non fiction text and their features? This fit perfectly with our current unit in Science, animals. Next we will be combing the two subjects and learning how to write a non fiction information report. The grade 1's have diligently researched about flamingos.  Look at what they found out!

Our next step is to use this research and learn about writing an Information Report.  What animal would you like to know more about?

How much money do we have?

That was the question we worked on today.  Students were challenged by counting the bunch of coins on their desk.  They needed to use their knowledge of coin values and counting by 1's, 5's, 10, and even 25's to find the amount of money they had.  Encourage your child at home to use these strategies when counting money.

In language, we have been talking about Quick Questions and Deep-thinking Questions.  Quick Questions are questions that can be answered very quickly (who are the characters in the story?).  Deep-thinking Questions take more time to answer and sometimes requires more research and reading.  Try having your child ask you both types of questions when reading.  We ask questions about what we read to better understand the text.

Reading Bags & Easter Egg Clues

It has been yet another busy week in our classroom.  I can't believe that tomorrow is Friday!  The Grade 2's had a wonderful time on the field trip.  I'm so glad the weather was beautiful.  The only students that were missing were the Grade 1's.  This afternoon I realized that the Reading Bags were still sitting by the agenda bucket.  Oh dear.  A few students wanted to take them home today so I quickly got them new books (how responsible of them!!!).  For the rest of the class, the bags will be going home next week.  Sorry parents for the delay.

The students were each given a plastic Easter egg today.  Over the weekend, please find a small item to put into the egg and have your child write 3 clues for their object.  All next week students will be presenting their clues to the class for everyone to guess.  Please have a look at the schedule of presentations handed out with the assignment sheet.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY!!!

We have recently started learning about money.  Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies, toonies: what do they look like, what is their value, which is worth the most and which is worth the least?

Blogging!

Blogging is difficult to understand!  What is a gadget?  How do I post a calendar of events?  AHHH, the joys of technology!

WELCOME!!!

Hi Everyone!  Welcome to my NEW Class Blog.  Here you will find information about what is going on at the school as well as in the classroom.