We had a great day today. I am proud to say that we are finally working with coins independently. Today, we played a tic-tac-toe game where students had to represent the number in a square with coins, their partner had to check it, and if it was correct, they got to mark that square. The students did a wonderful job working in pairs and being supportive.
During Language Arts, students worked on expanding "boring sentences", by asking the questions who? what? where? when? why? and how?. They also added any adjectives that they could think of. We also introduced our third centre to the 'Daily 5' program; 'Read to Someone.' Students practiced sitting elbow-to-elbow, knee-to-knee reading 'just right' books to each other. We were very happy with their on-task behaviour. Our UOI time today consisted of planting grass seeds to grow 'hair' for our 'silly face cups'. You will see what I am talking about when you come for interviews tomorrow. We also continued to learn about the parts of a plant and their function. We began to read the story 'The Tiny Seed' by Eric Carle.
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In Math today we continued to work with nickels and pennies. I want parents to remember that this is an exercise in counting using bonds of 5s and 1s, as well as trading. I know how irrelevant counting American coins is to most students in Madagascar. This is however, a number task, and one that should be solidified at home. Please feel free to use Euro coins, or any other denomination of 5s and 1s to build context. Work on trading 5 pennies for a nickel.
In Language Arts, we continued to work on our 'ideas' trait. Students used a cloud word web to think of things 'They would not want to live without'. They will be turning these ideas into simple repetitive sentences later in the week to work on sentence structure. During our UOI time today, students continued to learn about what plants need. Our new learning was on the parts of a plant and their function. Please ask your child what the roots, leaves, stem, flower, and seeds do. We will be reviewing these functions daily this week. We also made classroom green houses with corn and pea seeds. Students got dirty as well, planting watermelon and pumpkin seeds. We are hoping with proper care to have quite the garden growing so that our little ones have the opportunity to see what a variety of life cycles look like. I must admit I do not have much of a green thumb. If anyone has experience with gardening and growing, I would love for you to leave us some tips in the comment section of this blog post. Note: If you have not signed up for a meeting time with me on Thursday, I will be assigning you a slot. It is important that I speak with each and every one of you about how to assist your child at home. Early intervention is the best way to help your child have a successful year. If you cannot make it for any reason, please email me to arrange a different day or time. I am flexible and happy to meet you at a time and place the suits your needs. We had a very busy day today. We began our day writing 2 MAP tests. The scores that these differentiated online tests give us, will help us further guide your child learning, and fill in any educational gaps. Between tests we explored different math and language tools. After testing was done, we worked on our ideas writing trait. We started by making a list of things that we wouldn't want to live without. Families, ipads, and candies, being a reoccurring theme. We will use these ideas to write repetitive sentences this week to help our students continue to work towards mastery of writing simple sentences. During our UOI time, we learned about roots and their purpose; holding the plant up, and 'drinking' water. We then cut up a pineapple, tasted it, and peeled the leaves back looking for roots so that we can replant it. This is a trick I learned at a pineapple farm in the Philippines. We are looking forward to seeing if our roots take to the soil. We also learned about germination, and began germinating bean seeds. They are the start of our classroom greenhouse and have been taped to the windows in plastic bags. As scientists, we will be recording their progress and drawing our observations. We will be learning more about the parts of a plant as they grow. We had a fantastic Friday. This morning we worked with nickels and pennies to work on number bases of 5. Students had to trade in 5 pennies for a nickel. While we are not focusing strongly on American money while we live her in Madagascar, it is still important for students to learn about representing numbers in different ways, and being able to trade in 1s, 5s, and 10s.
In Language Arts, Mrs. Danielle came in to teach a very special vocabulary lesson. We are so lucky to have her doing her student teaching in our class, as we get to experience her richly planned lessons for her observations. She got 100% on her last lesson plan that she taught us from Liberty University in America. We are so proud of her, and are very supportive of her journey towards getting her second Masters degree. After that, we worked together to create rich silly sentences using adjectives, nouns and verbs, We structured them with a beginning (using a capital) then an adjective, noun, verb, and ending (with punctuation). You can click on the picture below to see how our silly sentences were created, and create some at home. While student wrote their silly sentences in their journals, we did our high-frequency word assessments. We put the words on post it notes, and rearrange their order to make sure that students have mastered these skills. During our UOI, we began to learn about the life cycle of a flower. We planted sunflower seeds, and gave them what they need soil, water, sun, and air. We wonder if we will see seedlings on Monday. On Monday we will be germinating bean seeds in our classroom window. While you are eating fruits and vegetables this weekend, please be sure to look at the seeds. If you want to send any in with your child to grow next week, we accept the challenge. Have a wonderful weekend! We have been so busy that I haven't had a second to catch my breath and let you in on all of our learning over the past couple days. In Math, we did our first and second MAP tests. These tests give the school and teachers some pretty amazing data about where students are at academically and how to push them further. We also continued to reinforce the skill of composing and segmenting numbers to 10. Today we played a game with 10 pennies (although you could use anything at home if you are going to reinforce this skill). We worked in pairs where one partner would put some of the pennies under the plate, and some on top. The other student had to work out how many pennies were hidden under the plate by using either addition or subtraction skills. Pictures provided below. In Language Arts, we are working on constructing a sentence with nouns and verbs. Yesterday, we cut different nouns out that were people, places, things, and animals, and sorted them (pictures below). Today we came up with a list of creatures and created sentences about them. Some were quite happy, and some were rather scary. We also learned about using adjectives to spruce up our sentences, we learned how we can use them to describe size, shape, smell, personality, appearance, taste, etc. We will continue to work on this skill throughout the year. Please make sure that your child is using adjectives when they write in our class journals. Today we began our Life Cycles Unit of Inquiry. The strategy we used to begin the unit is called "Picture Priorities". It asks students to rank, sequence and/or make sense of a series of pictures as a way of helping them to consider what they already know and/or how they feel about a topic. I think this strategy is fantastic because it gets kids thinking! It's a great way to assess their prior knowledge. We gave the students the pictures along with a large piece of paper on which to order the pictures and record their thoughts. I didn't tell them anything about the content of the pictures; I wanted to leave it totally to their interpretations. My directions were, "I'm giving your group a set of pictures, Your job is to figure out how they go together in a meaningful way. Share your thinking and then you must agree on how to arrange them on the paper." This got our little ones thinking! We walked around the room to monitor and make sure that all group members were contributing their ideas. Once groups came to a consensus about the order of their pictures, I asked them to write one of their thoughts, anything really, about 1 or all of the pictures. Many of them chose to break this task up by having each person in the group write a sentence about one of the pictures. I got the groups to share their posters with the class and debrief the strategy they picked. When we debriefed, I asked "How did your thinking change while you were arranging the pictures?" Some students shared that they recognized that the pictures were all part of a cycle, whereas some students did not have any prior knowledge and they really had to think about it. We drew the arrows together to make it part of the cycle. After this, we discussed what things are living and what are not. We decided that living things grow, eat drink, breath and reproduce. We went for a walk around campus and took a look for 4 living things, and 4 non-living things that we could see. I have attached some photos of our discovery. I want to start by congratulating our first grade friends on completing over 1000 math problems on IXL. If you have not logged on yet. Please do so tonight. I have sent an email with log in details for those of you who may have misplaced the original letter. Today we began Math centres. Students worked in small groups for more direct teacher instruction. One activity was working with myself on using measurement tools. We learned about centimetres and different tools we can use to measure. We used a ruler, a tape measure, and a metre stick to measure various objects around the room. Another activity was working with Miss Soa, on using a ruler to make straight lines and count by twos. The used a connect the dots activity to make a star with a ruler. Our other activity was sorting dominoes. The students needed to use their subitizing skills to see numbers based on picture patters and group them in order. In Language Arts, we continued to look at what makes a sentence and began coming up with nouns for the silly sentences we will be writing tomorrow. During our UOI time, we presented our story to the grade 3s. I had forgotten that the grade 2s were out on a field trip. I think that the small audience was better for some of our shy performers. The students did a great job presenting, speaking in a loud voice, and teaching others about diversity and getting along. We were so proud. A video has been sent to your email addresses. Some photos are attached below. The last one reminds me just how tall I really am. We had a lovely day. Today in math, we did our full morning calendar routine. This takes some time, but helps review familiar skills that bring us towards mastery. We worked on some review with our math boxes as well. We also heard about Celia's weekend with 'Ninja', our class pet. During Language Arts, we worked on writing complete sentences. We decided that a complete sentence has an equation. Capital letter + Complete Thought + Punctuation = A Full Sentence. We talked about how a complete sentence has a naming part and a telling part. To make it clearer, we broke it down to 'who?' 'did what?' We reviewed nouns and verbs in the process. We then crafted our own sentences. During our UOI time, we created the backdrop for our 'Whoever You Are' presentations. We then went and practiced our presentation on the stage. We were also very lucky that the senior drama class was presenting their pantomimes today. We got to learn about how to be a good audience, and how to behave on stage. It was a great day. Dear Parents, Mrs. Danielle asked me to share these photos of our 4 French students wonderful presentations on their families. She wants to express her gratitude for the amount of work, assistance and practice, that happened at home. I am told that the students did an amazing job, and that their posters were great. Happy International Peace Day!
Today in Math, we continued to work in building stamina through daily review of skills we have learned so far this year. We also learned about time to the hour and half hour. With the little additional time we had left, we played a game, by tossing our subtraction cube, and solving subtraction problems (pictured above). In Language Arts, we learned about nouns and verbs and how to write a complete sentence using capital letters, finger spaces, and periods. We talked about how every full sentence has a naming part, and a telling part. Kenisha also read her wonderful journal on her favourite holiday. It was special. Student's then worked on writing a friendship acrostic poem by themselves, and read. During our UOI time, we went to the art annex to paint a brick as part of our community art project. Students and teachers from Romper to Grade 12 were asked to paint a brick that symbolized peace. They will be glazed and put together to make something beautiful on campus. We had a special visitor for morning Math today. Dr. Amy dropped by our classroom to see our unique take on calendar math. She was very impressed by how we learn about patterns, ordinal numbers, days of the week, months of the year, place value, numbers that are 10 more, 10 less, one more, one less, tallies, number words, even and odd numbers, and time, all in 10 minutes. It is a rock solid math routine that gets our brains thinking. After this, we continued to build our math stamina by filling in our daily math boxes full of review material. This exercise is something that we will do quickly at least 3 days a week to review, build stamina and work on mastery of skills. After that, we had a mini lesson on telling time to the hour. We reviewed the minute hand, and hour hand, and how many minutes are in an hour. Our anchor chart can be seen above. We also counted how many things we could do in a minute. Felix did 34 push ups, and Aphiwe did 76 star jumps in a minute. Please work on the concept of how long a minute is with your child at home. During Language Arts today, we introduced two new student journals; "A Hobby" and "My Pet", we read the sample entries together, and discussed what we could write when it is our turn to take them home. Felix also read us his entry about his favourite sport, soccer, and Hermine read her entry about her favourite holiday, Valentines Day. I look forward to hearing more students responses. Not only is this a great reading, writing, and presenting task, but it also helps Miss Soa and I get to know the students better. After that, we began working on writing acrostic poems about friends. During our UOI time, we continued to practice our lines for our presentation on getting along, we also brainstormed more ideas. Our presentation will be pushed until next week when the students are more comfortable. We are looking forward to International Peace Day tomorrow. Please dress your child in blue jeans and a white shirt to support this. Felix seeing how many pushups he can do in a minute |
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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