Thursday, April 2, 2024

Upcoming Dates

FRIDAY                                    Good Friday - NO SCHOOL

April 16                                     Grade 1 Celebration - 1:30pm

April 22                                     Grade 1 Field Trip to Confluence Historic Site - Carter/Burch/Larmer

April 23                                     Grade 1 Field Trip to Confluence Historic Site - Watson/Fell

April 23                                     Grade 2 & 3 Spring Concert

April 24                                     Non-Instructional Day - NO SCHOOL

April 29                                     Fun Lunch - Coco Brooks

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

**Highlighted areas are the ones we are either focusing on right now, or the ones that they need the most support with.

- 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). 
• Have them answer inferencing questions that make them think about how the character feels or how their actions impact others to help them expand their understanding. 

- 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
• Counting money (especially coins) is a great way to practice skip counting. 
• Adding and Subtracting decimals
• using money to pay for items, whether in a store or pretending at home is a great way for kids to practice adding and subtracting decimals in a hands on, practical way. 
• Multiplication and Division facts 

- 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. 
• Persuasive writing: have your child write about something they want, and ask them to give at least three reasons why they should get it, and have them add lots of detail to their writing. 
• Writing letters, focusing on formatting and expanding ideas. 

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Literacy:

- Here is the link to the website where we have been listening to the podcast, incase your child has missed an episode and wants to catch up: https://gzmshows.com/shows/mars-patel/#listen 

- We finished listening to the story podcast, The Unexplainable disappearance of Mars Patel, and made a series finale page that allowed students to rate the podcast series out of 5 stars, and then draw or write about their favourites moments throughout the series. 

- We have begun reading the Wild Robot, and will be completing a novel study comprehension task in our new journals every few chapters throughout the book. We have read the first 10 chapters and have learned new vocabulary that is used to add detail to the story, and identified synonyms for each vocabulary word. 

- On Monday, we played the game 2 truths and a lie, where each student wrote 2 truths about what they did on Spring break, and one lie. Then they went around the room to read their sentences aloud to different partners, and their partners had to guess which one was the lie. 

- We have begun working on our story writing, and will be working on our stories for the next week. We focused the last 2 days on brainstorming ideas and planning the beginning, middle, and end of our stories. Next week, we will write the beginning, middle, and end in detail and then begin editing and typing out our stories. 

Math:

- We continued our Measurement unit and learned about perimeter, to practice this skill students went around the room and measured various items before calculating their perimeter in cm. The following day, we did a similar activity for estimation, where each student described an object and estimated its length, then gave their book to a partner and their partner had to go back to that same item and measure its exact length to determine if their partner had accurate estimates. 

- We have been beginning every math lesson with our warm-up brochures, where students practice their multiplication facts for each grouping. So far, they have completed the warm-ups for multiples of 1, 2, 3, 4 most of them have finished for multiples of 5 and 6, and some have begun multiples of 7, 8, and 9. 

Science/Social:

- We have been learning about the natural resources in Alberta, how our city/province/country is governed, and how those governing bodies manage our natural resources and promote economic development. We also looked at Calgary throughout its history, and discussed why the Indigenous people of this area, along with the European settlers, would have chosen this area to build communities because of the natural resources we have here. When we discussed the natural resources, we also briefly looked at how each of the resources are processed for us to use, including water treatment plants (they were not happy to learn that the water we drink could have been the same water in a bathroom once upon a time!)

Art:

- We made origami bunny baskets to practice fine motor skills, and I had each student colour an egg which was then taped to their chair. Their job was to sit on the egg all week so that it could hatch, and on Monday they will get to crack open their eggs to see the surprise inside!

Health:

- We have been learning about Manners and how they are an important tool to communicate to others that we are kind and respectful. Today, we connected that to positive relationships with others, and discussed what it means to be a good friend to others. The class got into small groups, and they each got a giant piece of paper and markers to draw a person, and write the different qualities that a good friend has. I then put all of their ideas into a word cloud generator, which gave us a poster with all of the qualities of a good friend. The biggest words on our word cloud were Trust, Kind, Smart, Helpful, and Funny!