It is hard to believe that we have made it to December. This is my favourite time of year in grade one as students are really starting to come into their own. They have come so far in the past three months and it is exciting to celebrate their work.
In Language Arts this week, we have been focusing on extending our writing. We are recognizing that more writing is only better if it gives us more information about the topic we are sharing. Of course, with the holidays approaching, students were eager to write about their family traditions. We had several discussions around what things we do that are similar to our friends and some of our traditions that may be unique. I hope that you and your child had a chance to do some writing together this past week for the Celebration of Learning and to look at our writing rubric. If you have not yet done this activity, please look for it in our Google Classroom. I will leave it posted until December 6th.
In reading, students are excited to be learning new strategies to solve unfamiliar word in their books. We have added a few new ones, so here is what we are currently using:
Students have also been working hard to master their beginning sight word reading lists. Being able to read these high frequency words at a glance really help students develop confidence and fluency in their reading. Practicing the word lists that are in your child's show and share book are a great way to support their learning.
Our Math work this week has been focused around two main concepts. We are continuing our work with counting and representing numbers using our Counting Collections. This week students were organizing their collections so that they could count by 5 or by 10 to make the counting faster and easier. Students are becoming more proficient and independent in this activity and are able to count large groups of objects quickly and accurately. They are also working to develop their understanding of what the numbers mean and how bigger and smaller numbers relate to each other.
Our other Math concept this week has been on sorting and organizing objects. Students are working to recognize attributes and to use this as a way to compare and sort things. We used a variety of buttons and discovered that we could organize them in a number of different ways: by number of holes, by size, by colour, by shape.
This week's Social Studies work had us really looking at how people all around us are unique, but that we all belong. We are working to develop the students' ability to appreciate that people may have physical, emotional, or learning challenges, but that everyone has something to contribute to our community. Every student in Tuscany School is creating a fabric art piece that expresses how they are unique. All of these pieces will be quilted together to make a Belonging Quilt.
In Phys. Ed. we have been working on our dance moves. The students have been getting a good work out and expressing their creativity through dancing to some high energy music. For our Virtual Winter Celebration, students in Mrs. Hamm and Mrs. Batchelor's class have created their own dance to the song "Celebrate" By JoJo Siwa. We will record the students dancing on Tuesday December 8th. Students are asked to dress up to record their "dance party" on that day. We welcome any kind of special party clothes that students can dance around in.
