We have been working on a mini-unit on 'The Gingerbread Man' this week. Here is a little story about what happened to us yesterday... We have also been busy working on graphing; finding range and median. Students are doing a great job navigating data in our classroom. Another skill we have been working on in Math is measuring in cm. Our little learners have been working on estimating lengths. Miss Soa and I have been giving a length and sending them around the classroom to find objects that are about that length. During our phonics time, we have began to work on tricky sounds, and "oodball' words that do not follow the rule. So far this week we have worked on 'are', 'ere', 'air' and 'ear' as sounds that make 'air'. We also reviewed the digraphs 'ph', 'wh', 'th', 'sh' and 'ch'. We learn phonics through reading games, and sorting by sounds. We have been incorporating writing into our phonics games this week, as students have developed a better understanding of how to write words and sentences. We also went to the book fair this week, to scout out books that we may want to purchase. It is here until after school tomorrow if you would like to send your child with cash, or come and and purchase books for home reading. It was great seeing so many parents before school buying books, and parents volunteering. I must tell you all that I brag about my super supportive grade `1 parent community to all of the other teachers. You guys are seriously the best! Carrying on with our Gingerbread unit, we worked in two groups to read some readers theatre scripts together taking on different roles from 'The Gingerbread Man' today. Students really enjoyed acting out the roles and as a result continue to improve their fluency and expression skills.
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We've had a busy few days since my last post.
In Mathematics we have introduced the quarter as one of the coins we now work with. We learned what the fraction quarter means, and how to count to 100 by 25s. In the spirit of learning about quarters, we learned about the quarter hour, and have been practicing switching back and forth between analogue and digital clocks telling and writing time to the hour, half hour and quarter hour. In Language Arts, aside from the 'Daily 5', we continued learning about Cinderella stories. This mini-unit ended in a culminating opinion piece about what we would do if we had a fairy godmother. We illustrated this by creating a fairy with shiny slippers, using our fine motor skills to cut tin foil. Our phonics lesson was inquiry based. We learned about alternative ways to make the long a sound ('eigh', 'ei', and 'ey'). In small groups, students were asked to create a board game that would help someone else learn to read these sounds. Soa and I were blown away by our little learners motivation, creativity, and excitement about this project. During their Friday reward/reflection period, they chose to continue working on/playing their games. A number students wanted to stay in at recess to do them today. Since I value unstructured play, and see the importance of recess time, I did not allow this, but LOVED seeing them so motivated that they would make this choice. It was a great day to be a teacher and learner in grade 1! We have been very busy with Math and Language this week. While it may seem sporadic, our research based 'Everyday Math' program moves around from topic to topic and skill to skill. The reason behind this spiralling approach is that when topics in Mathematics are taught in isolation they are reviewed less, and often not retained. By teaching and reviewing skills frequently and in conjunction with other skills, it helps our little learners retain knowledge and make connections between the different strands in Math. This week we have been working on patterning, probability, measurement and addition and subtraction. Your children are beginning to make great connections between addition and subtraction, and are becoming more fluent using fact triangles to solve problems. Please practice mental math drills at home to improve fluency with addition and subtraction facts within 10. In Language Arts, we have been continuing our focus on fairytales and storytelling. This week, we have been working on a mini unit on Cinderella, comparing and contrasting three different tales, as well as reviewing the concepts of characters, setting, problem, and solution. We have also been focusing on using voices, expression, and telling stories with our bodies. I am so impressed with our improved fluency and expression skills. I know many of you have been supporting this at home. I really appreciate it. I have attached our three Cinderella stories below - Dinorella, Cinderella Penguin, and Cinderella. - I believe that all of these books are available from our Library if you would like to check them out to read and review with your child at home. Remember that as ASA community members you have access to our library. Feel free to visit and sign out books to read with your child at home. There is also some great adult and young adult literature. Miss Lanto is happy to help.
Parents,
I want to thank all of you who were able to make it in for our 'film festival' this morning. While I know our stories seemed 'disjointed', our little ones spent a great deal of time shooting over 100 frames for each of their films. I am so proud of the outcome. You can view your child's written story and film by clicking their name under the 'learning portfolios' tab above. This will likely help you make sense of their stories. In the 21st century it is not enough to teach just pen and paper literacy. It is important for our learners to be able to express themselves digitally. This is just an introduction to one of the many ways we will learn to publish this year. Enjoy the photos below. Everyone looked so cute!! We have had a great week so far, with the LEGO digital stories, and third grade collaboration being the highlight so far!
Our phonics focus was on words with inflectional endings. All of our work on voiced and unvoiced sounds paid off when students were reading and sorting words with 'ed' endings. I posted a picture of the 'rule' above for what sound 'ed' makes at the end of the word. As a native speaker, I had to remind myself of the three sounds and when they are made, but our little learners did a wonderful job. Please continue to support this when reading at home. In Language Arts, we tread on with our unit on Narratives, and have been reading fairytales. This week we will be reading many versions of Cinderella and comparing and contrasting differences, between the different stories. In Mathematics, we have continued to focus on the relationship between addition and subtraction using fact triangles and families. The first graders are doing a wonderful job of finding missing addends when covering up numbers. I am really impressed! We have been learning a lot about publishing digital stories through our LEGO learning initiative. You can find out more about what we have been doing in phase two of our action research here. I have posted some photos below. We have had a very productive few days. On our short Wednesday, we got to learn with Mr. Khang. The students had a great time learning about the ow/ou sounds with him. They watched an alphablocks video that included both oi/oy and ow/ou. I have posted it below. They also worked in three different centres to practice reading and writing words that had the ou/ow digraph.
Over the past few days, we have been focusing on fact families. While this is a very difficult skill to master, I am happy to report that after plenty of practice, stories, drawing houses, and discussing families, I think that all of our little learners have a firm grasp on this concept. We will further review it next week, and introduce fact triangles. On top of the Daily 5, we have spent the last couple days learning about voiced sounds and unvoiced sounds, for letters. We began simply by identifying voiced and unvoiced 'th' sounds for example: 'th' in the word 'these' makes our throat vibrate when we say it, and 'th' in the word 'third' does not. Today we tried this with a few more letters where we put the ones that don't wiggle (vibrate) in bed, and the ones that do, needed to stay awake. There is a photo below. If you are wondering why we are focusing on this unique skill, it is because we will be working on 'ed' endings next week. In order to know whether 'ed' makes the 'id', 't' or 'd' sound at the end of the word, they need to be able to identify voiced consonants. This will take a great deal of practice for our ELL learners. During our UOI time, we have finished our LEGO stories, read them to friends, made revisions based on feedback, and will be turning them into LEGO movies next week with some help from the third grade class. Please check out the LEGO Learning section of our website for more info on this action research. In order to understand digital storytelling, we watched some clips from the LEGO movie. Phase two of my action research on digital storytelling will begin next week. Thanks so much for your thoughtful feedback. Surveys will be emailed soon, and your child's LEGO stories will be posted to their portfolios. We began our learning this morning by discussing the many names that I am called. We discussed how Miss Soa just calls me "Mason", how my students call me "Mr. Mason", how my students last year called me "Mr. McCormick", and how my family calls me "Mase". While all of these are different ways to call me, they all mean the same thing. They are equivalent names for me. After getting the hang of this, and discussing different names have have for each other, we talked about how number have different names.
We practiced using the number 10 and the number 12, showing them in as many ways as we could. We wrote it in words in different languages, we showed it with coins, tallies, pictures, addition sums, subtraction differences, base 10 blocks, dominoes, and dice. I was so proud of the many ways our students knew to represent numbers. They then went and practiced this independently. I have sent this home for homework this evening with a family letter attached. After doing our Daily 5 rotations, we buckled down, and learned about the diagraphs 'oi' and 'oy'. We learned three new games to practice reading and writing the 'oy'/'oi' sounds. One group worked on sorting and writing 'oi/oy' words with Miss Soa, one group played a game called 'oink' where they rolled dice and fed a pig oi/oi words depending on the number they rolled. They also played a game of connect four, where they had to read oi/oy words before putting a marker on their game board, trying to be the first person to get four in a row. This afternoon, Miss Lanto put together a celebration for Dr. Seuss' birthday. |
ASA First GradersWe are caring, balanced , reflective, openminded, risk-taking, knowledgeable, principled, thinkers, communicators, inquirers, explorers and learners. Mr. Mason McCormickI am: a husband, teacher, friend, researcher, grad student, mulitliteracies specialist, designer, social media fanatic, lover of all things tech, creative, and progressive. I am an energetic, life-loving, no-nonsense person; passionate about respectful, rigorous, and relevant teaching and learning in the 21st century.
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