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!