Hello families!
Just a reminder that on Friday, November 18, we will be having our three-way conferences. I will sit down with you and your child to discuss what we have been learning and to celebrate her/his achievements and successes so far in grade one! I am so proud of all of my students and am looking forward to Friday to meet with you all!
In literacy we have continued to learn about short vowel sounds, writing lists, cards, and sentences with proper conventions, and we have been working on reading to ourselves, in pairs and small groups. Since the beginning of the year we have been learning about the different literacy stations and have been practicing using our “whisper voices” and building up our stamina so that we can work quietly and continuously for 10-15 minutes at our stations while I read with a small group of students. We have also been reviewing rhyming words, our popcorn words, word families (ig, ip, ot, and it,) and segmenting and blending letter sounds in words. I will be sending home “Home Reading” packages this week. Each night your child will read a book with you and will record how many books they read. When they have reached 100 books they will receive a small prize at school! Students will also be expected to practice their popcorn words each night (a list is included in the package). More information will be included in the package.
In numeracy we have been continuing our unit in measurement. Students have been engaging in activities that explore length, mass, capacity, and surface area. They have been comparing objects by determining which one is shorter/longer, lightest/heaviest, holds the most/least, and has the greatest/least area. Most recently the students got into small groups and designed “ramps” for toy cars. They practiced a few times to see if they could make their car go farther than the other groups’ cars simply by adjusting their ramp. We used tape to measure how far each car went and then we placed the tape on a board so that we could visually see the results. I asked the students if having a higher (steeper) or lower (shallow) slope to their ramp resulted in their car going farther, and all of the groups stated that having a lower ramp allowed for their car to go the farthest. One student said that, “On the higher ramp the car hit a “bump” at the bottom and the car would flip over!” We learned a lot about measurement and ordinal numbers!
In arts education we created beautiful pieces of art work to accompany our Remembrance Day activities. Along with Ms. Perkins’ class we listened to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and used the imagery in the song to think about what makes our lives wonderful. Some of the ideas were truly heart-warming, like family, the world, and friends. We created beautiful pictures and wrote “I see…” sentences to accompany the pictures. We will be making them into a “quilt” and it will be on display this week!
In health we are beginning a new unit that focuses on feelings and behaviours that are important for healthy relationships. We will discuss the many different types of relationships we have (family, friends, neighbours, teammates, etc.) and explore the ways we interact with each. We will also revisit a concept that we learned about at the beginning of the year: what being a good friend looks like, sounds like, feels like. Most importantly we will identify healthy ways to respond in situations of conflict.
In inquiry we are starting our family and traditions/celebrations unit! We have started to discuss our families and realize that we have similarities and differences. As we move into December we will explore the many different traditions, celebrations and holidays that are observed by our families in our class! It will be an exciting unit!
For Remembrance Day the students wrote cards to veterans in Wascana Rehab as part of the school-wide Postcards for Peace initiative put on by the Remembrance Day committee. I was so impressed and proud of their ideas and messages for the veterans. We had many discussions about the bravery and sacrifices they made for our country and about the soldiers who are currently serving overseas. The students were surprised to learn that only men could participate in battle during the Great Wars, but that women played many other important roles. They thought it was fair that women can now serve in battle just like men. We learned about a “rough draft” or “first draft” when writing a card and how we write a first draft so that we get our ideas down on paper without worrying about spelling and conventions. Once we have written our ideas down THEN we go back and fix our mistakes. Once our mistakes have been corrected and I had a chance to look at their first drafts to make a few more corrections, they then wrote their “good copy” or “final copy” into the cards. This simple exercise is an introduction into the writing process–a process they will learn about and practice in grade one and for years to come!
I hope you had a reflective Remembrance Day and restful weekend!
Ms. Holmes