We had a fun Halloween day! The day flew by but we were busy. Spelling quiz will be on Friday. Students and I have put their words of the week in their agendas. I have not sent home the blue spelling books, at home reading or writing today on account of it being Halloween. They will go home tomorrow. As well, I should note that students did well completing their quizzes, Friday was the first time we did our leveled groups so it can be a bit confusing with them all going on. We will continue to practice! While it may go without saying, I will mention that with the words we have already had on the quizzes, students should be recognizing and reading those words in everyday texts. With the leveled books I am sending home, you will notice a letter at the top of each reader. The goal for this time in the year is to be at B (they get progressively more difficult, with A being the easiest). Keep in mind that students need to be reading this level by themselves and fluently (so it sounds like talking, not like a robot). I monitor this through our daily Guided Reading and other opportunities for reading that we have throughout the day. As well, I will be doing a formal assessment of their skills next week. Instructional level reading also requires appropriate reader response: comprehension and text connections. In Guided Reading, students are grouped according to ability and their group reads books at levels appropriate for them. We also typically do word work connected with the text, comprehension questions and if time allows, a supplementary activity connected to the text. At the bottom of this post, I have included a few pages from a sample B level text for your information. Lastly, there are a pair of girls pants left here. They are H&M, size 7, with a zipper and pocket stitched on but they are just stretch pants. If they sound like your daughter's, please let them know as no one knew today.
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Today we had Writer's Cafe to celebrate the end of our first writing unit. Students have brought home the books they wrote over the past three weeks. Please take some time to look through them together. They worked so hard on them and are so proud of their hard work. As am I!!!! A big goal in Grade One writing is ideas. It is often hard to get kids to write anything as they worry about spelling or they just have no ideas. With this in mind, the accomplishment of writing several pages, especially at this point in Grade 1 is huge. It is also impressive that their books centre around an idea, usually students find it hard to grasp the idea of a book being about the same idea, not whatever they are thinking about that day. Please remember to have them bring back their books Monday so we can add them to our class library.
Thank you for working on the At Home Writing with them, I enjoy reading their entries!!! Reminder that tomorrow is our spelling quiz, please have your child return their blue book.
In Math, we have been practicing counting backwards from 20, starting and stopping at different points. Also, just a friendly reminder about Halloween on Monday (orange note from yesterday). Tomorrow we will be doing our Writer's Café to celebrate completing our books. They have been working on their books for a few weeks, have done their own spelling, drawing and ideas. It will be exciting for them to share their accomplishments with their peers. We will send their books home for you to look at tomorrow or next week but they need to be returned to school so they can be in our class library. Students have brought home a Math outcome checklist for our current unit. This checklist encompasses the entire unit. I have highlighted the outcomes we have already worked on. I have also ticked off an informal evaluation for your child. Please take some time to look at it and discuss with your child. As well, it would be helpful if you could work on these skills at home. We will continue to work on them in Math centers.
You will notice throughout the year that I don’t tend to send home as much concrete Math work as I do for Language Arts. This is for a variety of reasons, one being because it is much easier and more accesible for Math skills to be worked on informally at home than finding, say an instructional-leveled book. Below are a couple of examples from the checklist I sent home today. -I can fill in missing numbers on a number line. This can be done out loud, driving in the car, over supper; it can also be done on paper by simply writing out 10, 11 __, 13 -I can estimate a quantity of objects. Grab a handful of something (e.g. forks) and ask your child to estimate (what I call a good guess). I will try and send home ideas throughout the year but if you are ever stuck for ideas, you can do an Internet search or ask me. I am happy to help!!! We continue to work on Zones of Regulation in class, we have been watching Inside Out bit by bit to support what students have been learning. This week, students will be learning strategies to help them cope with each zone. Please see the agenda for the spelling book, At Home Writing duotang (purple) and note (yellow). I have also sent home the reading pouches with new books if your child brought it back. There are a variety of games, activities and strategies that can be used when practicing spelling words. We started playing hangman in class with kids' names to begin working on letter and sound awareness. Now that we are working on sight and pattern words, we can begin to use it for our Friday quizzes. It is also sometimes good to break words into sounds and parts we know. (eg. we did "school" one day and we know two Os go oooo). For pattern words, because they are so similar sometimes I give clues (e.g. the kind of sleep you do during the day, a nap)
Here is picture of a few of the kids playing it on their own today. Our High Frequency Words for spelling quiz this week are: I, so, see, an, and.
Our pattern words are: -ap family (map, sap, cap, gap, clap, trap) and -ad family (mad, sad, dad, pad, glad) We are finishing up our current unit in Writer's Workshop, students have done very well with spelling and writing their books! We will have Writer's Café on Friday and the students' books will then move into our class library. Tomorrow I will be sending home an At Home Writing activity (some took it today!) and I will also be sending home an update on your child's progress in Math. Please remember to send back the blue spelling quiz books as soon as possible. We will need them for Friday.
Today in Math, we worked on 1 and 2 more and less than a number. For example -1 less than 18 ____ -2 more than 10 ____ Students had a very nice surprise for me after Phys Ed today! If you have a moment, ask them what it was. I have never had a class do such a thing for me before, I loved it- it was so sweet of them!! We continue to work on our short vowel word families –at and –an. If you are having trouble thinking of some at home when practicing, I usually do a Google Image search of, for example, -at family words and lists will come up.
Students also continue to work on learning to spell the first five words of our High Frequency List. Students need to be able to read (in texts as well) and spell these words consistently. In Math, students are working on counting quantities accurately as well as several strategies to help with counting, moving objects into a line to count, counting out loud or if it’s on paper drawing a little checkmark or dot on the object so as to not get mixed up. Students are also working on starting and stopping counting at different numbers. This week we begin our spelling lists or sound reviews. Based on the sound quizzes, work in class and a simple spelling assessment a few students did earlier this month, all students will work on the Grade One word list Regina Catholic School uses. Please check your child’s agenda for the spelling list. I have also sent challenge words with a few students. If it is too much for your child to learn in one week, no problem! They do need to have Grade One words “down pat” first. Please take time during the week to practice the list. While your child may be able to read the words with little to no problem, spelling is usually a bit harder for students to pick up. The spelling lists will typically include five high frequency words as well as pattern words (word families e.g. hat, mat, sat). The lists should be coming home Mondays, so please watch for them in the agenda. We will then have a spelling quiz Thursday or Friday. We will be taking various opportunities throughout the week to practice the words. As with the sound quizzes, I will be keeping track of which words students have learned. Students will keep this list in their center boxes so that they may practice their current and past lists in centers. For this reason, I will not keep track in their spelling books. Below is the list of the 100 Grade One sight words, should you wish to keep track at home. Please let me know if you have any concerns or questions. Reminder to please have your child bring 16 of something for our Math lesson tomorrow. See Friday’s post for more information. We are also collecting food for the Food Bank this week. Please check out the list to see what you might be able to bring to help those who might have to go without otherwise. Please note that Peanut butter is NOT on the list and we will not be collecting this item due to allergies within the school.
We had our last sound quiz today! I will send home the blue spelling books Monday. Next week we begin our spelling quizzes.
As part of our Education Week, our school is collecting items for the Food Bank. Please see message below regarding needed items. In Math we are working on number arrangements. Please have your child bring 16 of something on Tuesday. Preferably something small, eg. 16 macaroni noodles, 16 ponytails, 16 dry beans, a picture of 16 something etc! Whatever your child has an interest in. Dear Parents, Next week, we are doing a school-wide collections of food items for the Regina Food Bank. Please check out the list to see what you might be able to bring to help those who might have to go without otherwise. Please note that Peanut butter is NOT on the list and we will not be collecting this item due to allergies within the school.
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