Halloween Reading Fun

Dear Parents,

Yesterday was our first Pizza Day and our Halloween celebration. Ms. Lock's class did a great drama presentation at yesterday's assembly, and we had a lovely afternoon in what I hope will become a Pizza Day tradition.

We had a number of parents in to read books with students: Thank you to Adam, Jenny, Liz, Maggie!

Each parent picked a Halloween themed book and took turns reading with students, along with me and Mr. Eloi, our new student teacher. We also had out stamping, marble run, lego, and peg boards with elastics for those waiting their turns.

Students had prepared haunted houses, and when they read with an adult, they got a spooky character sticker to put in their haunted house. Kind of a reading passport idea spookified for the occasion. Be sure to check Mr. Zippy to see how many books your child read yesterday afternoon!

I loved overhearing one student, Zack, tell one of the parent volunteers: "The Grade Ones are all really good at reading, aren't they?" I just love how proud they are of their accomplishments (and they should be! Learning to read is a big job).

The book I chose was a pop-up by Jan Pienkowski called Haunted House. I love his books because they are full of little easter eggs--there's all these little details happening in the background that are fun to discover. Reading one on one was a good opportunity to let the kids explore and play with this book's hidden treasures.

Here's some before shots of students haunted house drawings. As a side benefit, you get to see some pretty cute costumes:

 And here are some after shots, taken in a hurry as we rushed out the door:

Reminders for this week:

--Friday is our Halloween celebration and costume parade. Feel free to send them dressed up in the morning.

--Friday is also Pizza Day.

--Forms and money are due Friday for the November trip. There are still a lot missing. Please send a note if you need a second form.

--Our Mad Scientist afternoon went well yesterday. Many thanks to Oscar's dad (as well as Katie and Nasr's moms from 104) for coming in to support. Students made windmills and took home U.V.  bead charms.

--I also sent home a project for our energy project. I've made it due November 7 in order to give a second weekend for you to manage this together at home. Please see me if you have any questions.

--Library is on Day 3, so Mondays until the next P.A. day

November is a really busy month in the school: we have our trip and a school performance, plus Remembrance day and report cards coming up. Please ensure you have a copy of the November calendar from the school mailout so you can keep on top of it all.

Subject by subject

Dear Parents,

We didn't manage to get our weekly writing done to talk about our week in class this week, so I thought I'd give you a few snapshots to start your conversations.

First, here's our Jump Math book. We're working on number sense and numeration and comparing numbers to 5 and 10. The numbers are being shown in a 10 frame, which makes it easier to see. This has been very tricky for some, and very easy for others.

One student said, "I just looked at it and didn't even have to count! " but another told me, "I can only start counting from one, otherwise I don't know what comes next."

Students chose names for their reading groups this week. 

My Chocolate Chips are reading A level books right now, my Candy Canes are reading B level books, Skittles are C through F, Gummy Bears are F through H, and Smarties are I or higher right now. I work with students in smaller groups in order to teach skills relevant to their reading needs.  Each week students will spend some time reading to self, reading with a partner, doing word work (spelling, phonics, patterning), and writing a journal entry.  We've just started our Ipad rotations so I'm hoping to get students on RazKids during reading time as well. 

This chart shows some of the big ideas from our energy unit. We're beginning to talk about energy conservation, which a big concept for many students, who are having some trouble understanding that some of the energy lighting up their classroom or powering vehicles comes from long dead dinosaurs and why it might be important to use less of it. 

The Story of Stuff video might be on deck in our next Science class.

Next up is art. We're focusing on the fundamentals of art and design, like line, shape, colour, space, and texture. These are experiments with line.

 We're building vocabulary to talk about different kinds of lines.

 And experimenting with the effects they make.

We're also learning about how to talk about our work in a critical way in order to improve it.

By giving you these examples, I'm hoping to show you a little bit of what we're doing in each subject area, but also give you a framework to understand how to place your own child's strengths and needs in a broader context. To a large extent, students in Grade 1 are figuring out what it means to be a student, and you're figuring out how to support their learning in this new context as well. 

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan

A quick Friday night post

Dear Parents,

I sat down to write a quick post and ended up writing a manifesto on reporting, which I'll have to tweak and post another time. For now, programming notes for next week:

--Tuesday afternoon, our Mad Science (like Scientists in Schools) is happening. We have Grade 1 students from Room 104 joining us. I have a couple of parents on deck for this, but would be happy to have more.

--Friday afternoon, our school's costume parade is happening. Students are encouraged to come in costume and stay for the parent council fundraiser party after school.

--Friday will also be the first official day for our new student teacher, Mr. Elio. Welcome to him! He'll be with us through most of November.

--Friday is also Pizza Day

--Because Friday is Pizza Day, we'll have a number of parent volunteers staying on. I'm hoping to use them to do a Halloween themed reader's passport afternoon, which I'm still fine-tuning the logistics of. I know Jackson D.'s mom and Oscar's dad will be there: please confirm if you would also like to spend the afternoon being read to.

--I've sent home trip forms for the Primary trip. Many thanks are due to Ms. Turna for doing the leg work on this one. We'll be going to see a Dr. Suess themed stage production. Forms and money are also due next Friday.

And I'll leave you with some photos of students making switches to turn lightbulb circuits on and off.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

A circuit moves in a circle

Dear Parents,

Today, as part of our energy unit, we tested electrical circuits using batteries and other materials.

These are the materials we used

You might like to see if your child can identify the parts needed for a circuit, and which materials worked to make the circuit connect. 

Unfortunately, I forgot to get the camera out while the students were experimenting, but there were a lot of interesting points in the discussion, particularly about why the painted wire worked for some people, but not for all of them.

Avery: The metal worked, but not the painted wire.

Jackson D.: It worked for me.

Oscar: Because Electricity only goes one way, maybe it would work if they put the wire backwards?

:I demonstrate it connecting and not connecting and ask the difference:

Joel: Oh, I get it! You're touching the white part, not the red part.

Me: Yes. I'm touching the metal and not the paint. The paint protects the metal, like the plastic cover on the copper wire.

This was a busy lesson with lots of materials management. Students are still learning to work as a team, share materials and return them to where they got them, but everyone respected the safety rules we'd set out beforehand and most people seemed to have a lot of fun making the lightbulb go on. Many many thanks are due to Maggie, who helped check work and lead students back on track. 

Some students were also excited about making their own experiments (Jackson B. suggested using a paper clip), so that may be our next step, bringing student led inquiry into the mix. 

On another note entirely, our Mad Science presentation for energy is happening on the afternoon of October 25th. Volunteers are not required, but I'm happy to have them. Please let me know if you are available to support us.

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Parents, 

For this week's letter home, students wrote out 4 reasons they were thankful. Some of the answers were sweet, some were thoughtful, and some were actually hilarious. 

I was off to an appointment this afternoon, so I hope they all made it home! Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the long weekend!

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Math Homework

Dear Parents,

I sent home two math things this weekend. One was our monthly graph of the weather, which I sent home in place of our weekly letter. I hope that you'll discuss their graph with your student and talk about why they've come to the conclusions they have. Creating and interpreting graphs are part of the Data Management strand of the Ontario math curriculum. Friday was also our Terry Fox walk, so a busy day in the classroom.

The other sheet is meant to be finished up at home. Some students managed to finish their graph quickly and others took a much longer time, so the worksheet follows up on some of the concepts we've been looking at this past 2 weeks in the Number Sense and Numeration strand of the JUMP math workbook. Because I've already received one questioning email, I thought there might be more questions.

The first side of the sheet asks students to count the letters in the words. The boxes are meant to help them show that they are counting on. So, after each word they place the number they've counted to and begin counting again from that number.

E. g. The (3) cat (6) is (8) black (13).

This is a very helpful strategy when beginning to add. Starting at the higher number and "counting on" means that when students are adding 3+3, they can start at 3 and count up ("4, 5, 6") rather than needing to start again at 0 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).  The answer is the same, but when we start running out of fingers, counting on helps immensely.

On the other side of the page, students are asked to read 2 digital numbers and say which team is winning (i.e. Which number is greater?). Some students are still reversing numbers, so 2 and 5 can be easy to mix up on a calculator.

We're working on using vocabulary like greater, more, less,  and fewer instead of just bigger and smaller, when comparing numbers.

Then, students can reverse their counting on strategy to find the difference (e.g. 9 is winning against 5. Show 9 fingers, count off 5. 4 are left over, so 4 is the difference).

Even if you don't finish, I would very much like to see where students are with the JUMP math worksheet. Please return it on Monday, so we can look at it as a class.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan