Recap June 8-12

Hello parents!  I hope you had a fantastic weekend with your children.

Here is a quick recap of what we were working on in our classroom last week.

This past week the students continued to work on inferring as a tool to form ideas based on context clues.  One of the books we used this week in class was called We Are All Friends Here.

In writing the students continued to work on narrative writing after a short detour so that we could write our reflections from our Safety Village trip.  I sent home a work in progress piece this past weekend so the students could work on some of their current work at home.  If your child does not have a chance to work on this no need to worry.  I will give the students more time this upcoming week to add final details to their work.

In Math we continued working on Symmetry and finished our Symmetry test.  Our next upcoming unit is on fractions. 

By the end of grade 1 students should be able to...

– divide whole objects into parts and identify and describe, through investigation, equal-sized parts of the whole, using fractional names (e.g., halves; fourths or quarters)

 The factions unit will be a quick unit as I hope to finish both measurement and fractions this week so that I can use the final week as a overall review of concepts taught in grade 1.

In Science the students began working on a structure for father's day.  The final product will be sent home this week.

In Social Studies the students began learning about community helpers.  We focused on the tools, work places, and duties of both fire fighters and teachers.

Other News:

I hope your child had a chance to enjoy the book fair, the carnival, and some of the other activities that happened this past week.

As a class we are going to try to read 500 books by the end of the school year.  This amounts to about 2-3 books a day per child.  The students are excited about this current challenge and I look forward to celebrating their accomplishment.

I have sent home your child's May Folder.  Please review it and send it back when you have a chance to review the contents inside your child's folder.


Reminders:
Please send your child with a water bottle.
Please remind the students to begin taking back classroom materials and books before the final week of school.

May 25-May 29 Recap

I hope you are enjoying your weekend! Here is a recap of what the students learned last week.

In Language, the students continued to write their narratives. They focused on adding detail to the middle portion of their stories and included speech to their stories. The students also worked on writing up their final copy of their first narrative. In Reading the students worked on improving their inferring skills as they read and responded to poetry. The students also learned more about non-fiction work and the features of non-fiction texts.

In our math classes the students learned more about probability and wrote their probability test on Friday. All the students did extremely well. Our next unit will be on symmetry. As a quick homework piece look around at different objects within your home and see if the kids can tell you if the object is symmetrical or asymmetrical.

In Science we are continuing our Structures unit. Over the next week the students will be building a garage that can store a toy car.

This week the students also had several special events including our Bounce Dance (this past Friday), being part of a Flash Mob and our monthly character assembly. Congratulations to Ryan and Morgan who won the Courage award!

Next week... We are headed to Safety Village for a field trip. The trip will happen rain or shine so please ensure that your child is dressed appropriately.

Probability Terminology

Some words we will use in our new unit. 

Recap May 19-22

In Language, this week we started our narrative writing unit.  The students had a chance to work with partners to create a story outline and afterwards they worked on creating their own stories based on the ideas that they brainstormed with their partners.  At this point the students are learning how to add dialogue and description to their writing.  In reading the students learned about different elements of non-fiction texts.  They were excited to be able to take out a non-fiction book from the library to read in class.

In Math, we continued our probability unit. The students created posters, and worked on different scenarios using key terminology for our unit (i.e. Impossible, unlikely, likely, certain).  Next week the students will be learning the words more likely, less likely, and equally likely and will be using them to explain the different chances for winning a game that they create.

In Science, we continued our structures unit. The students learned about fasteners (items which hold two different parts together). The students also had a chance to use their 5 senses to describe an apple during their apple experiment.

In Gym, the students continued to work on their introduction to soccer unit where they played 4-on-4 indoor soccer.

The following link is one that we used in class and explains the elements necessary when story writing.

Volunteer Breakfast

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are enjoying your long weekend.  I wanted to invite all volunteers in our class to our upcoming Volunteer Breakfast next Friday.  I hope you can join us.

Recap May 4-May 8

This week in our class we finished a few of our current units and began a few new ones.

In Language, we continued working on persuasive writing.  We wrote a persuasion on the best day of the week and one on the importance of brushing our teeth.  We were able to share our final product that was about the importance of brushing to one of the kindergarten classes.  We also worked on several mother's day activities.  I hope you enjoy them.

In Reading, we continued learning how to write strong retells and the importance of adding details to the middle portion of our retells.  We also learned the difference between fiction and non-fiction work.

In Media literacy, we continued learning about perspective and wrote our first comic book.  We will be using them in the future with our reading buddies.

In Math we began our unit on time.  In grade 1 the expectation is that students are able to tell time to the hour and half hour on both a digital and analog clock.  On Monday students were able to take home play clocks to practise.  I will be sending them home again next week.  This week the most challenging portion of Math was telling the difference between A.M. and P.M. please review this with your child at home by using this terminology.  For example, we have dinner at 6 o'clock P.M.

In Science we are learning how to use our senses.  We also learned that there are various descriptive words that can be used when describing different objects.

In Gym, we continued learning about appropriate kicking techniques.

Reminders:
Please send your child with a water bottle.

April folders were sent home this past week.  Please review them and return them in a timely manner.

I have sent home the monthly calendar for May and our current newsletter.  Please let me know if you have not received it.

Recap April 27-May 1

This week we wrote a persuasive letter explaining to Mrs. D'Souza what we should have for snacks if we were to have a classroom party. The choices were chips, chocolate, or a fruit and vegetable platter.

In math we finished our money unit and wrote our tests on Friday.

In Social Studies we finished our Mapping unit.

In Gym we continued our unit on kicking appropriately. We will be using these skills in a future soccer game.

Upcoming:

The school presentation of High School Musicial will be on Monday and Tuesday next week tickets are still available.

Class Recap April 20-24

For this week's recap the students typed up the recap on their own.  Here is their recap.  MathIn math  we  learned  about  coins. We had learned about Pennies, Dimes, nickels, Quarters, Toonies , and Loonies.  We have learned about coins for a long time and we might have our test soon.  Social StudiesIn Social Studies we made maps of our rooms and Barefoot Island.
  GymIn gym we are learning how to kick a ball.  The gym class was fun.     DanceIn dance we are learned to count to 8.
In dance we are learned locomotor and non locomotor movements. Health In Health we are learning about the 4 food groups. OtherToday it is p.j. day.  And we had pizza.
 ARTIn Art we are learning how to draw stuff on cups.


Though not as through as I would have wished I'm proud of the students for taking the initiative to type this week's recap up on their own.  This upcoming week is the closure week for many of our units.  We will be having a math test on money and we will also complete a mapping closure activity. 

Earth Day

Reminder:  On Wednesday, April 22, 2015 the school is encouraging everyone to wear blue and green in support of earth day.

Weekly Recap April 13-April 17

Friday, April 17, 2015 

Dear Parents,

This week we had lots of fun! On Thursday, we did a Little Red Hen Activity. There were four groups. There was a narrator, a pig, a hen, a dog, and a duck. The narrator wore a penguin costume.  We got to video tape our groups and use computers to read our scripts.


In Math we learned about money. We got money booklets to count. The coins are the penny, nickel, dime, quarter, loonie, and toonie. A penny is 1 cent. A nickel is 5 cents. A dime is 10 cents. A quarter is 25 cents. A loonie is 1 dollar. A toonie is 2 dollar.

In Social Studies we are learning about maps. We learned the map key tells us what is in the map. The map key has symbols on it and using those symbols we can see things on the map.  For example, for a hospital the map will have a H symbol.


In gym we learned how to jump rope because today we are going to have our jump rope for heart event. We will have lots of fun!

Thanks for reading our blog and we hope you write back soon!

Love,
Mrs. D'Souza's Class

More Than Words

Hello, If possible, please send your child with clothing that is appropriate for their role for the Little Red Hen. The students know what their roles are. Thanks!

RECAP APRIL 14-17

This was yet another exciting week in our classroom. Here is a recap of our week as told by the students.

Language: We are learning about retells. We listened to the Paper Bag Princess on Tumblebooks and then we retold the story to another person in our class. We worked in groups to do a retell about the Kuffle Bunny. In the story Trixie goes on an errand with her father and loses her bunny in the washing machine. The dad didn't know this and went home. Trixie's mom told the dad the bunny was missing. Then, the dad, mom, and Trixie go and look for the bunny everywhere. They solved the problem when they found the bunny in the washing machine. We are also writing persuasive writing pieces. Mrs. D'Souza asked us to write about who we would sit well with in the class and give reasons why we would sit well with them if they were at our table groups.

Math: In Math we made our own math problems. Some of them are easy to solve and others are harder. It's hard to draw a number line. We needed pictures, numbers, and words in our math question.

Social Studies: We learned about map keys, symbols, and how to find informatino on the map. We also learned about the directions that we see on a compass. There is North, South, East and West.

Gym: We learned how to skip.

Dance:We learned about locomotor and non-locomotor movements.

Reflections As A Teacher: This week, the students continued to work hard in all subject areas. In Math something that I noted was that the students had a difficult time transferring their knowledge of addition and subtraction to questions that "looked" different. When assessments are done in math (as with all subjects) rubrics are used which help determine a child's strengths and next steps. A typical rubric will consider a child's Knowledge and Understanding, Thinking, Communication, and Application.
In this current math strand this could include...
Knowledge and Understanding: Traditional formatting (e.g. 12+2=14)
Thinking: Assessing the strategies they used. (e.g. typical language when conferencing went something like this... "For the question 12+2, If I start at 12 I know I need to move 2 to the right if I am adding because I am looking for a number that is larger than 12.)
Communication: students showing their answers using pictures, number lines, etc...
Application: Students writing their own questions

Class Recap March 23-27, 2015

Hello Parents!  Here is this week's recap as written by the students...


Dear mom and dad,

We had an exciting week in our class this week as we started many new units and had many fun events.

In Language
In Language we worked on learning how to read with a purpose.  After we read our books we did a walk and stop and talked about characters that were like us in the stories we read.  We also talked about our favourite parts of the books we read. 

We were able to use listening centers.  They were fun because we could follow the stories we read while we listened to CD players.  We got our very own headphones for this that we keep in our shopping bags.

We did lots of writing this week.  For example, we wrote to Mrs. D'Souza about what type of pet would be the best for our class.  Mrs. D'Souza said she is going to read our persuasive writing pieces this weekend and then buy us a pet because of what we wrote.  We think it might be a fish or a gerbil.

In Math
In Math we started something called 3 part math lessons.  They are problems that are stories we need to figure out the answer to.  We work with partners to do this.  We tried to do subtraction problems today and they were hard.

In Social Studies
In Social studies we learned about directions.  We also used google map to look at the ocean and Toronto.  We made the Google man go to the CN tower and to our school.  He could go North, East, South or West.

In Gym
We had Yoga with Mrs. Nasir's class and we also had a period of gym where we worked with our groups on learning how to move around the gym without talking.  We used our eyes to look at each other and our hands to tell which way to move.

Other
We are doing fish art and using instruments in Music.  We also had a jump rope for heart assembly.

This week was tiring but fun.

Hope you can write to us soon!

Love,
Mrs. D'Souza's class



My reflections of the week as a teacher.

Coming back from mat leave has been great!  A year off has made me realize how quickly time passes as I saw many of my students from previous years gain about 5 inches in height.  I couldn't believe how quickly they went from being only as high as my waist to being taller than I am!  It made me realize that as time passes so quickly the importance of having children learn proper interaction skills is also vital.  I've been really strict with my class this week trying to get them to realize that their actions can be very impactful either in a positive or negative way and I strived to make them realize the importance of working as a team.  One activity we did this week was to say nice things to each other in order to see how this could make another person smile.  It was good to see them realize that with a single sentence they could brighten someone's day. 

Another lesson I've been trying to teach the kids this week is being aware of their surroundings.  I heard a lot of, "_____ pushed me" this week only to find out from the child who did the pushing that they didn't even realize that they had pushed another person.  The students hadn't intentionally meant to hurt another but they didn't realize at all that they had pushed someone accidently.  As a teaching point from these incidents I have asked all students to keep their hands to their side when walking and to keep their eyes focused on the objects in front of them.  Hopefully this will stop any unnecessary accidents within our classroom and make our learning environment a safer place.

3 Part Math Lessons

In Math students at working on addition and subtraction. We are moving towards 3 part lessons. You can read more about 3 part lessons here: http://professionallyspeaking.oct.ca/march_2010/features/lesson_study/three-part.aspx

Lunches, Snack Time With The Teacher, Distractors, and Lost and Found

If you notice your child is not finishing their lunch and you are concerned about it please write me a quick note in their agendas. I am a firm believer that without proper nourishment kids do not perform to the best of their abilities. Thus, although I not with them formally at lunch I will ask them during the afternoons if they ate.

I have also started an activity I call snack time with the teacher. I do this mainly for two purposes. First, I love getting to know the kids personally and unfortunately it is hard to do during instructional time, as I like keeping lessons focused and spend time with kids in guided groups. However, during snack time and lunch time I spend time eating with one student at a time (I'm going in alphabetical order) to get to know them. During this short time your child has the opportunity to talk about anything they want. It's great hearing about what interest them! Second, I strongly believe in the importance of children being able to communicate well with adults because it develops interpersonal intelligence over time.

One last housekeeping item, I noticed a number of items that are potential distractors in the students desk (eg toys) I will be asking the students to bring these home sometime this week.  If your child is missing an item rather than writing it in their agenda it would be great to use this as a context rich activity on poster writing (a media literacy grade 1 expectation that Ms. Spring taught during term 1) by having them create a poster with the lost item. I will post these posters in our classroom. 

Home reading books

Books

Students select their own books for daily home reading. I do not check what they are taking out until their reading logs are turned in at the end of the month. That being said, if you find that when your child is reading they are getting every single word right or on the opposite end are getting more than 6 words wrong per page and don't understand what they are reading let me know and I will get a buddy to check their reading book. If it still continues then I will eventually move to giving them my choice of books for the week.  This of course is a last resort because then the kids stop fostering independence on this area. 

Library

Hi!

Just a reminder that our library day is on day 3. Therefore, please send your child to school with their library books tomorrow so they can exchange them.

Home reading folders should also be returned tomorrow.

Thanks,

Caroline

Meeting Your Children For the First Time

Hello Parents,

On Wednesday, March 11, 2015 I was lucky enough to meet your child for the first time.  What a great experience.  Each of your children are unique and I can't wait to work with them soon.  I hope you have a safe and happy March break.  Read, Relax, and Rejuvenate.

Take care,
Caroline D'Souza