We had a very busy half-day today. We reviewed writing the numbers 9 and 0, counting by 5s, knowing what numbers are one more and one less, and counting on from a given number. In ELL, we read a book reviewing the 'short a' sound, and played a phonics game called 'Kaboom!' In Kaboom, you have to identify the letter name and sound of each letter. Ask you child to teach you how to play. After break, we had a mysterious crate. We took turns guessing what it could be, and read a riddle about it. Inside, we found our new class pet. We took a vote, and decided to name him 'Ninja'. He will be going home with one child each weekend. We can't wait to read about his adventures. Additionally, we read a few other journal entries on Mr. Mason's. Lots of parents have been asking about getting their children to write at home. Hopefully these journals will help. Some of you will find one in your child's folder today. Please read the instructions on the inside cover. Now I am off to do some learning to be a better teacher. Have a wonderful afternoon.
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Dear Parents, We have been very busy in first grade. Although the power was out most of the day on Monday, it did not stop our little learners for engaging in math and literacy activities. Here's what you missed. Math: On Sunday, we worked on 2 handed addition to 10. Students scooped up some cubes in one hand, and the rest in the other. Through trying this activity many times, we learned that there are many ways to make 10. After that, we learned how to fill a 10 frame, top to bottom and left to right. We learned that when the top row is full, we have 5. We filled in the number that we were asked, and then as a class tried to come up with how many more we needed to make 10. Once we were comfortable as a group, we split into pairs and challenged a partner to discover how many more we needed to make 10. We will be working with number bonds to 10 all year as this is an essential addition and subtraction skill. Today in Math, we used dice, to work on subtraction strategies, we learned that when we 'take away' we need to start with the greater number and count back. We also learned about how when we subtract one, it is the number before, and when we subtract 0, the number stays the same. Thanks to all the parents who came in to witness our learning. In ELL, we are learning about the letter 'Tt'. On Sunday, students made a flip book where they hid words that start with the letter 'Tt' under the flaps, then took turns giving clues to their friends to get them to try and guess the word. Today students did a sort where they cut and paste words that began with T and didn't and sorted them accordingly. This was a great vocabulary builder. During our UOI time, we completed the same activity we did at the start of the unit where we wrote down everything we knew about making friends and getting along. The students were amazed when they saw how much more they had written on the page. They really have learned a lot. They were very proud of themselves...but not as proud as their teacher.
They decided to send their 'Together' book of poems home as one of their action pieces to end the unit. They thought that this way they could teach Moms, Dads, brothers, and sisters about getting along. For their other action piece, they chose to do a presentation about getting along and accepting differences. Will will present this later in the week, or early next week to the grade 2s and 3s. Students will be reading/learning lines from 'Whoever You Are' a story about differences by Mem Fox. Their cue cards have been sent home for practice. Please talk about smiling and using a loud voice when helping your child with their sentence or 2 to learn. I will video tape the presentation and send it in an email when we are finished. Wow have we ever been busy! We had a very busy end to the week. In Math this morning, we worked on simple addition by playing a dice game in a group. We rolled two dice to make addition sums to 5. Next week we will be doing this with subtraction, remembering to subtract the lesser number from the greater number. In Language Arts, we had a special guest. Mrs. Danielle came in to work on a comprehensive phonics lesson as part of her Masters degree in Education. It was great to have 3 teachers in the room to help us work on our learning. It was a learning experience for everyone. Since we are coming up on our last week of our 'Getting Along' UOI, students were told to reflect on the qualities that make them a good friend. As a class, we came up with a list of good qualities we see in friends. After that, students were told to select the qualities that best suit them, and create a good friend rainbow. These can be seen next Tuesday when parents come in for our open day. In the afternoon, we went to music with Miss Blass, and then went on a special 'in-school field trip' to the computer lab. We learned how to use the computers safely, without breaking them, and then learned how to word process using Microsoft word. Students worked independently on their page of the class book that we are authoring. They typed up their work from their journal to create their own page. They will be illustrating on Monday. We are very excited about our publication. Next week we will be coming up with our PYP action project for our 'Getting Along' UOI. We are really looking forward to it. This morning in Math, students learned how to count forwards and backwards using a 100 grid. As a class, we played a game where we rolled a dice, and each number meant that we had to move forward a number of spaces on the 100 grid, or backwards. The first graders and I called it a tie, as this was taking a while. Once students were comfortable navigating the 100 grid independently, they went to their desks and played in pairs. Miss Soa and I were so impressed with how well the students were interacting respectfully together. We think that our UOI on friendship is really rubbing off on them nicely. They were working cooperatively, taking turns, helping each other, sharing, being respectful and using manners. We are so proud of our great little group. In Language Arts, we took our ideas from yesterday, and came up with short together poems for our class book. We will be going to the computer lab next week to type them up. Typing is a 21st century skills that students need to be exposed to early. While we know that this will take some time, we are looking forward to our students proud faces when they see the final result in our class book. During our UOI time, we made a 'friendship salad.' We followed directions, read instructions, and learned a valuable lesson about classroom behaviour. First we explained to the students that the bowl represents our classroom and we need to have a happy and kind classroom everyday. Next we added strawberries to represent the hard workers in our classroom. Then we added apples to represent the 'good apples' in our class, or the kind and caring students that we have. After that, we added marshmallows to represent the kind words we say to each other. We talked about how hard workers, kind students, and nice words mix well together, so we mixed them up with yogurt to represent that happiness we have when mixed together with nice people, and words in our classroom. After we talked about our great class represented by fruits, we took our the rotten 'sour grapes.' As soon as they were brought out, the students said, "don't put those in the class!!" We talked about what the grapes could represent; mean people, bullies, bad words, being unkind, etc. We discussed how just one sour grape could ruin the whole class. We talked about how we don't want any sour grapes in our class, and how we need to get along when mixed together in order to have a happy classroom. Then we talked about sharing as we all had an equal share of the salad. Today in Math we completed some assessments for our first unit of Everyday Math. Unit 1 is called 'Establishing Routines.' If you have been following the blog, and reading the newsletters, you know that all of the material covered in this unit should have been review from the Kindergarten program. If you child is still having difficulty with tallies, counting by 2s and 5s, knowing what comes before or after a number, or ordering and comparing numbers you will be hearing from me by early next week at the latest. Please continue to review these skills at home. Tomorrow we will be beginning Unit 2; "Everyday Uses of Numbers." The skills we will be covering include: working with number grids, complements of 10, unit labels for numbers, analogue clocks (telling time to the hour), counting pennies and nickels, and working with subtraction number models. We will also continue to work on number stories.
In ELL time, students worked on sorting, writing, and creating words that have the short a sound in them. If you child goes to French class, please make sure that they know this sound and can produce words with it at home. During our Language Arts period today, we talked about how we can use our senses in writing to strengthen our ideas. Students worked collaboratively with the ideas from the story 'When I am Old with You', to talk about what words they could use to describe the senses they would feel in each setting. You can see a picture of our whole class example above. During our UOI time, we talked about things we do together with friends and family. We began writing our ideas for things we can do with a friend for our classroom book. This book will be published next week, and begin to be sent home with students. We hope that parents will write comments in the back to encourage our students to write more. Audience is an important part of the writing process. More on that next week. We had a great day of listening and telling stories today. In math, we worked together to tell 'number stories' using pictures numbers and words. Ex. two boys were playing soccer, 3 girls came to play with them; 2+3=5 (add picture). This is a necessary skill for students in first grade to see math in a real life context that relates to them. Please continue to practice this skill at home. In Language Arts, we continued to work on the trait of 'ideas' for writing. Before students are able to write, they need to have topics that excite them about writing. In first grade, while we focus on spelling, phonics, and sentence writing, One of the most important skills is developing a love of writing, and having students see how writing benefits them. During our 'Daily 5' time, students will be encouraged to work on writing that they want to do. This can be cards, lists, stories, information, etc. During our UOI and Language Arts time, we will focus more on structure, and the different types of writing. During our UOI time we continued to work on traits of friends. In the beginning of the lesson we read the book, "Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale" by Marcus Pfister. The book is about getting to know others rather than passing judgement on them. The "Big Blue Whale" keeps staring at all of the fish and the fish assume that he is going to eat them when really, after several events, the fish find out that he was just admiring their beautiful scales. After we discussed the book we moved into talking about making friends and keeping friends. We talked about using kind words with others, which allow us to make and keep friends, while saying mean things may cause us to lose friends. Before the lesson I wrote each student in the classes name on a strip of construction paper, and then after we read the book I passed out a strip to each student, making sure they did not get their own. The students then returned to their seats with the task of writing nice things about the student. I also encouraged them to draw pictures if they wished. Before the end of the lesson we gathered in a circle and the students told the class who they had and what they wrote. After each student shared, I stapled the strips of paper into a chain. We talked about how nice words bring us together, so that we are strong and connected like our chain. This morning we rolled out our daily math routine, using the calendar to guide our number exploration. Did you know that we have been at school for 14 days! We also looked at the temperature outside, and learned how to use a thermometer. We learned that when the mercury goes up, it is getting hotter, and when it goes down, it is getting colder. We used warm and cool colors to color a thermometer, pointing out body temperature, room temperature, and freezing temperature (32 degrees F). In Language arts, we began writing down our ideas for 'Working on Writing,' our second level of the 'Daily 5.'. We came up with a list of ideas as a group that consisted of: grocery lists, thank you cards, dinosaur stories, treasure maps, tree house plans, lists of favourite things, informational texts, instructions, recipes, etc. The boys then did 'Read to Self' while the girls did 'Work on Writing' using clip boards to write their ideas in one place. Then we switched. Students spend the first two days of 'Working on Writing' generating ideas for topics that they can write about this year. That way we as teachers don't hear "I don't know what to write about." Students will just be directed to their ideas list. This week we will be focusing on what a good sentence looks like; finger spaces, capitals at the beginning, and a period at the end. When we start our writing, we are looking for students to write complete sentences, please practice this at home. During our UOI time today, we re-read 'The Rainbow Fish' and discussed what the rainbow fish did to make his friends feel special. We then generated a list as a class of things we do to make our friends feel special, and completed the writing prompt: "I make my friends feel special when I..." Students completed the sentence, and then made a rainbow fish. We shared these as a class afterward, and practiced sequencing the story. Tomorrow, we are reading the sequel to 'Rainbow Fish' titled: 'Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale." We have looked at the pictures, but are very excited to read the words. This years school wide theme is providing feedback. I will be providing you and your child feedback on their learning. The administration will be providing me with feedback on my teaching, and I encourage you to provide me with feedback on my work. This is a great way for me to improve as both a teacher and a learner. I encourage you to fill out the following survey honestly in order to help me become the best possible educator that I can be for your children. Thanks for taking your time to fill this out, This mornings Math work consisted of centers where students did puzzles, ordered cards, and jumped around a 100 chart counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. In Language Arts, we read the words to "When I am Old with You," and discussed ideas that the author had. We will be spending next week focusing on the 'ideas' trait of writing. During our UOI time, we got out the ipads and began to familiarize ourselves with 2 apps that we will be using quite often this year. Kidsa-z and IXL. The students enjoyed navigating them. We will begin using Kidsa-z next week for reading homework. Students reading levels have been assigned, and they are encouraged to read stories nightly. One reading will be assigned on Wednesday next week. During our open reflection time, we did a 'Give, Get, Go' activity. During this activity, students gave thanks and showed gratitude for a student, received it, or choose their right to pass their turn. Students had some great reflections, and praise to give to their friends about the way they played together, or helped each other out during the week. It was a sweet way to end our week together. |
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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