Zero the Hero

     As most of you have probably heard, on every 10th day of school we get a visitor- Zero the Hero! He is always in a hurry so he drops off a note for us and even leaves us a treat. Most times, he talks about how 0 is his favourite number and helps us to count by 10's. He also teaches us about place value (ones house, tens house, and hundreds house). Today was our 50th day of school so he dropped off a note telling us that we needed to get two dice and create our own addition sentences. He also left us a treat that was shaped like a zero. Today our treat was festive coloured mini eggs! In previous visits, he has left us cookies, chocolates, and other candies all shaped like the number zero. It is safe to say that the kids LOVE when Zero the Hero stops by and they count down the days until he comes again!

Our new sight words this week are:
put
be
has
us 
him

Here are some of us doing our math activity Zero the Hero wanted us to do.

Goal Setting

     You may have noticed in your child's agenda that we have started goal setting. I have got them to choose one goal to work on for the week. In our classroom we have a visual on the board with their name beside it. We do check- ins twice a day (morning and afternoon). At the end of the day, we reflect on our day and decide if we should circle a 1, 2 or 3.

1- need help to accomplish our goals
2- very close to accomplishing our goal
3- accomplished our goal

     I am hoping that students will view this as something to strive for and improve on throughout the week. If they do not, we will reflect on their goal and talk about if they need a new goal or should keep trying to reach their current one.

    If you have any questions about your child's goal please feel free to email me, send me a note or give me a call. We will also be sending these home every day. I ask that you please initial or sign under each day so I know that you have seen it.

Thank you!

Sight Words:

for
day
was
sat
yes

Interviews

      This week we have started learning about interviews. We have discussed what an interview is, who may get interviewed and why we might want to interview someone. We are doing this not only get to know our families (the paper we sent home) but we are getting to know our classmates. We are wanting to find out "what makes us unique?" and "what are some similarities and differences between people/our classmates?".  
     We are starting this process by getting one person from our class to sit up in front of the class while we interview them. We have brainstormed some questions that they can ask to get to know them better. Some questions may be: "what is your favourite sport to play?" and/or "do you have any siblings?". Once we get our answer, we all take turns coming up to our chart paper and writing down the answers. This helps students to recognize what a sentence is, how to start a sentence (capital letter), sound out unfamiliar words/using words that we have already learned, and other reading/writing strategies. It is a longer process but eventually we will interview all of our friends and make a book for us to read! Here is a snapshot of what our interviews look like. 

      

     Don't forget to come tomorrow morning at 8:00 for a Mug and a Muffin. We have been working hard on some goal"selfies", spine poems and other fun things in our classroom that we would love to show off!

 Reminders

1. Book orders are due tomorrow Oct. 23/15.

2. At home interviews are also due tomorrow.

3. Mug and a Muffin.

4. Please read and do word work activities with you child at home. I know you are all very busy but it is proven that if work is done at school AND at home students are much more successful! :) 

Thank you!!

Catch up!

          I am very sorry that I have not updated the blog in a while but get ready because I am going to fill you in on everything!

1.
    At our Terry Fox assembly we revealed our grand total of money raised from our school. Our goal was $2500.00 and we got to just over "$2600.00! As an incentive for the students, we told them if we got to our goal we would do something CRAZY. So we pulled some crazy ideas out of a box and getting a pie in the face was the winner. We had some brace teachers come up and the students that raised the most got to pie teachers in the face. The brave souls were Ms. Corson, Mrs. Hall, Mr. Jordan, Mr. McDowell, and Mr. Schendel.

Terry Fox Assembly

2.

  Our next big excitement at school was our Thanksgiving Feast. We practiced our songs a lot and I think they all had fun performing for everyone that was able to join us! Thank you to all the parents/volunteers that helped get all our food ready for the day as well as clean up after! 

3.  In our classroom we have now learned our first 25 sight words! We are moving onto the next 50 starting this up coming week. I would still encourage you all to practice reading these words, building them, using them in a sentence, etc. It will only benefit your child. We have introduce a few new word work stations as well a expanded on some of the originals. If you have any questions about how to help your child at home please feel free to send me and email or call whenever. I would love to help!

Parking Lot- these toy cars are good for not only recess but learning words too! Students have a die and the parking lot  sheet. They move however many parking stalls and then read the word as they pull in. They continue going around until it is time to move to a new station.  

Leaf Pile!-  in this game the object of the game it to try and not get the card that says "leaf pile!". If they pick up that card they have to put all the other words back into the pile. These cards have sight words we have learned as well as some words we have not. The words that the students are unfamiliar with should be easy for them to break down using some reading strategies we have learned. We have learned "Stretchy Snake", "Chunky Monkey" as well as consonant clusters/when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. These sounds could be "oo", "or", "ee", "ie" "sh", "th", etc. 

Play-Doh- We used to just spell letters and try to spell some of our first sight words and now we are writing beginner sentences! 

Practicing words using capital and lowercase letters. 

Writing Cards- we have some writing cards to help us with either writing prompts or words we may not know how to spell. Some students can use these to write sentences about Thanksgiving for example and others may just need to just practice writing the words and concentrating on how to form their letters. These two girls were sharing their cards and writing about thanksgiving and halloween in their journals. 

This student chose to writing about the weather and used the weather card to help him spell words such as sunny and rainbow. If you look closely there is the word and the picture beside it to help them visualize the word that they are trying to spell.

4.

   In math we have been using the "Power of 10" to help us with our numbers to 10 as well as numbers to 20 and higher. I was away at a workshop over a week ago and learned many interesting things that you can do with these cards such as teaching them to add, subtract, subitize, and even multiply! Right now we are playing the game "Memory" so students keep building their knowledge of what each number looks like in a ten frame. We have also played the game "War" so they have to know what number is worth more/less. Eventually we will be introducing a game similar to war but they have to flip two cards instead of one and add them together. It moves in progressions and they learn through playing games which they all seem to enjoy. It also allows me to have flexible groups so I am able to work with students they may already know a concept and teach them a new one while some students may need a little extra so we will work on it a bit more until they master it. Grade one is such a HUGE year to be learning many of their basic skills so we want to make sure they know them before we move on. 

Getting ready for a game of Memory! It also teaches them organizational skills when it is time to clean up. There are blue cards and red cards and they need to be separated before they can put them away. Each set also has a letter so they have to make sure all the letters match up. 

5. 

    More Math! We had some spiders in our classroom the other day with some numbers. I am not a big fan of spiders so I got them to find all of them for me. Some were pretty sneaky! Students had to find the hidden spiders and then write the number down on their sheet of paper. Once they found them all they filled in their ten frames with the correct number and then had to try to write a number sentence. For example: if they found the number 11, they would fill in the first ten frame and then only fill in 1 on the second. They would then write 10+1=11. Some may have got creative and given me a different number combination which was wonderful too. 

6. 

    Our most recent event happened on Friday. We had a presentation all about masks. Some students love it and others thought they were a bit scary but overall they were all engaged and interested. The presenter explained how different faces mean different moods and that our body language says  a lot about how we are feeling. He also talked about how when you are in a costume it is also like you are wearing a mask and you don't act like your "normal"self, you act in character. 

       I have now caught up on some of the events happening at school. The new sight words will be in your child's agenda. Please practice at home, you can also get your child to read some stories to you, or go on a word hunt and find the words that your child does know. Reading is also not limited to books, they can help you read/write the grocery list, cards, magazines, etc. Reading is everywhere!

Math- Numbers to 20

     In math we have been talking about numbers to ten and just started talking about our double digits/teen numbers to 20. We have also been working on subitizing (a fancy word for being able to recognize an arrangement of dots, pictures, etc.  and know how many there are within 3-5 seconds ideally). This activity also helps them to arrange images in their brain and to know if there are three dots going down and two on the side, that number should be five because 3 and 2 make 5. We are also working with two part math mats. These help us split a number into two and give us a visual of splitting the number up. eg. 2 on one side and 4 on the other would make 6. We are doing this with all of the numbers so when we get to adding and subtracting it should come easier to them! 
     Here are a couple pictures of the students working with a partner and practicing subitizing! 
   

Sight Words this we are:

and

the

on

in

up

Other reminders:
Terry Fox Run is tomorrow- send in your pledges!

Thanksgiving Feast-  Friday, Oct. 9. If you are available to help prepare, please send the bottom portion of the note that was sent home by Friday Oct. 2.

Science- Daily and Seasonal Change

      In Science we are covering the outcome "Daily and Seasonal Change". In this unit we will be learning about the days of the week, months of the year, seasons, and more! We have just started to learn about the days of the week and months of the year. We have been learning some songs and dances to go help us remember them. We also do calendar every day which helps us with the days, months and seasons so this outcome will be ongoing throughout the year. Check us out! 

     Today we had a pretty fun day. We got to go to the Atrium (this was the old staff room and has now turned into a work area). The kids thought it was pretty neat and it allows them to work in a different space which also gets them more excited to work/learn and feel at home! 

Everyone was working hard despite their poses! 

     We also had our Grade 8 buddies come and help us work a "word hunt". Students listened to their buddy and watched the words to see if they could find any of our sight words we have worked on. If they found them, they wrote them down on a sticky note (this is what was in their agenda today). This is an activity you can do at home with a sticky note or you could find some hi-lighter tape! The sticky notes that were sent home students can use to practice their sight words.

Our new sight words this week are:

see

is

go

so

am

We have also been talking about vowels and short vowel sounds. 

ChatterPix

   I posted about the app we used called "ChatterPix" last week but I only posted the two that we had finished. We have now finished all of them and they are begging me to post theirs to the blog. So here they are!