February - Friendship and addition

Friendship and Kindness

In February, we took time to talk about who is in our class and how we want to treat each other. We used many books to provoke conversations. One of my favourite books to use for conversations around kindness and treating others with care is "Bonne idée, Zoe". It is the story about a girl who feels very uncomfortable about the demands being placed on her classmates by a girl named Isabelle. It all centres around a super, amazing birthday party that Isabelle is hosting. We had good conversations about the choices made by the characters in the book. 
We had two wonderful celebrations. The first was our Friendship Fruit salad feast. It was such a huge hit. The children ate fruit salad all day long. The cards that the children made and distributed were very touching and meaningful. 
The second celebration was decorating our pink t-shirts. We decorated the shirts with buckets to show that we are all bucket-fillers. We had spent about a week talking about being bucket-fillers, what it means to be a bucket-filler and acknowledging those in class who filled our buckets. 

The unedited picture with the pink shirts is on your child's Ed Inform page.

We are bucket fillers!

Addition 

We talk about addition as two groups that join together to make one larger group. This definition works even when the children start to learn about negative numbers. (The hole in the negative either gets bigger as you add two negative numbers or the number gets bigger when you add a positive to a negative). This way the concept of addition that they first learn stays consistent for the child instead of saying that addition always gets bigger.
We have been using a variety of materials in class to help the students to visualize the numbers and how they relate to the other numbers they are adding. We have used Cuisinaire Rods to help solidify the idea that 2+3=5 is really 2 and 3 is the same as 5. The Cuisinaire Rods allow us to make train with the blocks and compare them. We are also using scales/balances in the class to support this idea.

We have also been using dice and cards to practice memorizing our math addition facts. All children start by counting to find the total. Most students in class right now are at the next step where they are able to say the first number and then keep counting to find the sum. We are working towards using doubles and making 5 or 10 as strategies to make addition easier. These strategies help the students be more flexible when they solve problems with larger numbers. 

New on Ed Inform

  1. Feedback on the castle that the class worked collaboratively to make for Carnival.
  2. An assessment that explains the strategies that your child is using to add. I am adding these assessments at a rate of about five students a day. All should be updated by Friday March 6th.
After spring break, I will post updates on reading progress with pictures of our Reading Workshop activities. 
The class castle

What you can do at home:

  1. Use playing cards to practice addition facts. Here is a website with a few games that you can try: Addition card games
  2. If you have relatives in another area of Canada, or have visited other areas, share your pictures and recollections with your child. We are starting to talk about our fabulous country. After the break we will focus more on our local community and our neighbourhoods. 
  3. You may have seen a letter from Lisa on the subject of infectious illness prevention at our school which highlighted staying home when ill and prevention etiquette when sick.  When children of grade 1 and 2 are sick, they have not yet learned good prevention hygiene and share their germs quite freely. As a result not only do they pass on viruses, they can also get sick again as the virus mutates and makes the rounds again in the class. In general, the children prefer to have their teacher in the class, and when children are sick, unfortunately the teachers usually succumb as well. I know is difficult to make arrangements for sick children. However, staying home will help to stop the spread of all the colds and flus that we see at this time of year.  On the bright side, the flu season is short and spring is on the way! Let's hope that after the break we will see the end of the coughs, sneezes and runny noses!

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