February 23, 2018

Wow! We have had a couple of very busy weeks filled with exciting learning!

Last week, we had the Leighton Art Centre visit our classroom. The students were great listeners and ambassadors for Kenneth D. Taylor school. I was VERY proud of their respectful behaviour and hard work! During the presentation, the students had the opportunity to practice drawing figures, create a wire sculpture and experiment with an image transfer using wax crayons.

In literacy, we have continued to create our gingerbread people stories. Most of the students have finished their first draft and are now working on their good copies. While completing their final copy, the students are focussing on spelling words properly and forming letters correctly. We are very excited to start displaying the amazing stories in the hall soon!

We have continued to practice our 100 sight words each day and recently began to practice words from the 200 sight word list. We are also reading our poems and Wall Story frequently.

At literacy centres, the students have been busy creating sentences that contain "wh, ph or qu" words. Ask your child to tell you the sounds that each of these pairs of letters produces.

In science, we explored  "Optical Illusions" and the students have been LOVING a book from our library about the topic.

We have also started to delve deeper into our "Building Things" unit. The students were challenged to create a house for a gingerbread person, a rocket or a balloon. They were also given some free time to create their own design. I have loved watching the students collaborate with one another as they ponder building difficulties/solutions!

We also visited the Maker Space this week. The students were challenged to work with their group to complete different tasks. Ask your child which challenge they were given. We will be visiting the Maker Space again over the next few weeks to provide students with the opportunity to complete each challenge.

In gym, we practiced skipping and singing our skip counting song!

In math, we continued to explore addition. This week we have been focussing on making 10. Ask your child to complete the following:

• 2+  ____=10   
• 4 + ____ = 10
• ___ + 7 = 10

Reminders:

• Library on Monday
• Thursday, February 28 is Pink Shirt Day
• Popcorn days on February 28 and March 1
• Grade 1 Vaccinations on March 1

February 7, 2018

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Here is an update from the CBE regarding the winter weather warning:

Our learning this week...

We have had a jam packed week of learning so far! We are continuing to work on our sight words daily through poems and flashcards. Since we are about half way through the year, students should be able to recite at least 50 of the first 100 words quickly (2 seconds or less). Students are making great progress in this area and it is really helping them with their reading and writing.

One Monday, we worked on our journals. Here are some examples:

We began story writing this week in regards to our missing gingerbread people (that have all been found!).  As a class, we worked on an introduction. After writing, we then went back and edited our work for proper punctuation as well to re-word things that did not make sense. Our class is really focusing on independently making edits to their work by circling the word that they want to edit and writing the edit above.

We have also been doing a morning message to aid students in editing their work independently. Usually, I select a student to tell me something that they did or that they are excited about, and then we edit it on the board. An example might look like this:

thIs WEEkend i WETN to. banFf to si teh ICE SculPTures?

Have your child edit the above sentence for proper capitalization, punctuation, and spelling of sight words:).

We had a special guest, our school nurse, come to our class to teach us about our senses and proper oral hygiene. Ask your child to tell you about the experiment with the egg and Coca-Cola!

We also have been discussing our sense of touch and our skin. Ask your child how their skin helps them and what they can do to protect it in all different types of weather :).

We started new math centres today. Ask your child which one they enjoyed the most. We are focusing on the following skills:

- 1 more/1 less, 2 more/2 less

- counting by 2s to 20, 5s and 10s to 100, 1s to 100, and backwards from 20 to 1 by 1's

- naming random numbers out of sequence (mystery number)

- counting on from the bigger number when solving an addition question

- using number lines to solve addition questions

- doubles facts

Reminders:

- Forms for an in-class field trip went home yesterday. Please sign and return the forms as soon as possible.

- Please return any "letters to home" green books and poetry books you have at home.

- Feel free to keep home reading books for a couple of nights if needed. Please practice fluency and expression  the 2nd and 3rd time your child reads the book. Purple folders need to be sent back to school even if you keep the book at home.

February 2, 2018

Happy Groundhog Day 🌺🌻☃⛄

On Tuesday, we had our school nurse come to teach us about the importance of hand washing. We learned that you need to sing your ABC's when you wash your hands and that you have to remember to wash your wrists as well! Ask your child to tell you about the awesome experiment they got to do.

On Wednesday, we learned about the sound "th" makes. We also explored some words that have "th" inside of them. The students were challenged to pick a "th" word and to write a sentence about it. The sentence also had to include descriptive words.

We also completed a science experiment on the sense of touch. Ask your child to tell you some descriptive words they used. (soft, fuzzy, hard, etc...)

Yesterday, we learned about Groundhog Day. Throughout the day we read poems and listened to lots of stories. We also learned how to draw a groundhog and wrote about what weather we would like for the next six weeks.

Today, we attended an assembly on friendship. Ask your child to tell you about it.

Reminders: