MathLast week we looked at solving subtraction stories. This week explored subtraction by knocking over cups. I began by placing 10 cups standing on top of each other. The children were told that they would knock over some of the cups and figure out how many cups were still standing. We had a blast knocking over cups. Then the children shared solution strategies that lead to their accurate counts. Some described drawing 10 cups, crossing out the 4 that were knocked over and counting the remaining cups. We then used the change-to-less diagram to summarize what took place. This diagram can help children organize their thinking when dealing with "taking from" situations, like Cup-Drop Subtraction.
The next day, we reviewed the change diagrams from the past two lessons. The children were told that today they would learn how to use symbols to explain what is happening to the numbers in the change diagrams. We learnt that in mathematics, the symbol + stands for the word add and + is read plus The symbol = is read is equal to. It was explained that 7 + 3 = 10 is called a number model, or number sentence. We discussed the meaning of each symbol as we related it back to the context of the penny-drop activity being modelled. It was explained that the total on the left side of the equal sign has the same value as the total on the right side of the equal sign. Students then worked with partners to do a penny drop addition using number models. They were encouraged to use the Strategy Wall to find the sum. They were then asked to record their number models on their slates. To practice using number models, we used objects to tell number stories. I think that number stories are important for several reasons. People like to tell stories. We tell stories about mathematics, about mathematicians, and about doing mathematics. We do this firstly because we enjoy it. We do it secondly because the students like it. And we do it thirdly because I believe that it is an effective instructional tool in the teaching of mathematics. I am not alone in this. There is ample literature to support the enjoyment of storytelling on the part of both the story teller and the story listener. There is also an abundance of anecdotal data that suggest “telling a story creates more vivid, powerful and memorable images in a listener’s mind than does any other means of delivery of the same material” (Haven, 2000, p. xvii). Aside from the educational value, however, there is also beauty. There is beauty in a story well told, and there is beauty of a story that can move a listener to think, to imagine, and to learn. We will be using number stories throughout the year to work on language, problem solving, and seeing math in real-life stories. Have your child use objects at home to tell you math stories that involve adding to, and taking away from. Language ArtsOur phonics focus this week was on r-controlled vowels, or bossy r as we like to call it in first grade. When a vowel is followed by an r, the r changes the sound that the vowel makes. The vowel is called an r-controlled vowel. We refer to the “r” as the “bossy r” because the r “bosses” the vowel to make a new sound. When “a” is followed by r, it makes the sound you hear in “bar” or “car”. When “o” is followed by the r, it makes the sound you hear in the word “corn”. “ir”, “ur” and “er” make the same sound /er/ as in the words “bird”, “fur” and “her”. It is important to teach students to recognize and practice words containing r-controlled vowels.. Because there are so many variations, students need to become familiar with the look of familiar words, rather than memorizing spelling or pronunciation rules. We played several games this week to practice this skill. shown above is a bossy r 'connect 4' game, that required students to properly read bossy r words, and look for line patterns. On Wednesday, we received a "package" from the /er/, /ir/, and /ur/ super triplets! They sent us a letter, pictures of themselves, super fun hats, and word cards, The letter explained that if we wanted to become a super heroes with our friends, we would have to sort and identify the r-controlled vowel words. We had to practice with our friends first, who got to wear these super cool hats and be our supER leadERs! We then ran a relay race where students sorted their words in groups, and had to bring them to the super triplet to see if they had sorted them correctly. We also rotated through a number of centres playing games to reinforce this concept. We have been using game based lessons to teach, practice and apply new skills and knowledge. The academic results and progression in Phonics as a result of our game based approach has been truly amazing. If you would like to borrow some of these games to play at home. Please come see me. During our Daily 5 time this week, we unlocked a new activity; Work on Writing. Students leant about the many different things that writers write. This week students chose to write letters to spread kindness to members of the school community. This activity, however is based on choice. Very soon, the children will be choosing what they will be writing. Unit of InquiryThis week, we finished our unit of inquiry. We spread kindness all over campus, decorating Dr. Aina's door, Miss Lalaina's desk, making cards, and putting a poster in the cafeteria that outlines how other students can spread kindness. We also reflected on our entire unit of inquiry, and made sure that all of our questions from the beginning of the unit had been answered. It was great for students to take a full look at the inquiry cycle and see how we moved from the "known" to the "new." At the end of the week, we looked at all of our teaching resources for the next unit of inquiry. As students passed them around, I started to hear "oh, now I know what a 'life cycle' is." Students then wrote and illustrated what they think a life cycle is, and what they know about them. Other Exciting NewsThis week, our amazing elementary principal Mr. Vis went out and purchased carpets and bulletin boards for our classrooms. The environment is brighter, quieter, and more organized. I am so happy with the new feel of our room. It is amazing how a few little things can make a big difference. Elementary student council also began this week. This is a great leadership opportunity for our little learners. Nina and Seoyeong are our first two student council reps, but many students will rotate through as the year progresses. Our new playground equipment arrived! All learning; social, emotional, motor and cognitive, is accelerated, facilitated, and fuelled by the pleasure of play. I am so excited about all of the amazing things that students will learn and do on this equipment. The ASA had a guest speaker, Norah Mishanec, in this week. "Nora is from New York State. She is currently living here as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She always liked bugs and as a kid she raised butterflies in her backyard. She started beekeeping six years ago and she thinks honeybees are the coolest. She was an exchange student in France her junior year of high school. She always liked studying English and French in school but when she got to college she discovered a love for science and majored in psychology and biology. After attending Wellesley College she won a scholarship to study edible insects in Latin America and Asia. She's eaten over 80 species of insects." Having Norah in to talk about insects was a perfect provocation for our new unit on life cycles, where we will be exploring the life cycles of insects, plants, and animals. The kids loved it! Thanks for another amazing week!
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MathThis week in Math, we worked on writing and solving addition and subtraction stories. We learned how to use the Change to More diagram to organize our thinking. This diagram can help children organize their thinking when working with "adding to" situations. We used penny drops to demonstrate this. I dropped pennies into a can, and we used them to add more.
We found out that another way to say 3 more is to say add 3. We repeated this using different numbers. After working on this together, children worked in partnerships to solve penny-drop mysteries. I explained that they will determine what information is missing. Secretly hiding 6 pennies in the can, I posed the following problem: I have some pennies in this can. I am going to add 2 more pennies. (Dropping in the 2 pennies.) Then we counted the total pennies in the can as a class. There are now 8 pennies in the can. How many pennies were in the can to start? Partners were invited to share their strategies, which included the following:
We then used the change-to-more diagram to help the children make sense of the problem. After putting the known quantities in the diagram, we used a question mark (?) in place of the missing quantity, in this case, the "Start." We repeated this activity with other pairs of numbers with sums within 10, varying the placement of the unknown. I encourage you to practice this at home. This week, I tried to bring our Math classroom outside as much as I could. The concept of the Outdoor Classroom is built upon the premise that children are complex beings. To nurture the whole child, education needs to follow the fundamental principle that children are learning everywhere and all the time. Experience in the field and child development research alike are showing that all children need and benefit from more time outdoors; it is critical for their health, self-concept, and future school success. The optimal learning and growing environment for young children is composed of a full integration of indoor and outdoor spaces. The Outdoor Classroom enhances and adds to the limited scope of activities available inside confined classrooms by providing for hands-on experiences, physical activity, social-emotional growth through peer interaction, and multifaceted approaches to cognitive development that connect children to nature and maximize their learning outcomes. Pictured above is the class playing a game called 'hops.' This game reinforces addition and subtraction concepts. Ask your child to teach you how to play at home. This week we stopped some of our regular Math programming, because I was noticing that many students were struggling with skip counting. A necessary skill moving forward with our mathematics. Skip counting is an important part of early numeracy as it is a basic skill used in many different practices. Children use skip counting for basic tasks such as telling the time or dealing with money. Skip counting is also essential as it lays a mathematical foundation for developing a students ability on other mathematical skills. Counting forwards and backwards in ones, or even in twos, fives and other multiples, are strategies that may be used to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems. Learning this skill in the early numeracy classroom is therefore essential to allow for positive and effective future mathematical experiences. Skip counting is important not only because these mathematical activities and skills are developed and used in the classroom, but they are also a basic skill students can apply in life outside school. Activities such as sport, shopping or even counting large quantities are made easier by acquiring the ability to skip count. Some students, particularly those who play sport, may not even realize they are skip counting when scoring for games such as basketball, football or netball. Next week, we will move back to telling, writing, and solving addition and subtraction stories with missing addends. Language ArtsThis week in Language Arts, we took a MAP test. MAP, or the Measure of Academic Progress, is a computerized adaptive test which helps teachers, and administrators improve learning for all students and make informed decisions to promote a child's academic growth. With that in mind, this was our first test. Data from MAP helps us improve more when collected over time to look for trends in data. Your child's map scores will be shared with you in second grade.
Unit of InquiryThis week, many classes were beginning to wrap up their units of inquiry. We were so lucky to be invited to Mrs. Jennifer's second grade class for them to present out their learning from their unit of inquiry. Advocacy is one of the 4 types of action that can be used in the PYP. Through this approach to action, students create awareness on a topic. The grade 2 students did a phenomenal job presenting and teaching us about healthy eating. We then got to be risk-takers, by trying something new. It was a great way for us to learn about presentation skills. Authentic Inquiry - Our New Playground This week we arrived to school to see that the playground had been covered up. Students rushed to my room with so many questions. If you haven't realized yet, I LOVE QUESTIONS! We wrote our inquiries down, peeked out at the equipment, and made several predictions about what will be built for us. We are excited to see the construction of our amazing new playground equipment. Taking Action - The End of our Unit of Inquiry Our unit of inquiry on getting along is coming to an end. On Monday morning, Angele brought me in a flower, and I discussed how her small act of kindness could grow as I 'pay it forward.' This led to us deciding that if we did 50 acts of kindness, and each were paid forward that we would create 100 kind acts, and then talked about the spread of this to 200. We got to work and made a list of some of the kind things we could do at school. Gabrielle, mentioned that we could divide into groups to get the work done, and so we started a pile of student initiated actions that incorporated Math, literacy and science. One of the actions that we came up with was baking cooking for the custodians. We found a great (easy) peanut butter cookie recipe, and recruited Mr. Joe, our design teacher to help us. He told us that he works in the 'makers space' and that baking is another form of making and designing. We learned how to measure (math), look at temperature (math), follow directions (reading), and mix ingredients (science), We made delicious cookies and then spread the kindness to our custodians, in hopes that they would pay it forward and create a ripple. We remembered what we learned about bucket filling at the start of the year. When we fill someone else's bucket, we fill our own too. Giving away the cookies made us feel great inside. We also spent time working on several other action projects to spread kindness around the school. Students worked in groups to get along, Again, good inquiry integrates Math, Literacy, Technology, and Science, and this week our projects certainly did. Students are in the process of decorating Dr. Aina's door, providing a list of kind acts for students in the school to try, making a school welcome sign for the front of Miss Lalaina's desk, writing a thank you card to the cafeteria staff, and drawing/framing a picture for Mr. Reilly. In the PYP, action is supposed to be student-led and teachers are there to inform students as a mentor or guide. This was hard for me when I first started teaching in the baccalaureate system. But now I see the amazing ways that students drive their own learning. I am so proud of how these projects have come along.
MathIn Math this week, we worked on composing and decomposing 10. Decomposing numbers means to break down numbers into their sub-parts. Common Core standards has students decomposing numbers in two ways. The first is to decompose numbers into their tens and ones (focus on numbers 11-19) and the second is to show how any number 1-10 can be created using a variety of addends. Why do we expect our little learners to compose and decompose numbers? Let’s look long term. The simple answer is because there is value in students being able to see the groupings, relationships and patterns in numbers. We are laying the foundation for students to be able to eventually solve 53+12 and see that they can manipulate it: 50+15 or 60+5 or 50+10+3+2 or any other variety of ways to see the quantity as it makes sense to them. This is part of the fluency part of numbersense that we talked about on the parent evening. Now that’s the bigger picture and carries us into older grade level Common Core standards… Bringing it back down to our level, we are working on understanding that numbers 1-10 can be grouped in different ways to make 10.. Seeing numbers broken down into a pattern of their groupings of tens and then the addition of some ones makes these numbers palatable and simple. Learning how to compose and decompose numbers this way gives students a “visual” [especially when representing with ten frames} to what 6, 16 or 67 really looks like and is. We started by using 10 frames to play top it. By looking at the numbers represented in the frames, and the missing numbers or spaces, students were able to get a visual of the numbers that compose 10. I sent a copy of this game home for each of you to play with your children this weekend. Penny Plate As we continued to decompose numbers within 10, we played a game of penny plate. This game required students to visualize, count on, and become fluent with missing addends that make 10. While written statements like 6 + x = 10 are difficult to digest, this concrete example of solving missing addend problems was a great way for our students to become fluent in composing and decomposing numbers to 10. Instructions below. Explorations Mid-week, we broke into focus groups so that Mrs. Mbola and I could gain more 1:1 time with students and focus on developing math concepts. Students rotated through three exploration stations. Exploration A: Subtraction BINGO Students played a game where they had to take away, or subtract, one number from the other to find the difference. Students were told that they should subtract the smaller number from the larger number to find the difference. Mrs. Mbola observed what strategies the children used to find the differences and who was subtracting accurately, while discussing the differences that were easier and harder to calculate. Exploration B: Picking 10 Apples Children used ten frames and counters to find all possible combinations of 10 red and green apples. Throughout the activity, they were reminded that the counters represented apples and the ten frame represented a basket. Questions with multiple solutions, such as this one, provide excellent problem-solving opportunities. We took a closer look at this again later in the week where students were given the opportunity to try this independently. Exploration C: Counting Our Classroom In this Exploration, children used tally charts to model data they collected about the number of desks, shoes, and chairs in their classroom. They then used their data to answer questions. Open Response The children were asked to recall the Picking 10 Apples exploration, in which they found different ways to make 10 apples with red and green apples. Volunteers shared the pairs they found. We also looked at patterns found in our tables from earlier in the week, re-discussing turn around facts. Students were reminded that looking for patterns can sometimes help determine if things are missing. They were encouraged to look for patterns in their table and talk about them with a partner. They were to decide if all the pairs were listed. After this, students worked independently with red and green counters and 10 frames to make a list of all of the possible combinations that make 10 High Roller On Thursday, Carlee, our school counsellor came in to see how we were getting along when playing math games. Students learned how to play the game High Roller. High Roller makes use of counting on and the turn-around rule. Players played in partners. While Carlee observed social skills, I observed which children count on to add and who is applying counting on consistently and accurately. I also observed who was using the turn around rule to count on from the bigger number. Language ArtsThis week we 'unlocked' the next level of our Daily 5 program - Read to Someone. Of all the choices children participate in, Read to Someone is often their favourite. Reading with someone helps readers, especially developing readers. It increases areas of comprehension, accuracy, fluency and prosidy. It also increases reading involvement, attention and collaboration. What's more, children love partner reading and readily participate with books of their choosing. We also took a close look at vowel teams and dipthongs this week. Of all the syllable types to teach, Vowels Teams can be the most challenging for students to master. The main reason is that there are so many variations of this syllable type. There are approximately 32 vowel teams. So for this reason alone more time has to be given to teaching Vowel Teams. Up to this point students have only had to learn one basic way of spelling long vowels and that was the Vowel-Consonant-e pattern (magic e). Now all of a sudden 32 Vowel Teams appear before them, and students can feel overwhelmed. The best way to alleviate students feeling overwhelmed is to teach the most commonly used Vowel Teams and give the students activities where they can sort out the various spelling patterns by visually seeing the differences. We did this through several phonics games and sorts this week. After repetitive practice with word sorts and games, students will begin to memorize what words are spelled with what letter combinations. We will be doing this far more often once we 'unlock' the word work section of our Daily 5 program, and begin to use the Words Their Way program. You can find information on this word study program in the resource section of our website. Unit of InquiryThis week during our UOI, we talked about emotions and feelings and how we have to know them, and ourselves in order to get along with others. Many classrooms have reflection centers (formerly time out) and they are primary used as a place that children can go and reflect on the behaviour that has already happened. Reflection centers are very helpful, however, I believe it's important to have a place in the room that is preventative in nature... Enter 'Chill Ville.' As teachers, it is important to teach children productive and healthy ways to deal with emotions such as anger, sadness or frustration. By teaching students different tools they can use to deal with these emotions in a healthy way, we are helping the child, and eliminating a potential disruption to the learning environment. The first step in doing this is being proactive and ready for a child who needs some additional help calming down within the classroom. I did this by introducing Chill Ville. We talked about times when we’re too sad or upset to think. We also read 'When Sophie Gets Angry.' I told the students that everyone feels that way sometimes and that by taking some time alone, we can help ourselves feel better. Then, when we feel better, we will make better decisions about taking care of ourselves and others. Talk to your child about Chill Ville, and the strategies that he/she now knows to feel better. "Say Sorry!" "Say it like you mean it" These are the repetitious grumbles I used to say to students before learning more about effective apologies, and the importance of explicitly teaching how to apologize. As a teacher (or as a parent), when we elicit an apology, we feel like we did something about a situation, and have then 'closed the case.' Often, however, we know that the offended still feels bitter, because the apology was not sincere. And while it may seem like the offender got off easy– not even having to show proper remorse or use a sincere tone– this child is actually the one who loses out the most. He/she not only learns a poor lesson that they can get away with lies and empty words, but does not have the opportunity to experience true reconciliation and restoration of relationships. These children will probably continue inflicting similar offenses, feel less remorse than they should, and undergo less positive character change than they could have. While this method may not always elicit a sincere apology, it makes students think about their acts, and preventative solutions for the future. Here is the format: I’m sorry for… This is wrong because… In the future, I will… Will you forgive me? After writing out these prompts, and having Imran read us a book called 'Sorry,' I talked with the children about apologizing properly. We went over the importance of tone of voice and body language; when I used my brattiest voice and spat out, “Well FINE then, SOR-RY!” they all laughed, because the insincerity was so obvious and the scene so familiar. I demonstrated the importance of body language, crossing my arms and rolling my eyes to the side as I mumbled, “Sorry.” When I asked if it seemed like I meant it, they all gleefully cried out “NOOOO!!!” in unison. I did a few more impressions of pathetic “sorries,” and then we got down to business. I shared with them that apologies were pointless and meaningless if people didn’t feel like the offender meant it, and if the offender didn’t actually plan to change in the future. Then I went over the prompts and we used puppets to practice giving sincere apologies. As a teacher, I know that asking for forgiveness puts the offender in an uncomfortable and vulnerable place of humility. However, this seemingly obvious yet widely underused phrase is very, very powerful for both the offender and the offended. It is the key to reconciliation and often the first step in restoring friendship. I also know that the second item, “This is wrong because…” is powerful in changing the longer-term behaviour of the offending child. Forcing the child to put themselves in another’s shoes will increase empathy and help them understand better how they have hurt someone else. This exercise in trying to see themselves from someone else’s perspective can be very powerful. I encourage you to use the 4 part apology prompts at home to elicit apologies to brothers, sisters, friends, or parents. After talking about feelings, empathy, and apologies, I wanted to redirect our learning back to being kind. We read the book 'The Jelly Donut Difference." This book is too cute! It is all about Leah and Dexter, two siblings that can't seem to get along! With a little help from a neighbour and some special donuts, the siblings learn what is really important in life and learn to spread kindness and smiles! After we read The Jelly Donut Difference we brainstormed ways that we can sprinkle kindness as a class! We then independently wrote about how we can sprinkle kindness and enjoyed our very own sprinkle donut! Our sprinkling kindness lesson snowballed this week and got bigger based on student inquiries. We found out that a single act of being kind creates ripples of kindness that are carried out into our world. Building on that conversation about being kind, I wanted to do an object lesson about acts of kindness, to have another conversation about how little acts of kindness can make a difference. Do small things really create movement? If our world was, in fact, water in a bucket, and if each act of kindness was something we dropped in the water, what would happen. We came up with two questions: Our first question: If small acts of kindness create ripples, can there be an act of kindness that is too small to create ripples? Our second question: Can many small acts of kindness together create as many ripples as a large one? We grabbed all the small things we could think of trying to test the theory and answer our questions. We learned how even the smallest object can create ripples. We also used our toy dinosaur to create big ripples. We, then, talked about whether all the little things, together, could make as many ripples as the single big dinosaur did. So, we tried it, putting in a pinch of each of the items.You could see the connections being made in their heads. "So, do you think that we can help others by doing little things as well as with big things?" a student asked. "Yes!" they all responded Even a grain of salt causes ripples in the water. We watched the videos below, and I am predicting that we are going to see some student action based on spreading kindness in the very near future as we begin to wrap up this unit of inquiry.
Design/TechOver the last few weeks, Mr. Joe and I have been giving students problems, and having them work through the design cycle to solve them. While this was a great way for students to begin to understand the design cycle, it was leaving out one of the most important parts, identifying problems in our lives and the world around us.
This week, Mr. Joe, asked students to find a problem in the makers space and design a solution. While asking them this, many of them couldn't hear him because of the noisy stools. The students realized that a huge problem to be solved is the noise in the space. With some help from Mr. Joe, the students got down to making a plan and designing a prototype to fix this. I was so impressed by seeing such a great and simple example of promoting design thinking and action (I am learning so much from Joe this year!). Our little learners will be identifying which design is best based on materials, ease, labour and other factors, and fixing this problem for all students who use the makers space. I am so proud of them! MathThis week in Math, we looked at bigger numbers, addition and decomposing numbers. We began by looking at a number grid. First, we recalled some of the ways that we have used the number line in earlier lessons. After that, we looked at the number grid, I explained that it may be more helpful than the number line when working with large numbers. Students were invited to compare the number grid to the number line. They said that they count up and count back by making "hops" on the number grid, similar to how they made hops on the number line. After making some connections, we played a game called Rolling for 50 to provide practice navigating a number grid. We connected the game board and the Number-Grid poster by colouring the return sweeps on their game boards. Counting on the number grid builds the foundation for children to relate counting to addition and subtraction, as children learn to count up and back from various start numbers to reach new numbers. To continue laying the foundation for relating counting to addition and subtraction the children used a number grid starting on one number and then counting up or back a given number of hops to land on another number.: We began with counting up by 1s.
The students were then prompted to count up and back by 10s. These problems encouraged children to think carefully about how they could use the structure of the number grid to help them. We learned that we could move up (or down) 10 hops by moving directly up (or down) one row. This week we also looked at counting on as an addition strategy. Most children begin solving addition problems using counters, fingers, or drawings as models and then count all to find the total. During first grade, they develop the ability to count on; that is, they start with one of the numbers being added and count on the remaining quantity from that number. This demonstrates a solid understanding of the counting sequence and helps in developing more efficient computation strategies. We played a game called Roll and Total that uses one numeral die and one dot die. This encourages children to start with the numeral die and count on the number of dots, thus moving beyond counting all to find sums. Another addition strategy we looked at this week was the "turn around rule." Students learned that the turn-around rule can sometimes be useful in solving addition problems, meaning that if the numbers seem too hard to add, children can turn around the numbers and try to add them the new way. We also learned about number bonds to 10, and how we can use turn around facts to find them all. Students were asked to name and draw things that come in pairs. We discussed how a pair is made up of two parts that go together. The children were told that they would be finding pairs of numbers that add to 10 while doing Two-Fisted Penny Addition. Each child was asked to take out 10 pennies. The children were asked to grab some pennies with one hand and pick up the rest with the other hand. The volunteers identified the number of pennies in each hand by saying: "I have _____ pennies in one hand and _____ pennies in the other hand." This language reinforces the idea that each number is a count of objects. The students then completed this activity in partnerships, recording on their slates the number of pennies in each hand. Language ArtsLast year, I came across a really engaging way to teach "plot" to students. Pixar short films! They're cute, exciting, dramatic, and, most of all, can encapsulate a mature story arc in a mere matter of minutes. I also love that there are no words. This makes things great for ELL students, but also encourages our native students (and all students) to make inferences or work on characterization. These videos do an amazing job of helping me as a teacher, isolate the story element that we are focusing on. This week, we watched one a day, and mapped our each story discussing characters, setting, problem and solution. This week our phonics focus has been on identifying short and long vowel sounds. When students learn that vowels can make short and long sounds, they immediately build their decoding skills. Vowels are the building blocks of words. By practicing to understand and hear vowels properly, students will also improve:
I have found that by focusing on the sounds of all the letters–the vowels and consonants–and by practicing our use of sound regularly, my students improve rapidly in their general English ability. These lessons also help native English students better navigate letter sound patterns. Unit of InquiryThis week our Getting Along unit of inquiry focused on the topic of bullying. Did you know that each year over 3.2 million students are victims of bullying. By age 14 less than 30% of boys and 40% of girls will talk to peers about bullying. Approximately 160,000 teens skip school every day because of bullying. 17% of students in the USA report being bullied two or three times a month or more. I find that these are alarming statistics and that bullying is preventable . Talking to children about tough topics such as bullying can be very difficult so I used the book 'The Bully and the Shrimp' to help us talk about bullying, what we can do about bullying, and more. . In the book, 'The Bully and the Shrimp,' Noah Shrimpton who is small for his age moves to a new school. At this new school the class bully starts to pick on him. Noah starts a journal to express himself and begins drawing scenarios where he beats the bully! Throughout this book Noah makes friends, gains confidence, and stands up to the bully! This picture book deals with the issue of bullying in a way that is easy for children to relate to. We discussed the following questions:
If you would like to follow up with your child at home on this issue, here are some things you can talk about
Verbal bullying is something that we talked about a lot this week. One way we talked about it was through a lesson by Character Education Partnership. This lesson, called “Wrinkle on my Heart,” teaches about empathy, taking responsibility for mistakes when they happen, learning from them, and thinking before you speak/act. It’s very simple, but effective. Students folded their paper hearts for every mean thing that had been said to them. We then unfolded them, and tried to straighten out the creases. With that said, their hearts never looked new again. We now have them displayed in our class with the following rhyme to remind us that words can hurt. Before you speak, think and be smart, it's hard to fix a wrinkled heart. Maria Dismondy wrote a wonderful story called 'Spaghetti in a Hotdog Bun,' to show and teach children how important it is to have the courage to be different and to forgive others when they can’t understand this wonderful gift. As the story begins, Lucy is a beautiful, little Italian girl who lives alone with her Papa Gino and loves to eat spaghetti in a hot dog bun each day for lunch. However, a lonely and grumpy classmate, Ralph, uses Lucy’s differences as a way to daily torment her until a defining moment occurs in which Lucy chooses courage and forgiveness over revenge. This is a great story again about verbal bullying, and 'payback.' We seem to have an eye-for-an-eye mentality in our class, that I am desperately trying to change. After reading the story, we completed a cut and paste venne diagram activity, where students had to discuss what things and activities that they have/like and see what made them the same and what made them different. We learned that if everyone was the same, life would be boring. We also learned that we can be friends despite our differences. Our last activity about verbal bullying focused on how our thoughts are private, but that our words and behaviour is public. We talked about how we can think whatever we want to think, but the minute that we let your thoughts out of your head through our words or your actions, they become public information. A great visual to explain this was the Toothpaste Squirt. Students took turns squirting toothpaste into a bucket. When they were finished squirting it out, they were asked to put it all back into the tube. After trying for several minutes, and making quite the mess, we learned that this was very tricky to do. We talked about how once the toothpaste comes out of the tube, we cannot get it all back in. This is much like an insult or mean comment. Once a put-down comes out of someones mouth and goes into ears, it cannot be taken back. We went on to learn that for each put-down a human hears, they must hear 10 pull-ups (or sincere compliments) to get back to where they were emotionally prior to the put down. (i.e. if a child gets 3 put downs in one day, he must get 30 compliments to get back to where he was…30!) When we were finished, I reiterated that thoughts are private, but behaviour is public and the next time you think about giving a put down, think again and screw your lid to your toothpaste tube on tight! We concluded by coming up with some nice words to say to each other. Tech IntegrationThis week, Mr. Joe integrated tech into our unit of inquiry by having us get along in pairs to build a boat that could hold the most dice out of tin foil. We went back through the design cycle, and used our growth mindsets to improve our designs and make them better. One boat held over 100 dice! I was so impressed by our little engineers being so up to this design challenge.
MathThis week we started to look at organizing, and categorizing data. First grade students love this, and do it all the time. The students were told that they would be learning a new way to represent, or stand for, their counting, and that was by using tally marks. Students looked at cards with a number of different animals on them, and were asked to discuss similarities and differences among the animals. They used differences between the animals to sort the animals into groups of their choice and shared how they decided to sort them. After that, they sorted the animals into two categories: those that have wings and those that do not have wings. We talked about what a T-chart is and how we used it to organize our sort, giving it a title, labelling rows, and using tally marks. Students then sorted the animals in many other ways, and represented their data in charts using tallies. Continuing with tallies, we looked at all of the data we could collect about ourselves and the class. We tallied bottoms people were wearing (skirts, pants, shorts), girls and boys, favourite things, and even what we were sitting on (shown above). When we finished collecting data, the children counted the tally marks in each row aloud and wrote the total for that row. We learned to always count the 5s first and then the 1s. This was great practice for counting by 5s and counting on. Please check to see if your child has acquired this skill by collecting data at home using tallies and then counting them. Later in the week we played the game rock, paper, scissors, and used tally marks to represent the results. This led to a wonderful discussion on probability or liklihood. Our little learners played several rounds. After each round, the students made a tally mark in the tally chart to indicate the winning gesture or a tie. This was a great opportunity for me to observe:
At the end of the week, we looked at number stories and strategies for solving math problems. It was explained to the students that lots of everyday problems and stories involve numbers and have questions they can answer with math. We looked at several problems (above), and had the children think about each problem and solve them using any strategy they like. Strategies included using counters, drawing pictures, using a number line, counting on, using their fingers, using the number grid, and mental math. We learned that there are many ways to come up with answers to math problems, and that different ways work better for different people. We also talked about the importance of labelling our answers with appropriate units. Students were guided to understand why certain strategies did not yield the correct answer. It is just as important to understand why certain strategies do not work as it is to find and use strategies that do work. Students then partnered up and used pennies to tell and solve their own number stories - Here are some examples:
Pictured above is Tiffany leading our 100 stretch. Every day we move our bodies and count to 100 in different ways. Language ArtsFor the last two weeks we have been looking at story elements. This week we looked at characters and setting. In first grade students need to do more than just identify characters, but also understand them through making inferences and thinking critically about what they read. As these are two huge standards that we look at all year long, I like to start at the beginning of the year by teaching students how to analyze characters. I like to start with a short simple book called “No, David!” because the kids don’t get lost in the story or zone out while reading. I can spark a surprisingly rich discussion about a simple character like David. Is he bad? Is he good? What words best describe him? I can easily begin teaching lots of great vocabulary (kindhearted, impulsive, energetic, playful, forgetful, etc.). Plus, I just love David! The stories about him also spark many good inquires related to our unit of inquiry on 'Getting Along.' I love teaching character analysis! I love looking closely at an interesting character and trying to uncover what makes them who they are. In my experience, kids love this process, too. Unfortunately, for many little learners, understanding character traits is a bit tricky. Here are three big pitfalls and what to do about them! 1. Vocabulary One of the biggest issues is simply vocabulary. Most kids are familiar with the basic emotions – sad, happy, mad. But words that describe traits, such as compassionate, driven, and selfish, are often totally new or only partially understood. I build this vocabulary by doing LOTS of read alouds with rich discussions about the characters. We list these traits on charts and in notebooks, illustrating different traits, and using that vocabulary in the day-to-day of our classroom as much as possible! 2. Outside Vs. Inside (see photo above) Another aspect that students have difficulty with is understanding the difference between what we see on the outside and what the character is like on the inside. When I ask my students to describe a character at this point in the year, I often get a description of their physical features. As a result of this, we work hard on trying to understand the difference between physical traits and personality traits (we use the words inside and outside). I encourage you to discuss this at home. Physical traits can be seen with our eyes but personality traits are trickier. We have to use what we know about the character – their actions, choices, words, thoughts, feelings and more. We must use all of those clues to draw conclusions about the personality of the character. 3. Emotions Vs. Traits Another area of confusion is the difference between emotions and character traits. Many students want to describe a character as “angry” because the character was angry at one point in the story. Or they’ll say a character is “sad” because she cried. The emotion might be correct for the situation, but when we’re talking character traits, kids need to think bigger picture. When reading at home, this is something I would like you to focus on with your children. Talk about how our emotions don't define us, and that we all get: sad, angry, happy, etc., but that isn't who we are. After working on understanding characters, we moved on to identifying the setting of a story. We have sang about it, written about it, discussed it, illustrated it, acted it out, read about it, and I think at one time I may just have rapped about it to your kids. That being said, students were still mixing up characters and setting. As a result of this, I found some cards that helped us sort characters and setting. After we sorted them together, students did a 'read the room' activity where numbered cards were displayed around the room with a picture of a character or a setting. Students were asked to find them in the room (a big game of hide-and-seek) and circle whether the picture was a character or a setting. This was a great way to assess student understanding. On Tuesday night during parent evening, one parent told me that their child comes home and says that they "played all day." It was such a compliment. This is the way I like to teach. Students had a fun time finding cards in the room ("playing"), and I was able to assess understanding. In my opinion this is a much better way for students to be assessed than a test. Unit of InquiryThis week we began to take a look at the inquiry cycle. We will be using this cycle for each unit of inquiry that we do this year. At the ASA, we use Kath Murdoch’s Inquiry Cycle. We find this inquiry cycle provides some structure to the elusive process of inquiry. When I first began teaching in the PYP I used to over think the process of planning for inquiry – when really it is just the natural stages of human curiosity! Now I have students write questions to serve as a great way to structure the process of inquiry with the students, instead of for the students. We then use the cycle to help scaffold and guide the processes that students come up with. Please take a close look at your child's question(s) above. Our UOI focus this week was on communication because of a student question on how to communicate with people who speak other languages, and how can I be a better communicator. We looked at physical and oral communication, clarification, and manners revolving around communicating. We began by reading 'My Mouth Is A Volcano.' This book presents the opportunity for great character development discussions, such as respect and taking turns. As we know, a class that respects each other allows for much greater and effective peer collaboration and conversation. Students learned about waiting their turn to speak and how to be good listeners. We also learned about how to be effective oral communicators by sitting back to back with a parter and trying to explain how to build the same tower without looking. This was a great exercise on asking clarifying questions when we don't understand something. Our oral communication inquiry continued by going outside with a partner and a blindfold. Students were required to get their partner through an obstacle course blindfolded. They needed to rely on their communication skills and teamwork. We learned how this is more difficult when someone doesn't speak the same language as us. We also learned about how we can modify our directions for learners who are new to English. Our biggest task when it came to getting along this week was the building of our Rube Goldberg Machines. Students had to work together, communicate, solve problems, and resolve conflicts, in order to create a working machine to drop a marble into a cup. With the help of Mr. Joe, we learned how to engineer these machines and work through the design cycle. We also enlisted the help of Mr. Joe's wife, Mrs. Carlee, our school counsellor, to come in and talk about conflict resolution strategies for when we have a problem with a friend. She taught us the ABCD method. To see a video of your child's Rube Goldberg Machine in action click on their photo below. What a great week!
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March 2018
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