Friday November 28th, 2025

Upcoming Dates

December 8                             Picture Retakes

December 11                           Grade 1 Winter Concert - 1:30pm

December 17                           Fun Lunch - Coco Brooks

December 22 - January 2        Winter Break - NO SCHOOL

Recommended areas to focus on at home to help your child:

- Reading every night:

• focusing on fluency (can they read without stopping to sound out each word),  
• expression (changing their tone of voice to match the punctuation and dialogue of characters), and 
• comprehension (ask your child questions about the story while they read or after they finish). 

- Math

• addition and subtraction, both with and without regrouping (this could be practiced using worksheets or card games like addition or subtraction war)
• skip counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, and 25s (a great activity to practice this is by counting coins)
• Reading time on an analog clock. 
• Place Value: expanded form, written form, standard form, and block form 
• 3 digit Addition and Subtraction with regrouping 

- Writing:

• spelling (you could also practice this skill playing games like 'Horse' using a basketball, net, and choosing different words to spell). 
• printing mechanics (are the letters legible, is their a clear size difference with capital and lowercase letters, are their spaces between the words)
• punctuation and capitalization 
• Using nouns, adjectives, and verbs within their writing

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Literacy:

- We reviewed s, l, r, end, and triple blends. We identified these blends within words and practiced writing these skills through word ladders, dictations, word sorts, and word scrambles. 

- We have been learning about opinion writing and have practiced expressing our opinions through Meme of the day writing. Each day we have looked at a meme together as a class, discussed if we think it is funny or not, and then gave reasons for our opinion. Students then went back to their desks and wrote about their opinion on the meme. We will continue with opinion writing next week and learning about formatting our opinions in paragraph form. 

Math:

- We are halfway through our place value unit and completed a midpoint check-in this week. This check-in assessed student understanding of the concepts we have covered so far, including: standard form, expanded form, written form, block form, and comparing numbers. 

- We practiced our 3 digit addition and subtraction skills, with regrouping, by solving standard equations. These concepts were challenging for the class and I recommend practicing these skills at home.  

- We learned a new place value game called Bump, the class had a lot of fun playing this game with a partner and we will continue to play it throughout the year. 

Social:

- We have continued to learn about the 6 different regions in Alberta: the Boreal Forest, Foothills, Grasslands, Rocky Mountains, Parkland, and Canadian Shield and have been working on our independent research booklets. We will be finishing these next week and continue to use our research for our next project. 

Science:

- We continued to learn about fossils and engaged in an activity where the class helped a paleo-artist decipher what an "unknown" dinosaur might look like based on the fossils they found. We looked at pictures of bones that belong to animals we still have today, and made observations about them (ex. if they were a carnivore or a herbivore based on the skulls, did they walk on 2 or 4 legs based on the legs/arms, did they have wings, claws, or flippers based on the arms). Then we compared the bones of animals today to the fossils of the dinosaur and observed what qualities they shared and how that would determine what the dinosaur could have looked like when it was alive. 

- I made some dinosaur research pages and the class made 'Dino Trading Cards' using that information. They were each given Q-cards and wrote the name of the dinosaur on one side with information about their appearance, habitat, and diet. Then used my dinosaur guided drawing pages to drawing the matching dinosaur and background on the blank side of the card. 

Art:

- We have been adding artwork to our work throughout the week, with drawing the meme of the day in our notebooks after writing our opinions, drawing pictures of the regions of Alberta to match our writing, and drawing the dinosaurs on our Dino Trading cards.