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Dear Parents, Good afternoon! We've made it through the first week together! Time sure flies when you are having fun! Earth Day is coming up on April 22nd! Today we focused on our planet. This morning we read a poem called "Valentine for Earth", by Frances Frost. The poem is centered around what the author loves about our planet. We then talked about the "gifts" that our planet gives to us and "gifts" we can give back to the planet. Ask your child what "gifts" we receive from Earth. We used all of our great ideas to write a journal entry. We are really working on forming letters properly and writing complete sentences. While most of us used a sentence starter to guide our writing, some of us challenged ourselves to create our own sentence starters! Woohoo! We also made sure to use punctuation in our writing. We even have a sound effect for placing periods. Ask me what the sound effect is! After lunch we read a book called, "The Elders Are Watching" by David Bouchard. He will be visiting the school on May 2nd so we want to get to know his work a little better. His book ties in perfectly with Earth Day. Ask your kiddo what the story was about! Afterwards we created art inspired by the illustrations of the book. We used construction paper to create ripped paper landscape. We will finish our project next week. They already look amazing! If you would like to watch a video from David Bouchard where he reads his book, follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pQftknij8k  You may notice your kiddos calming toy coming home today. Unfortunately it didn't have the intended results we were hoping for and became quite the distraction in the classroom. We are going to work on self-regulation strategies next week that we can use as an alternative. My goal is to create the best possible learning atmosphere in our classroom. If there is anything I can do to assist your kiddo, please let me know.
Friendly Reminders:
Have a great weekend! ~Mrs. Stanford
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Dear Parents,
Good afternoon! I am so excited to be joining your lovely children for the rest of the year. Transitions are difficult (for teachers too :) but we have had a couple of great days to start off and it's only going to get better from here! If you have any concerns/questions/comments, please feel free to email me at : jcstanford@cbe.ab.ca or send a message in your child's communication folder (they may be called Smiley folders). I will get back to you as soon as I am able. This morning we discussed as a class how to be a respectful member of our school community and classroom. Afterwards we wrote a journal entry on how we can show respect. Ask your kiddo how they can show respect in the classroom! They had some great answers. We also had our daily literacy time. This afternoon we read a story called, "Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse" by Kevin Henkes. The story is about a little mouse (Lilly) who brings her new toy to school. Unfortunately, her teacher has to take the toy away because she keeps disrupting her classmates. To be able to keep her toy at school, Lilly must learn when an appropriate time is to play with it. This story was particularly timely for our class. We are also learning when the appropriate time is to use our stuffies/comfort toys. Ask your kiddo what an appropriate time is. In math, we are reviewing numbers that add to ten. Some of us worked on adding two numbers together while others challenged ourselves to use three, four or even five numbers to add to ten. Friendly Reminder:
Have a great evening! Hopefully this post has given you some dinner time conversation! ~ Mrs. Stanford Good Afternoon Families and Friends,
Today was day two of Inline Skating and we were so excited!!! We began our day with Literacy Centres. Students continue to work through reading and writing centres. This weeks spelling words are: - kind - many - last - more - light - much - long - must - made - never After Literacy it was time for snack and then outside to enjoy the beautiful Spring weather! Hopefully it lasts. When we came back in we had some 'Ketchup Time.' Students worked on any unfinished work that they have, we updated our art and writing portfolios. After Lunch we continued our Silent Reading Challenge, we are up to 12 minutes!!! It was then time for some Math. We are continuing to challenge ourselves with more complicated Math equations. We are adding up to different numbers over 10. Today we looked at 15! It was then time to clean up and head off to inline skating!!! Ask me how many laps I did!! Students worked so hard :) It was then off to Music to finish off our busy day!! Today was the last day this week for skating, we will have one more lesson next week. Reminders 1) This is my last week in Room 80. Mrs. Stanford will be coming to meet the students this Friday and will then be full time in the classroom come Monday. 2) Fun Lunch this Thursday 3) Thursday is Jersey Day. We are encouraging students to wear a jersey to school to show support for the Humboldt Broncos. This is a cross canada initiative! Students can wear jerseys of any kind. Have a great evening, Room 80 Good Afternoon Families and Friends,
We had another busy day in Room 80. We started our day with some Ketchup time. Students worked on finished stories from Writing yesterday, Birthday cards for a classmates and if they finished they had free choice coloring. After ketchup time we dove right into Science. As we have moved into Spring (although Mother Nature seems to have forgotten this) we have been talking about some things that we notice in Spring with the animals, the weather, and our clothes. Today we brainstormed words that describe Spring to us after reading one fiction book and one non-fiction book. We are so excited for Spring now and can't wait for some warmer weather. After Snack and an Outside break we came in for Literacy Centres. After Literacy Centers it was time for lunch and Silent Reading. We have now made it to 10 minutes of Silent Reading for our challenge! We got a little chatty at the end but we are excited to keep challenging ourselves to independently read. We then moved into Social Studies. We have started to learn about Calgary's past and how it has changed over the years. Yesterday we looked at pictures of Calgary over the years while reading C is for Calgary and today we talked about things that we know about Calgary and things that we wonder. Over the next period of time we will continue to study how Calgary has changed, the people of Calgary and how we fit into Calgary as a Community. It was then time to continue our study of Wassily Kandinsky. We learned about a famous piece Kandinsky created "Kandinsky Circles." We talked about different things that this piece of art reminds us of and then created our own versions based on what we saw in our minds. Ask me about my creation. Reminders 1) Inline Skating begins on Monday. Please ensure you send the form in with your students or email to myself or the office. They need this to participate. Have a great evening, Room 80 Good Afternoon Families,
I hope you had a fabulous spring break. Today we got right back into our normal routine. After morning centers it was time for our writing activity. We began by sharing some of our spring break experiences and then went on to write about what we did. After writing it was time for a quick snack before heading to Gym. We are continuing our basketball unit that we started before break. When we came back from Gym it was time for Literacy Centres. This week we have a new centre, "Story Cubes." At this station you roll three dice that have pictures on them, you then create a story that has to tie together each of those pictures. This challenges students to use their imaginations as well as making connections. Our new words for this week are: - gone - got - had - hard - her - hold - how - if - it's - just I encourage you to work with your students this week on each of their words in addition to their home reading. After Lunch we came back and did some read to self. For the next couple weeks we are going to be working on increasing our reading endurance by adding time to our Silent Reading each day. After Reading we had some Literacy time. As a class we read the book "Night Noises." Students learned a new concept from this book, onomatopeia. We learned the definition of an onomatopeia is "a word that imitates the natural sound of something. It creates a sound effect that mimics the thing described, making the description more expressive and interesting." As a class we then went back through the book and came up with a list of words that are considered an onomatopoeia. It was then time to go an enjoy the sunshine for a recess break. When we came back in we dove right into Math. We began learning a new concept in math, subtraction. We talked about what subtraction means and began to subtract different numbers from 10. Students noticed that there was a pattern that occurred when you subtract numbers that normally add up to 10. They realized that the answer will always equal the number needed to add to 10. For example we know that 4+6=10 therefore 10-4=6 and 10-6=4. We are going to continue working on some basic subtraction skills over the next couple weeks. It was then time to finish our day with Music! IMPORTANT NOTICE 1) Before the break you were sent an email with a risk form attached regarding inline skating. This is a program that will be taking place at school over the month of April. We will have three different sessions taking place on April 9, 10, and 18. Please ensure that you complete and sign the form sent home and return it as soon as possible so your student can participate in the skating. We encourage students to bring their own helmets that are labelled with their name. These helmets can be left at school for the duration to ensure that students have them at the time of the lesson. However, if you are unable to bring a helmet there will be a few that are available at school. Skates will be provided for the students. Have a great evening, Room 80 Good Afternoon Families and Friends,
This morning we started our day with a fun Science lesson that Ms. MacDonald taught us. She taught us about the parts of the ear and how the ear allows us to hear sounds. We then got to sketch the ears in our visual journals. After Snack and Gym it was time for Literacy Centres. After lunch and Silent Reading we began our next artist study. This artist study ties in with what we have been learning about in Science, our senses. We are beginning to learn about Wassily Kandinsky. He was born with a rare condition where he has an extra sense. This extra sense is where Kandinsky is able to hear colour. As a group we learned about what that would be like and how it might shape who we are as artists. As a group we listened to a number of sounds and tried to hear colours with the different sounds. We will continue learning about Kandinsky tomorrow and create our own Kandinsky inspired pieces. Reminders 1) Student led conferences are this week Thursday and Friday Have a great evening, Room 80 Good Afternoon Friends and Families,
It has been a busy week this week in Grade One! We had our final two days of swimming Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. Students did so fantastic and got to celebrate their hard work by going down the slides at the end of their lesson. This week we have also continued our journey in learning about the senses. We began to talk about our sense of sight, why it is important, how it helps us, and what happens if we don't have that sense. Students challenged themselves to draw pictures of things they are familiar with while having their eyes closed!! Students drew a cat, a car, and themselves! We will continue our journey into the senses next week!! Our literacy centres this week have included new stations including word tiles, dinosaur exploration and writing, poetry, word searches, journal writing, and spelling word writing. Students did a great job working through their stations and they are excited to share some of their literacy centre work with you next week. In writing this week we continued to work on our expanding our descriptive word vocabulary. Students were given simple statements that they worked with a partner to expand on using descriptive vocabulary. This week in Gym students continued to work on their basketball skills through a number of games and drills! Reminders 1) You are now able to book conferences for room 80! They will be held next Thursday evening and Friday morning. These conferences will be STUDENT LED. Students have chosen several projects, learning experiences, tasks or challenges that they wish to share with you in the classroom. There will be several families in the classroom at once. Although I will be present, it will be primarily to support the students. I am happy to have a quick chat regarding your child's learning, but if you have major questions or concerns at this point it is best to contact me via email or schedule a one on one appointment at a different time. Thank you! Have a great weekend, Room 80 Good Afternoon Friends and Family,
Today we began our week with Gym. We are starting a fun new unit, Basketball! When we came back we continued learning about communities in Social Studies. We started to learn more about different people and organizations in our community. It was then time for snack and some Math where we continued to work on our skip counting skills. It was then time for literacy. Students have new words this week: - on -so - one -show - out -she - put -saw - run -say Students also have a new word family poem this week. Their rhyming words are -ole words. After lunch and silent reading it was off to Music class. Ask me what we did. When we came back it was time for writing. We continued our Author Study learning about 'Drew Daywalt' we read a new story called "The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors." We compared that story with the other stories we have read by Drew Daywalt. After a beautiful recess we came back in and did some Small Moment Story writing. Reminders 1) Swimming on Wednesday and Thursday. If you are able to volunteer we still need some. Please email me if you would like to volunteer. Have a great weekend, Room 80 Good Afternoon Families and Friends,
Today we started our day with Math. We are working on our skip counting. We practiced counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. We talked about any patterns that we noticed when counting. For example, when counting by 10's it always ends in a 0. Students were then challenged to solve a word problem using their skip counting skills. After Math it was time for snack before heading off to Gym. When we came back from Gym we got right into Literacy Centres. After lunch and Silent Reading it was time for Science. In Science we began talking about Senses. We learned what our 5 senses are and why they are important. For example, if we are out camping it is important to see and hear danger that might be around. Students were then challenged only using their hearing to identify 10 mystery sounds. After listening to all 10 sounds we watched the video to see if we got the sounds correct! Ask me how I did. We began to talk about why it is important to have soundproofing as this will be our next building challenge but we ran out of time and had to get ready to go to Music. Ask me what we did in Music. IMPORTANT NOTICES 1) If you can volunteer for any of the swimming days we still need volunteers, especially male volunteers! Please let me know if you can volunteer even for one day. 2) Swimming tomorrow afternoon. Please send your student with an extra snack as they will be hungry! They also need bathing suit and towel as well as some warm clothes so they don't catch a chill after swimming. 3) If you have not already paid for swimming please ensure you log onto your CBE account to do so!! A reminder has been sent home with your student. Have a great evening, Room 80 Good Afternoon Families and Friends,
Today our day began with gym class. We started a new unit today and learned how to become Ninjas! Ask me some of the games we played! When we came back it was time for some writing. We began our first Author Study. We read the book 'The Day the Crayons Quit' and learned more about the author and the illustrator. We then went and wrote about what our favorite colour is and why. As we continue to learn about this author we will write our own book based on his writing style and the Crayon series. It was then time for a quick snack and body break before diving into this weeks Literacy Centres. After lunch and silent reading we began to talk about what a Community is in Social Studies. We learned about different types of communities, including, where we live and groups that we are a part of. We began to make a list of the different things that we see in our community of Evergreen. After Music we came back and had our afternoon recess before coming back and doing some Math. We used information we had previously collected to answer simple word problems that challenged us to use both our addition and subtraction skills. IMPORTANT NOTICE 1) We are still in need of volunteers for swimming this week and next. We need both male and female volunteers to help. If you would like to volunteer please let me know. We have a list of volunteers who are cleared to help out this year and can check for you! Have a great evening, Room 80 |
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