We celebrated our 100th day of learning in first grade today! Thank you for dressing your children up as the cutest 100 year olds, in order to help conceptualize our writing task for the day. We began our day with a 100 year old fashion show. Students walked up and down the catwalk as 100 year olds, modelling their style. After our fashion show, we went through our Everyday Math calendar routine. We had to trade 10 ones for a ten, then 10 tens for a 100. We have been counting up to this day every morning since the first day of school! Then, we broke into four groups with our friends from Kindergarten to begin our rotations. One group worked with me (Mr. Mason) playing a dice game using the number grid, to see how many rolls it would take to get to 100. With Miss Soa, we worked on making paper chains. Students worked individually, then joined their chains, adding them together to see if they could collectively make 100 links. With Mrs. Danielle, our little learners worked on making a fruit cereal necklace that consisted of 100 pieces of cereal. We counted, and recounted to make sure each student had 100. With Miss Lucia, students worked on building structures out of 100 plastic cups. They learned that there are many different ways to stack 100. Later in the day, we looked and presented our collections of 100 things. It was neat to see how 100 looked so different, and could be presented in so many ways. Elizabeth even used a string that was 100 inches long. There are so many ways to show 100! Before break today, we capped off our 100th day by writing about being 100 years old. We wrote about; how we would fill our days and evenings, what we would no longer be able to do, what we would eat, what we would shop for, and how it would feel to be 100 years old. Our work has been posted up the stairs in the main office. I encourage you to pop up there and see the amazing writing your little ones have done! Looking forward to many more great days of learning together!
:) Mr. Mason
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I apologize for the delay. We finally have the internet capability for me to get some photos and info up here. Here are the highlights of our time together over the past week or so. MathMeasuring lengths across complex paths, using relation symbols to compare 2-digit weights, finding differences We have been busy introducing a number of new skills in Math this week. I love the spiralling approach that Everyday Math uses in order to introduce topics, continue to practice learned skills, and learn about a number of skills continually throughout the year. This week we used paper clips to measure different paths on a treasure map to try and find the quickest way to get to the treasure. We also explored alternative routes. We learned that not everything we measure will be a straight line. We also continued working with relationship symbols (<, >, =), looking at the weights of different animals and seeing which ones weighed more. The skill we spent the most time working on this week was finding differences. I posed the following problem,: Kya has 12 cents. David has 7 cents. Who has more money? How much more money? I used this opportunity to introduce the comparison unit box and diagram (shown in photos below), a visual way for children to quickly organize their thinking. Then we discussed the following:
The children attempted writing number models to represent the problem. We discussed and displayed: 7 + _____ = 12; 12 − 7 = ___; and 12 − ____ = 7. I emphasized that while nothing is being added or taken away in the story, all of these represent the number story and can be used to solve it. It is important to use all of these so that children can see the connection between addition and subtraction number models. We repeated this activity several times, becoming more comfortable using the comparison diagram. Then we tried some of these questions on our own in our Math journal. After this, we played the difference game; I love learning through play! - I have attached the directions below if you would like to play at home. Language ArtsSoft and Hard g and c This week we have been focusing on the very tricky concept of reading, and sorting soft and hard g and c words. We learned through songs and games the rules to follow in order to decipher if a c makes the /s/ sound or the /c/ sound and if a g makes a /j/ sound or a /g/ sound. We used our 'Words Their Way' program to sort initial hard and soft g and c words. This sort had several steps, so we allowed extra-time throughout the week to do it. First we read over the words and talked about some of the unfamiliar ones. We then sorted the words by beginning letter (g or c). Then we read all the words in the c column and asked the students what they noticed about the sound of the words spelled with c at the beginning. We explained that these sounds are called hard c and soft c and introduced the headers (hard and soft). This sort has been sent home today for you to have your child show you. Students then began to sort by hard and soft c and g. After sorting them by their sound, we noticed that the vowel after the c or the g had a pattern. If the c or g was followed by e, i, or y, they made the soft sound. If it was followed by a, o, or u, they made the hard sound. We used the charts below, and a song to help us remember this rule. We spent the rest of the week sorting these words in different ways, checking, reflecting, and writing sentences with them. Sun, wind and clouds After learning about the energy of the sun during our first week of this weather unit of inquiry, I got in touch with the Association pour le Développement de l'Energie Solaire Suisse - (ADES). They sent some of their Amazing staff to teach us about the power of solar energy and the importance in using it for conservation. As a result of this amazing presentation, we bought a solar oven (50,000 AR) and will be using it to make cupcakes for a bake sale on Valentines day. We will use the money collected from the bake sale to buy solar ovens for those in need in the south. We decided that before our bake sale, we needed to try out our solar oven. We used it to make cupcakes for the custodians for custodian appreciation day on Wednesday. Thank you to Silvia Gaya and Melinda Manning for their contribution of baked goods as well. The custodians really appreciated it! After a quick, week long inquiry cycle on the sun, we moved onto one about wind. We broke into three centres and spent a few days doing different activities with Frances, Miss Soa and myself. Students tinkered with Frances in order to make a wind chime. We learned that wind chimes help us hear wind. They are loud when the wind is strong, or quiet/silent when the wind is calm. Students worked with Miss Soa to learn that winds can be strong of soft and move in many directions. They first tried blowing different objects with their mouths and with a straw to see if they could get them to move. They also did an experiment where they dropped a feather off of our balcony to see the different ways that wind can move. With me, students learned about hurricanes. We read a Gail Gibbons book and learned about the different classifications of hurricanes. After this, we did an experiment to learn about the eye of the hurricane and how clouds move within a hurricane. We also learned about tornados and how they are created. Frances first taught us a lesson about hot and cold fronts. She used a ballon, a water bottle, boiling water and ice to show us how hot air is thin and rises, and how cold air is dense, and heavy. She used this experiment to show us what happens when warm fronts and cold fronts meet. This led us into a tornado inquiry. This week we inquired about clouds. We read books about clouds, watched videos about clouds, talked about the different types of clouds and their features, sang songs about them, and went outside to scope out the clouds around our school. This exploration will continue next week as we learn about precipitation and the water cycle. |
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March 2017
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