Conference info

A quick reminder that student led conferences will take place Thursday March 21 from 3:30-7:30 and Friday from 8am-10am. There is no sign up required. Please make sure to bring your child as this is a chance for them to show you their learning.

This week Room 15 and 16 finished up with our artist in residence. The students learned a lot of new sketching skills and we are excited to apply them to future projects.
We continue to do 3 Act math tasks where students are shown a video or picture and share what they notice and wonder. We discuss the math possibilities in the video, often coming up with a question. The second act provides students with information so they can apply a strategy to solve the problem. Students are working on representing their strategies and explanations with words, pictures, objects or equations.
Room 16 worked with unifix cubes to build towers and comparing the 'difference' between 2 numbers.
We also played some sight word games, boggle (room 16) and met our literacy groups this week. 
We are wrapping up our community building projects and they will be ready to share during conferences next week!

Scientific discoveries and literacy centers

Scientific Discoveries

This afternoon the students had a chance to explore and make some interesting observations! They were presented with a bowl of a white mystery material. After a discussion about matter, students were challenged to explore the material, describe how it felt and then guess what it might be. After some exploration time, 50ml of water was poured into their bowls. Mix, mix, mix! 

At the end, we had a discussion about what the students discovered. Ask your child what they discovered. What was the mystery material? 

Literacy Centers 

The Grade 1 students have been busy improving their literacy skills by engaging in new literacy groups. Here is some information about what each group has been doing: 

Mrs. Pittman's group

Mrs. Pittman’s group is focusing on story writing. We began with generating ideas about what we can write about. Students focused on likes, interests, hobbies and experiences to create their ‘What can I write about page.’ We discussed how authors write about what they know and what they experience. Students created a plan and are working on their ‘sloppy copy.’ We will focus on beginning, middle and ending  and read the beginning of different stories to help students see that often characters and the setting is introduced and it doesn’t always have to start with ‘Once upon a time’ or ‘One day.’ We will focus on adding more content, detail and description to our work as we edit and revise. We will practice making more complex sentences, spelling patterns, word families, sight words and punctuation as mini lessons during our writing process. We plan to spend a significant amount of time on this piece and students are excited to publish their work. When our stories are complete, we will move into non-fiction texts and continue to apply new concepts we have learned.

Ms. Fraser's group

Ms. Fraser's group is working on sentence structure and making our writing easy to read. We are currently focusing on including finger spaces (spaghetti) and punctuation (meatballs). In the coming weeks we will focus on proper letter formation and sticking our letters to the line, using interesting and descriptive words in our sentences and exploring different kinds of punctuation. Each day we have four tasks that we complete: 

1 - practice using a variety of sentence starters on whiteboards (I see, I like, I can)

2 - read a story and answer comprehension questions 

3 - write about a picture prompt - students look at a picture and write sentences using the starters I see, I think and I wonder 

4 - share our writing with the group - students have the chance to read their work aloud to the group 

Mrs. McCaw's group 

Mrs. McCaw’s group is exploring letter sounds through the Jolly Phonics Program. We are working on blending and segmenting letter sounds through the use of songs, actions and visuals. We are also learning about how to form and read sentences by matching sentences to pictures and creating sentences with common scientific vocabulary. We will continue to practice being independent writers with the help of our Jolly Phonics sound chart. A small copy of the sound chart will be sent home. Have your child tell you about the letter sounds we have learned so far and play with blending and segmenting sounds.

Miss V and Mrs. Crowe's group

In our literacy group we have been working on research projects. We are researching animals who live in our community or extended community like: wolves, squirrels, and bats. The group has been learning about categorizing information, asking questions like a scientist, and using tools in non-fiction literature to answer those questions. We will be making final projects in the coming weeks to share with our peers. 

Upcoming Conferences

Student-led conferences are coming up on March 21st from 3:30pm-7:30pm and March 22nd from 8am-10am. This will be an opportunity for you child to show you what they have been learning at school. There is no booking system for these conferences, you are welcome to come anytime between 3:30 and 7:30pm on March 21st and 8 and 10 am on the 22nd. This is not an opportunity for a one-on-one meeting with your child's teacher as there may be multiple families in the classroom at a time. Since these conferences are a chance for your child to demonstrate their learning, it is important that they attend conferences with you.

New literacy groups

Today all of the Grade 1 students started new literacy groups. Students will be working with different teachers 2 days a week, learning a variety of literacy skills. They will then have the opportunity to share what they have been learning with their classmates.

This afternoon, the students continued working on their stop motion projects. They are coming along incredibly well! We are excited to share the finished products with you at conferences in March.

Reminder:
No school for students on Friday, March 1st

Pink Shirt Day

Tomorrow is Pink Shirt Day. The pink shirt reminds us of the importance of kindness and empathy toward others. If your child has any item of pink clothing (doesn't have to be a shirt), they are encouraged to wear it.

Friday- PD Day. No school for students.

Today students made a storyboard for their stop motion projects. They created an animal character out of clay and a background. Next step is building their invention and use stop motion to show how it helps their animal.

When we were at Bow Habitat last week, the students saw a beaver lodge and had some questions about beavers. Today we watched a video explaining what a dam is and how it can change the environment. We also learned some interesting facts about Beavers. Ask your child what stood out to them from the video.

Stop Motion

Room 15 and 16 started off this chilly Monday by becoming familiar with the Stop Motion program on the iPads. They created a clay character and had to show it performing an action like walking or kicking a ball. Students are working on keeping the iPad still and only moving their character a little bit for each frame.

Last week we read a story called 'Make Way For Ducklings' and discussed how the ducks caused problems for the people by causing traffic jams and how people caused problems for the ducks by feeding them and nearly running them over with bikes and scooters. Today we discussed animals that we coexist with in Calgary. We talked about problems that people and animals encounter when sharing a space and students brainstormed inventions to help an animal. Some ideas include putting sensors on the side of roads so when animals step on them lights and sirens warn people they are crossing, using a robot squirrel to assist other squirrels to cross the road safely, bridges, tunnels and sensors on cars. Students will build their invention and create a stop motion movie, showing how an animal can use it.

Room 16 brought home field trip forms for the Glenbow trip on March 6. Please complete and return them. Thank you to the 4 volunteers able to come with us.

Today was a blue day and it looks like a cold week but we may be outside so make sure your child comes prepared.

Bow Habitat

We had a busy week with offsite activities.

During our trip to Bow Habitat Station we:
-learned about fish senses including some scientific words including lateral line, otolith and nares
-created a habitat for a fish (ask your child the 4 things this included)
-used our sense of touch to figure out the mystery objects in the boxes
-saw some prehistoric fish (sturgeon)
-did a smell scavenger hunt to see if we could find our way home like salmon do to lay eggs
-explored the museum and saw other animal habitats including a beaver lodge and marsh

Most of our writing this week was based on our trips to Fort Calgary and Bow Habitat as students reflected and connected their ideas and experiences back to our focus of community, past and present and citizenship.

Students have been doing some measurement and sorting during building activities and we continue to practice basic facts and number sense using cards and games like 'guess my number.'

Here are a couple examples of mystery number games you could play at home to help develop number sense. Finding a hundreds chart to use as a visual will be helpful to have and kids can eliminate numbers as they get more clues.

1. My number is between 0 and 100
2. It is a 2 digit number
3. It is odd
4. The 2 digits add up to 9.
5. What could the possible answers be?

Another option is have your child ask questions that you can answer 'yes' or 'no'
Eg. Is it greater that .....
Is it even....
Is it less than....

Reminder: PD day Friday March 1. No school for students.