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Showing posts from 2018

Patterns and Story Telling

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December news Story telling We have begun a story telling unit based on the fairy tale "Hansel & Gretel". We have read several versions of the story.  We have talked about who the characters are, the locations in the story, the main problem and the solution (happy ever after ending).  The children have paper Hansel, Gretel and the witch. This week they retold out the beginning of the story with the characters. At the beginning of next week we will retell out the middle section with the witch and finally the grand finale. I have plans for the children to create a cage that will hold their paper witch as well as an activity where they write up a "For Sale" ad for the witch's candy house. It should be a busy week that will include a lot of hands on activities to help with the pre- Christmas energy! Of course we have our candy house building afternoon as well! Patterns  We have begun a unit on patterns in the class. The children are

Forest and squirrels

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Squirrels Inquiry Project We have been working on a research project about squirrels. We have a wide variety of books in the class from the library. We have been researching the following details about squirrels: their appearance the size of their families and who cares for the babies the materials used to build the nest the food that squirrels gather We have been enjoying many stories about squirrels, just ask about "Those Darn Squirrels." It was a favourite. Starting tomorrow we will begin to write all the things we have learned to accompany a directed drawing art project that we finished yesterday. As part of our research, we have been talking about how squirrels collect food for the winter. Next week we will begin to look at animals who hibernate and what hibernation is since animals do hibernate differently. Math- number sense For counting collections, most students are counting up to 40 items independently. Some students are experimenting counti

Halloween activities and the forest

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Halloween This past week we have added halloween stories and activities to our usual routine. In the morning we have started with centres to support reading and writing. We have searched the room for halloween vocabulary, sorted halloween objects by syllable and drawn and labelled halloween objects. We drew a haunted house and wrote about the drawing.  We started a project to build a haunted maze. The first step was to practice making mazes with materials in the class. (pictures on Ed Inform) We then spent some time, individually designing a maze. The maze had to have at least 4 turns, 2 or more dead ends and one goal. The students will meet in teams on Thursday and decided on the maze they were going to make. Before they can build their maze on Friday, they all have to have the same drawing of the maze as a blueprint. Then they can begin to build. Forest Our trip to Goldstream was the beginning of our unit about our relationship with the forest and squirrels. Next week

October happenings

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Family and Healthy Eating Over the last 2 weeks we have started a unit on family and healthy eating. The Thanksgiving weekend gave us the perfect excuse to talk about the relatives we had visited with and the food we ate. After the weekend I asked the students "What did they think they knew about food?" They had several ideas including that it is healthy for them and it helps them grow. So then I asked "What puzzled them about food?" They came up with 2 main questions that we are now exploring. Where does food come from? We are tackling this question first. Earlier in the fall we went to the forest in search of salal berries as there are many salal plants in our neighbouring forest. On Thursday we returned to the forest to look for mushrooms. We set out to count how many we could find and we found over 270! On Friday we returned to the forest as scientists to observe the mushrooms and record what we saw in drawings. We had a fabulous time.   We re

Our class culture

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About my beliefs about our learning community I hope that you find this post enlightening and that it helps explain the cryptic things that children sometimes say at home.  In our class, I try and foster an environment that helps children develop to be critical and creative thinkers. I try to create a physical environment that gives the students different areas to choose to work either with others or on their own. They are welcome to work anywhere in the class. However, if it is a math block, we all work on math or writing block, we all work on writing for the whole block which is a bit different from a Montessori experience. Deep learning and thinking takes time and trial and error. That being said I pay careful attention to the mood of the class and am very mindful of their stamina as little people. When it is time to stretch or move or play outside, that is also a part of the class culture. We leave our work and take a break together. We use a lot of hands on materials to

What we have been doing

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Welcome back. Welcome to the new school year. We have now spent 6 full days together as a class. I wanted to share some of my learning goals that we have been working on over the last week. We have been talking about being a good friend. We read a book called Stick and Stone,  which is about a stick and stone who become friends. We also worked in small groups to make a playground that both stick and stone would find accessible on which both would be able to play together. We also read a book called "All are Welcome here" and in the coming week we are going to talk about ways in which we can help the kindies and new students feel welcome at our school as well as how we check that they are feeling welcome. A playground for Stick and Stone "A climbing wall on the ground so Stone can play" Being a learner and learning opportunities We have been focusing on the role of the children as learners in the classroom. I have been highlighting the responsibili

Core Competencies and Our Last 2 Weeks

Music The students have been studying Music twice a week with Sunny. Here is a description of a video that she created for you. For the past few weeks in music class, children have been working on the music story called 'Eeba Streeba' by Lee Campbell-Towell.  The author uses the musical theme of a suite called 'The Carnival of the Animals' by Camille Saint-Saens.  Here's video recording of the students dancing and having fun to the music Eeba Streeba. Enjoy watching your children in action. Music video Communication, Creative and Critical Thinking as well as Personal and Social Responsibility These are the 3 core competencies. The Ministry of Education and various stakeholders including Post Secondary institutions and leaders of industry met together to come up with a list of competencies that students will need in the future. These are at the centre of the new curriculum and the heart of education. To read more about them you can click on this link  BC c

New Countries

New Countries The children have been working on creating a new country. The content focus was around natural and human-made features. The natural features were to be natural colours while the human-made features could be any colour. We talked about the parts of the body of animals and they created their own animal that is suited to live in their country.  We definitely could have kept working on these projects for many more days. If your child is interested in continuing adding to the project I would ask where is the animal going to find food and how do people get around in your country.  Museum trip Thank you to those parents who are free to join us this week at the museum. The bus is leaving at 8:45 to get us in to Victoria for our 10 am visit time. Please make an effort to be on time on Thursday so we can load the busses.  For those that have indicated that they can join us, you are welcome to meet at the class to arrange carpooling so that you do not have to all driv

We are still going strong!

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Math We are continuing with subtraction activities first thing in the morning. We are using Lego to model subtraction, e.g. physically taking pieces away from the whole group, and we are practicing writing the subtraction equation accurately with - and =.  We are also working on geometry. For grade 1 that means that we are looking at shapes and describing their features such as: colour, size, thickness and actual shape. We will continue to sort shapes next week and we will take a tour of the school looking at objects and seeing what shapes make up that object. We did a fun activity last week to help with the idea of sides of shapes. The students used popsicle sticks to make shapes and then drove a car around the outside of the shape and each time the car had to turn, that is the end of a side (not necessarily at each stick.) Both the geometry and the subtraction centres are up on Ed Inform for you to look at in more detail.  14 sticks and 14 sides! Many sticks

The Marble Run challenge

Marble Run Challenge Hopefully you have heard about the Marble Run challenge that the children work on this week. They were to create a vertical marble run that crossed the piece of poster board at least 3 times. This project is part of the Applied Design, Skill and Technologies subject of the grade 1 curriculum. The first day the students made a plan on their own for the marble run. They then met with a partner to share their ideas. They then returned to their plan to add new ideas that they got when talking  to others. The second day of the project the students met with their groups and looked at all the plans. They had to agree on 1 plan or an amalgamation of the plans and then as a group, they were to draw the agreed upon plan in their journals. Finally, when they had the plans drawn they could start construction. All the marble runs were a huge success and very different from each other. I will put the videos up on Ed Inform over the next few days, so that you can see the f

Springtime

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Writing Over the month of April we will be doing more writing. At this point of the year in grade 1 the students have a really great French vocabulary and can converse in French with me and their peers. Now that they have a good vocabulary base, we will spend more time writing.  Once or twice a week the students will practice writing from a topic or starter sentence that I give them in class. They will also have weekly opportunities to do a free-write in their journals.  Below are the writing goals for Fully Meeting writing  in the spring of Grade 1. These are the things we will be working towards in class: - Including a detailed drawing   -writing several sentences (3+) that follow a logical order and make sense to the reader - using letter sounds to spell unfamiliar words and spelling frequently used words correctly.   -beginning to use capital letters and periods correctly.   Subtraction We are beginning to work on subtraction in class. The

I know here

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Our community- I know here We have started a unit on our community. The children have all made a model of their house. They had to draw details such as the number of windows, doors and window coverings. Then they placed their house on a table in the class closest to the area where they live such as Mill Bay, Shawnigan Lake and Cobble Hill.  We have talked about what is in the yards of our homes. The children used loose parts such as rocks, gravel, green paper and buttons to make what is in their yards. The next step in our journey is to draw our streets. We are going to draw them as if we are looking down at our houses. If you wish, please write in the agenda if we can look at your home on Google maps.  Addition We are practicing our math fact to 12. We have practicing writing math equations and using drawing to solve addition equations. This next week we are going to continue with the games in the class with the goal of making the math facts more automatic. Aft

100 days of school!

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Making hearts Making hearts 100 Days of School  We have spent over 100 days together at school! If you are counting there are approximately 80 days left. We spent some time talking about the things that we can do now that we couldn't do at the beginning of the year. Reading, math baskets, writing and counting were some of the ideas mentioned. We counted 100 several times throughout the day. We decorated our hats with 100 drawings. The hats were to be interesting and colourful, not just dots or tally marks. We counted toys in the class to see how many, how long a 100 things stretch and how tall a tower with 100 things can be.  We compared the baggies of 100 things to see which ones appeared more full.  We highlighted a grade 1 word list to see how many of 100 words we can read. It was a fun day filled with hands on activities! Winter Olympics We are enjoying watching some of the Olympics at school during lunch and centre time. It is a great way to see different s

Fort Day, Valentine's Day and More

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  Fort Day We had a fabulous celebration day to end our unit on snow and winter. The children worked well to make forts in the class. It was amazing to watch. As each child began to lay out the sheet that they brought, they began to talk and then plan and then work together. As a result we had some pretty spectacular forts! They did all their work in the forts, ate lunch and played in the forts.  In the afternoon, they did a science challenge. They were given wooden blocks, wax paper, plastic wrap and sandpaper and were asked to build a hill that an ice cube could slide down. There were so many creative ideas. Some students used the sandpaper to stop the ice cube at the bottom of the hill! They had a great day!   The Virtues We are beginning a unit on Career Education which sounds very lofty for grade 1. In our class we will be focusing on our attributes, skills and interests and what each of us can contribute at home and in the class community. Also as part of th

So far this January

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January We have been very busy so far this month. I hope that you have been hearing about "It's not a box!", our "All about Snow" unit and the writing and math we have been doing in class. It's not a box The whole school participated in the "Most Magnificent Thing" project. In our class we called it "It's not a box" to help facilitate understanding in French. We started the project by looking at a box and the criteria and making a plan. After the children had made their plan they got to work. The children worked for about 3 full afternoons creating and painting their projects. When they were done the project (or ran out of time), they looked back at their plan and reflected about what went well and what they would change. On the Friday of last week, their classmates from K-7 toured our class to see and hear about their projects.  On the Ed Inform App are pictures of the very beginnings of the projects, the finished project

Happy New Year

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Welcome back! This week we are returning to routine and structure after a more carefree time at home. As I am sure that you have noticed at home, the students are very tired.  It is winter on the west coast despite the rain. So in our class we are starting a unit on snow. It includes; science, writing, math and art. The goals for the students in this unit are to be able to tell 3 facts about snow to others, make a symmetrical snowflake and to read or retell the booket that they write about snow. This week we started by brainstorming what we know about snow. I was pleasantly surprised by all that they know. Their list included things that they do in snow such as make snow angels, as well as the fact that snow is made of water. Other facts that the students mentioned include: snow sticks together, it is cold, it falls and it piles up.  “It is not a box” We are participating in the school wide project “It is not a box.” For this project the students are asked to bring a box