Friday, December 5th, 2025

***This week I sent each student home with a folder/envelope full of their completed work that was shown during conferences, as well as practice pages for them to do at home to target the areas they need the most support in. 

Our class has earned all of the marbles in their jar again, so we will be having a mini class party on Tuesday. The special activities that they chose are: choose your own seat day, computer lab, bring a stuffie/toy (no bigger than a regular piece of paper) and watching a movie at snack.

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 
• 10 more, 10 less, 100 more, 100 less: Write down a set of numbers and have your child calculate what the number would be if you were to have 10 more, 10 less, 100 more, or 100 less. 
• Skip counting by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, 10s, and 25s

- 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
• Opinion writing: have your child tell you their opinions on things either in verbal or written form, but have them give at least 3 reasons why they have that opinion, and have them further explain each reason as well. 

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Literacy:

- We learned about the panther rule for dividing words up based on their syllable pattern. We also reviewed the magic e rule, soft and hard sounds for c and g, as well as the ck rule. 

- We have continued practicing our opinion writing, and completed a guided writing session about our favourite flavour of pizza so that we could learn the proper formatting for opinion writing (introduction, reason 1, explanation, reason 2, explanation, reason 3, explanation, conclusion). I then edited their drafts so that they could see what they were missing, or what they did well on, before starting their next opinion writing piece independently. They had to chose their favourite season, and explain why they like that season.  

Math:

- We continued with our place value unit and practiced comparing numbers and explaining how we new one number was bigger than the other, we played a more advanced version of the game BUMP going up to the ten and hundred thousands. Then we practiced skip counting, and calculating number changes when you add 10 more, or take away 10 from a number, as well as 100 more and 100 less. This skill was very tricky for some as they learned that adding 10 will change the number in the tens place value spot, but not the other number (we also discussed how this rule does not apply to all numbers). I recommend practicing these skills at home. 

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 dinosaurs and worked in small groups to design our own dinosaur using specific criteria that we learned in previous lessons (how does it move, what does it eat, physical features, what region of Alberta would it have lived in, etc). After answering their guiding questions, they continued to work with their small groups to make a fossil of their dinosaur using air dry clay. The following day, they became paleoartists, and created dinosaur posters that represent what their dinosaur could have looked like when it was alive. They also had to match the background of their poster to the region of Alberta that they said their dinosaur would have lived in. 

Art:

- We made origami mittens at the start of the week, and then made melting snowman out of paper and oil pastels later in the week. When we made the melting snowman, we talked about how the area we live in is unique because of the Chinooks we get in the winter, and how our snowman may melt throughout the season because of the bursts of warm weather!