Request for Headphones

Please send in a pair of headphones for your child (not earbuds). The students need to have their own headphones when we use technology in the classroom.  They can be purchased at the dollar store, or you may already have an extra pair at home! The earphones will be returned at the end of the school year.  Thank you, in advance, for your support!

Congratulations Grade 1!

Our class has filled the 'Earning Jar' with pom-poms!  On Monday, November 6th, each student will get to invite a friend from another class to eat lunch with them in our classroom! Whoo hoo! This week our goal is to use our 'W.I.T.S.'  Once the jar is full our reward will be a gum chewing block in courtesy of Mrs. Stratford and Ms. Damiano!

Halloween Fun!

On Monday, October 30th, we had fun with pumpkins in Grade 1. Each table had their own pumpkin. The students illustrated their pumpkins, wrote about how they feltn to the touch , examined and then drew the inside of their pumpkin, etc. We estimated and then measured the height of our pumpkins using snap cubes.  We also estimated the number of seeds in our pumpkins. With the help of 100's charts and a lot of hard work, they worked together with their group to count the seeds in the pumpkins.  Table #1 counted 321 seeds, Table #2 counted 500, Table #3 counted 621 and Table #4 counted 312. That is a whomping 1,754 pumpkin seeds counted in grade 1!

After counting the seeds, we decided as a group on jack-o-lantern faces for our pumpkins and Mrs. Stratford carved them! On October 31st, we enjoyed our illuminated jack-o-lanterns during snack time while dressed in our Halloween costumes!

Week of October 30th

We have a busy and exciting week planned for the Grade 1 students. We will be diving into our class pumpkins, counting seeds, measuring how tall they are with unifix cubes, and of course making jack-o-lantern faces. We have a special pumpkin too that has garnered a lot of attention. We discovered on Friday that it is called a "Warty" pumpkin. So much fun!!

REMINDER: Children are invited to wear their costumes to school on Tuesday, October 31st. Please remember no masks or dangerous accessories.

COLLECTIONS:

All that Glam Fundraiser is collecting handbags and gently used jewelry where the proceeds will support breakfast programs in Nunavut Schools.

We Scare Hunger canned food drive is from October 30th-November 6th.

Here is a peek at what the Grade 1 students were up to this past week. The Discovery Centre was open for exploring how pumpkins looked, felt and smelled. On Friday, students worked very hard to write about the pumpkin that was on their table. Ask your child to describe their pumpkin using their senses of sight and touch.

We have reading buddies on Wednesdays with Mrs. Costello's class. We will continue to have our own Library time on Thursdays (Bring your Stuffie day). 

We are wrapping up our unit on 3D shapes and moving onto 2D shapes.

We are learning about Seasons and cycles, day and night.

Addition Strategies

We have been exploring strategies to help us solve addition equations with sums up to 18! We practiced the 'counting up' strategy using fingers, number lines and 100's charts. Using objects as counters is another great tool we can use to calculate our sums!

Mixing Secondary Colours

Inspired by the book 'Mouse Paint' by Ellen Stoll Walsh, we mixed primary colours to make secondary colours and created these wonderful birds!

Picture Retake Day is this Wednesday!

Wednesday, October 25th is 'Picture Retake Day.' If your child missed the original photo day and you want them to have their photo taken, or you want them to have a picture retake, you MUST write a note in his/her agenda! 

Applesauce Making!

Class Earning Jar

The children are working very hard to fill the jar with pom-poms so that they can invite a friend to have lunch with them in our classroom.  This week our focus has been on listening and avoiding interrupting others when they are talking.  During today's presentation in the gym, the students showed respect to our presenter and their peers by being good, respectful listeners so they received 4 pom-poms when we returned to class.  We are so close to filling the jar - way to go Grade 1!

Raz Kids Reading Program

'Raz-Kids' reading program is a wonderful digital resource that promotes and develops reading and literacy skills.  (It is optional and does not replace our 'Snuggle Up and Read' home reading program). 'Raz-Kids' is just simply another resource that provides your child with the opportunity to further enrich sight-reading and reading comprehension skills. Periodically,  your child may also be exploring 'Raz-Kids' here at school during classroom literacy centres!  Glued onto the front page of your child's agenda, is their username and password information. We encourage you to explore this worthwhile and fun resource with your child at home. If you have any questions, please feel free to write a note in your child's agenda! 

Week of October 16th - 20th

Highlights from last week

3D Shapes 

We learned a great song by Teacher Tipster about 3D shapes. Ask your child to try to sing it to you. The beginning goes like this, "Sphere, Sphere, what's your clue? I'm like a soccer ball you kick with your shoe!" We did a shape hunt in our room, collecting objects that were the following shapes: sphere, cylinder, rectangular prism, and cube. We are also learning about the pyramid and triangular prism but those are more difficult to find examples of. We have begun to learn about the properties of the shapes (faces, vertices and edges). On Friday, we learned how to count all the faces of each shape and recorded it in our Shape Booklet.

Our Grade 1 students had a blast shopping at the Scholastic Book Fair. Thank you parents for helping your children choose a book with your child. 

Our students are loving the Read Across Canada program. Ask them to try to sing the song we all sing when a student moves provinces. Remember you can read to or with your child if they are still at the pre-reading stage. Ask them to look for words they recognize (sight words), and use the strategies we are learning in our class (Eagle Eye, Stretchy Snake, Lips the Fish).

THE GLOBAL READ ALOUD 2017

We are participating in the Global Read Aloud this year. Grade 1 students from across the globe are reading a different book by Mem Fox each week. We have read 'Koala Lou' and 'Possum Magic' so far. This coming week we will be reading 'Whoever We Are'. We have been contributing to padlets, exploring different aspects of the books, and connecting with students from all over the world. After reading 'Koala Lou', we shared animals we see in our area and read other class posts about animals living in their areas. Ask your child about the animals living in or near Delray Beach, Florida. We are also participating in a postcard exchange and have been paired up with a class from Wisconsin. We created postcards this week by gluing on pictures of Canadian symbols and geographical features. On the back we wrote about our favourite part of 'Possum Magic' and drew a picture. The students did a FANTASTIC job on this. Here is a glimpse of their work:

Samaritans on the Digital Road

We have been working through our 'Samaritans on the Digital Road' unit which contains a series of 5 lessons whose goal is to help students to develop digital citizenship skills. The lessons were developed and built around the 'Parable of the Good Samaritan' that Jesus told which teaches us how we must treat one another. Today's lesson was all about how each of us can create a positive digital footprint. These are a few highlights from our follow-up discussion about how each of us can create a positive digital footprint:

'You can donate to on-line charities' (Abby)

'Make videos with positive words that make people feel happy' (whole class)

'You can help people by getting them the stuff they need' (Omar)

'Follow the Golden Rule when you are using the Internet' (Evan)

'Use digital for good things.... like setting up a playdate with your friend' (Scott)

'Use the computer to learn and do homework' (Christian)

Top 5 kids who got FAMOUS for KINDNESS!

Week of October 10th- 13th

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

IMPORTANT DATES:

TERRY FOX RUN tomorrow on TUESDAY OCT. 10th at 10:45am (Rain date is October 11th). Students can wear RED and WHITE for our Terry Fox Run if they would like to.

BOOK​ ​FAIR!​ Students can purchase books during school hours, on Thursday​ ​October​ ​12th,​ ​and​ ​Friday​ ​October​ ​13th​. Our class has been scheduled to go on THURSDAY OCT. 12th. We have our viewing day on Weds. Oct. 11th. Parents are welcome both days between 8:30am and 9:00am.

Check out what we did on Thursday afternoon as our STEM activity (Science-Technology-Engineering-Math)! Lots of fun.

Week of October 2nd to October 6th

FALL has officially arrived and we are happy to see it here in Grade 1. Our classroom is back to being a comfortable place to be.

REMINDERS:

THANKSGIVING MASS is on Wednesday, October 4th at 10:45. All are welcome.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 6th is a PD Day - no school for students. Enjoy your extra long Thanksgiving weekend!

TERRY FOX forms went home on Friday. Please sign, return and donate a toonie if you can. We need to have the forms signed so that students can participate.

We learned a new reading strategy last week: STRETCHY SNAKE. Ask your children how to stretch out an unknown word sound by sound!

We will be wrapping up our patterning this week and focusing on Geometry - 3D & 2D shapes for the next month. We will continue to work on Number Sense & Numeration daily - looking for patterns in the 100 chart, printing and recognizing our numerals and number words, counting by 1s and 10s to 50, and adding single digit numbers. 

Last week we tried our first whole group word problem. Ask your child about how they found out how many pockets we were all wearing on Friday!