I promised you pictures...

Dear Parents,

I spoke to many of you last night for curriculum night and you got a chance to see the surprises we baked up for you. There were mysterious mustachioed photos and self portraits for art, lots of writing samples and a chance to look through students' reading folders for language, Calendar math (all five strands are represented!) and a peek at the JUMP math workbooks for mathematics, plus a button spinner to help us start to think about energy.

Some mysterious characters

I also put out a sign up sheet for volunteers. I'd love to have parents come in and read with students. If you're able to come in, but didn't get a chance to hear from me, do ping my email and we'll figure it out.

Using writing to help us delve into the people behind the mustaches

A lot of parents wanted to know how their child was doing. A couple overarching trends appeared in all my talking:

Students are served well by reading daily with parents. If there's one thing you can do to help your child, this is it.

Students in Grade 1 are building stamina for focused work. This will be easier for some than others, but everyone will get better as they practice.

Students in Grade 1 are building their toolkits. They need lots of ideas for what to do when they don't know what to do. Coaching them through challenges to help them build resilience is probably more important than any content I teach.

Another way to look at the same kids

A class set, being cheered on by Rosie

Ultimately, we're a team. I'll communicate with you if there are bumps along the way. Please do the same for me.

Thanks for a great start to a new year!

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Beginning Math (Looking at Clocks and the JUMP program)

Dear Parents,

Over the past week, we've been working on time so that students can read the classroom clock and our class schedule. This is a component of measurement, but it's also a challenging concept for students this age because many of them don't have a sense of the times that matter in their daily life.

Many knew their bedtimes, for instance, but not what time they might eat breakfast or dinner. I sent the worksheet we had done together home on Monday, with the hope that you can see where your child's sense of time is. For many students, this was very challenging work.

The passage of time is a concept we'll revisit over the course of the year and a good one to reinforce with students --having routines and schedules lowers student stress by allowing them to predict what might happen. I also like the idea that instilling these routines and expectations early will help students internalize how to organize their time more independently as they grow older.

Today we started our JUMP math program. Each student in Grade 1 at IRC has a workbook that we'll work on together as a class. I'll supplement our math program with lessons to deepen and enrich their understanding of the 5 strands as we go, but I love the JUMP math program because it's based on the idea of "micro-inquiry"--allowing students to explore concepts and then build on them. If you want to learn more about JUMP math, here's their website.

I took a lot of photos today, but they are for parent night next week. Mustaches may be involved. Mystery must be maintained. I promise a more photo heavy post for next week.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Student letters

Dear Parents,

Every Friday, you'll get a letter home from your child explaining some of their favourite things that happened in school this week. Some students will need help getting down even one word, but others will start with words or phrases. As the weeks progress, you'll hopefully see their letter formation and ability to sound out words improve. Reading this letter together is a good way to get your fingers on the pulse of their learning and what's happening in the classroom.

And I usually don't publish links to other articles, but this one was sent to me recently and I think it's quite useful. It outlines good practices for reading together with your child (an important thing to do daily). At the bottom, it also outlines some of the reading strategies we'll practice together as a class to begin figuring out what to do more independently when students come across words they don't know. This is especially helpful because it gets us both speaking the same language.

We'll be starting with Eagle Eye (looking at the whole word) and Lips the Fish (getting your mouth ready for the first sound) this week.

Here you go:

Reading homework tips for parents

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Adventures in Grade 1

Dear Parents,

Today, we had a visit from a nurse from Sick Kids who explained about cancer and leukemia. She talked about how cancer cells can sometimes overwhelm other cells in the blood, that cancer isn't contagious, and went into some details about how our classmate's treatment. Students watched a short animated show from Charlie Brown about a girl named Janice who gets cancer and some of the challenges she faces, then had the opportunity to ask questions of the nurse.

A. had a question about how veins get to have blood in them, then J. immediately asked how babies were made (We deflected back to you guys), but F. let us know how mothers stop producing milk when their babies stop drinking it, in case we wanted to know and were too embarrassed to ask.

Happily, then it was recess.

On an unrelated front, students seem to be really enjoying our class read-aloud of George's Marvellous Medicine. I had to read two chapters today, because one was too short. Then, I saw this in the bathroom when I went out for dinner and thought it might remind students of some of the ingredients George included in his potion.

Every day is an adventure.

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan

Math Manipulatives in Action

Dear Parents,

It was a hot day in the classroom, but I feel like we started some real work today and wanted to show you what that looked like. 

Until I've had a chance to communicate with parents and get media releases, I'm doing my best to avoid face shots, except where I've had those conversations. At the beginning of a new year, I feel like it's good to be clear that I try to respect various family comfort levels about online privacy (For example, I never publish student names with their faces and configure this blog to be as low visibility as possible while remaining public). Please do let me know if I ever publish a photo you're uncomfortable with being on the blog. 

Below you see an example of an exercise that asks students about numbers relevant to them (their age, their birthday, the number of people in their family, how many pets they have, and how many students are in our class). 

I handed out a variety of manipulatives and asked students to show me those numbers in various ways. This is a simple exercise that lets students become more familiar with the materials in the classroom: 

Two sided counters and pumpkin seeds

Buttons, and checking each other's work

Marbles tend to roll, so are best in lids

Teddy bears

Cards

Jewels

Some students had an easier time than others (June 2 was a lot easier than December 29). Some students got excited and started to add all their numbers together. We consolidated our learning at the end of the lesson by talking over some tricks to counting bigger numbers, like 21, that don't fit on fingers

Here are the tips we talked about today:

--Holding the number in your head and counting up or down.

--Patterned counting by twos or fives.

--Using the manipulatives by moving them once they've been counted.

--Grouping the manipulatives to help patterned counting.

These are all simple ideas, but they are so useful when counting, representing, adding, and subtracting. You might even see the beginning glimmers of multiplication strategies in grouping the numbers. We'll keep working at this, but I'm happy that so many students seem excited by math concepts. 

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan

P.S. I'm totally bringing in popsicles tomorrow.