SPORTS DAY!

We have our Sports day on FRIDAY- PLEASE ENSURE ALL STUDENTS WEAR THEIR HOUSE T-SHIRTS! We look forward to seeing you all on Friday and joining in all the fun the PE. Department has planned for us!

WEDNESDAY- is DRESS up/DRESS down DAY!!!

Literacy Day

We celebrated literacy day on wednesday and I am proud that all our kiddies did a super job. They wrote stories, read at the readers theatre, and had lots of other activities... here are a few pictures before we started on our afternoon of literacy fun on Wednesday!

Social Studies-

We continue to discuss families, rule and consequences.. a little bit of homework this week for Social Studies- more to come on that.... we are discussing family trees and we would like each child to make a family tree and present it to our class. A letter will come home on Tuesday expanding on this! 

Science - Plants and Our New Unit- MATERIAL PROPERTIES!

We have completed our unit on Plants and it is wonderful to see what students have learned. We played a fun game this week- I brought in vegetables and students guessed what part of the plant these vegetables came from and what they were called. We had many risk takers who tired celery and beetroots. I am very proud of all our RISK TAKERS! 

Our new Unit in Science is- MATERIAL PROPERTIES- What are Materials, What are things made of? Naming and Sorting Materials and lots of other fun activities we will be doing over the course of this unit. If you would like to come and and join our class as we experiment, please let me know. 

Maths

As we review our number sense- addition and subtraction problems every day, students have been introduced to the terms great than, lesser than and equal to. We have discovered that Ally the Alligator like eating big numbers only! 

This week we also discovered that we can share things equally- especially chocolate and students have been introduced to the concept of division. It has been fun learning and figuring out patterns even when we share things equally! 

Oh what a busy week we've had! LANGUAGE ARTS

Happy Sunday everyone!

I hope the weekend has been a restful one for all of you. We have had an extremely busy week this past week. We have been learning a lot of new things as well as reviewing all that we have learned. 

LANGUAGE ARTS

We have been discussing word choice and how we choose the right words to express what we are writing. We discuss verbs and are learning how to use "strong" verbs when we write. We have been doing lots of short paragraph writing as well as discussing what recounts are. 

We went on a picnic last Thursday and will be writing a recount about it this week. 

As students are beginning to express themselves better and better each day, from Tuesday I will be asking them to write about their ORT books they have read. Please ensure that they bring back their ORT books to school so that we can read and write about them. This is a wonderful way to help our kiddies express their thoughts and be reflective students. As we write everyday we continue to focus on Capital Letters, Punctuation, Spacing and familiarising ourselves with our basic sight words. It is absolutely amazing how writing everyday is helping each student express themselves more clearly and thoughtfully. Here is a small check list that helps students remember if they are using these conventions! 

Basic Writing Check list!

As part of paragraph and recount writing, as we have our "show and share", each student is encouraged to being in a favourite book they have read and tell us about it. What is the name of the book? What is the story about? Who is in the Story? Why is this your favourite book? What is the best part of the story? We use the same format to write out paragraphs every day- this maybe something that you may like to talk about at home with your child as they read their ORT/Bug Club Books. 

If students would also like to write at home, please let me know, I can send in a small book in which they write about the books they have read and answer a reading prompt! 

We usually use a writing template that looks something like this- 

Here is a link if you would like to download this template and if your child would like to practice their writing at home! 

Writing Paragraph Template

OUR PICNIC PICTURES

OUR WRITING PICTURES 

Working on Word Choice!

Paragraph Writing

Brainstorming what "Word Choice" is... 

8 Days of School in 2014 so far!

Hello Everyone!

Unfortunately I was unable to post my usual weekly posts last week, so this week, there are lots and lots of pictures and information that you may already have.

It has been wonderful to have all our students back with us and I have loved hearing about your winter holidays. Everyone is excited about being back in school have the kids have come back refreshed and ready to take on more learning.

FIRST DAY BACK AT SCHOOL PICTURES

We did not waste anytime when we got back and went straight to work. It is amazing how each child is ready for the challenge and is working harder. My favourite part of this term is January and February because this is when we as teachers can see how much each child has learned and assimilated. It is amazing to watch each child move from a concrete concept and apply it to an abstract concept. Students are reading more, writing more and are beginning to become more confident when asking for clarifications.

In Language Arts, we have begun working on Recounts- what recounts are the the special ways we write recounts. We are also focusing on Capital Letters, Full Stops/ Periods at the end of a sentence, adding details and our feelings. We are writing a small paragraph everyday about the book we read, this will become a longer piece as students become more confident. We will also be working of word choice and how to choose the right word to express exactly what we mean.

In Maths, we are reviewing number, and this week and the past week we have been working on number patterns, and skip counting. Students are getting the hang of it and are finally beginning to see patterns in numbers :-)

In Science, we have had wonderful discussions about trees and plants, the differences and similarities and how they help us. We learnt about PHOTOSYNTHESIS and I am sure most students have gone home and sung the PHOTOSYNTHESIS song, we have also learned about what it means, as well as been introduced to the word CHLOROPHYLL! Big words for Grade 1, however, they love the challenge and are excited to learn more and more.

In Social Studies, we have been discussing our families, the jobs Moms and Dads do as well as how we help our families. Please watch out for a letter towards the end of next week about personal stories- a little homework not just for your child :-)

We have begun our BUG CLUB reading program and so far I have heard that the kids love to read online. If you cannot get into your account, try adding a space after your child's name and before the number, that usually does the trick. I can now track what students are reading and how they are comprehending not just at school, but at home.

We have had an assembly and we have a cross country run where we all did very well.

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead and as always if you have concerns and questions please let me know via the homework diary or email.

Happy Saturday to all of you and I look forward to seeing your children on Monday!