Our Learning This Week - Feb 22-26

 We had a tremendous time with our learning this week and accomplished so much.  We can't wait to share everything with you.

In Language Arts, we began writing our circle stories that we planned last week.  Students were challenged to find more than one reason that their main character was unhappy for the beginning of the story.  Students are working to add details and descriptive words to their work.

In Math, we practiced our "counting on" strategy for addition and we are all able to successfully use it to calculate addition equations.  We worked this week on adding one and two just by counting quickly in our heads.  Learning these strategies helps us to be quicker with adding number and helps us to develop our mental Math.

As we have been working on friendship skills, Pink Shirt Day was the perfect opportunity to share ways to be kind, support friends, and prevent bullying.  Students all chose a caring message and helped us to create a large pink shirt as a class.  Each child had his or her picture taken with the shirt and we will put these in their visual journals.

In our Social Studies work about belonging to our community, we decided to take advantage of the amazing weather and do a walk around Tuscany.  With the recent snow, we chose to take our snowshoes along and use them to explore some field and forest areas in the green spaces close to our school.  We also went to the ridge path to look out at the view of the mountains, the river, the ski hill and even the downtown.  It prompted some great discussions about what is our community and how can we take care of the special place where we live.

Our Science work has been focused around the signs of winter and how plants, trees, and animals survive in the cold.  Friday is our virtual assembly day and it was room 152's turn to share, so we made a video about how animals cope with winter.  Here is the link to the video for you to enjoy.

In Art this week we explored using plasticine as a medium for making pictures.  We modeled our work after the Canadian author and illustrator Barbara Reid.  Our snowman pictures are already on display in the hallway by our classroom.

I noticed that many families have not yet had a chance to participate in the Celebration of Learning.  Please make time to get into the Google Classroom and get the directions for this activity.  The kids are excited to share their stories with you.

Upcoming

Monday March 1 - Home Reading Exchange   - The start of Read-a-Thon

Thursday March 4 - Home Reading Exchange

Saturday March 6 - Booking for Parent Conferences (Conference dates March 11th and 12th)

Our Work This Week - February 16-19

 We were all very happy to see our friends after the extra long weekend and were eager to dive into our work.  Here is what we got up to this week:

In Language Arts, we have been working on assessing our writing so that we can see what our next steps will be.  Students enjoyed journaling about their weekend and practiced responding to a storytelling video that I made.  They will be able to demonstrate what they know during the Celebration of Learning.  This is now posted on the google classroom.  We hope that everyone will have time to participate in this activity some time in the coming week.

In Science we are looking closely at the signs of winter.  We have had lots to notice these past few weeks.  Students are working in their visual journals to record what they know in pictures and in words.  We are also reviewing what animals do in winter in preparation for sharing our work at next week's on-line assembly.  Your child has chosen an animal to share and has 2-4 sentences to learn.  Please help your child practice this over the weekend as I will be filming them next week.  I will create a movie for the assembly and will post it on the blog next week.

In our Math, we have been working on strategies for adding numbers.  This week we have been working on using a number line or a number path to "count on". Students look at equation and decide which is the higher number.  They then start at that number and "count up" with the other number to get to a solution.  In grade one, students are expected to be able to add numbers for values from 0 to 20.  Of course, I am also extending this work for students who have already mastered working with these values.  They are working with the numbers from 0 to 100 with the same strategy.

Of course our big Math event this week was today, our 100th Day of School!  We took 22 minutes with 22 students to see how many paper chain (10 links long) that we could make.  We then counted by 10 to see how many we made all together.  We had 4 chains of 100 and 65 more.  We discovered that we could count to 465!  We had a great time counting everyone's collections that they brought in.  I will quarantine these items over the weekend and return them on Monday.  We also did an amazing art project.  We drew ourselves as we are today and we drew ourselves how we thought we would look at age 100.  The kids had a great time looking at images of seniors and trying to envision what they would look like when they got to be 100.

We finished up our Valentine's art from last week, but we are not leaving this work behind.  I have noticed, as I am sure that all of you have, that some of our students are having some issues with friends.  I have been spending an increasing amount of time dealing with students who say "He is being mean" or "My friend isn't playing with me" or "She is not being fair'.  Social issues seam to be coming up in many classes with a variety of kids, so I know that my students are not alone in needing help to develop socially.  I believe that that a part of this is the limitations that we have put in place due to Covid and how we have had to make changes in how we normally interact with each other.  I will be focusing on social interactions more intentionally in the coming weeks and will post the area of focus on the blog so that you can discus them with your child at home.

This week we talked about how to make sure that others are included in the games that we play.  We did some role playing about how to ask someone to play with us and how to find friends who want to play the game we like.  We also talked about how to tell someone that you don't like this game and could we play something else.  We can either choose who we play with or what game we want to play, but we can't do both.  Our friends have the right to choose a different game if they want.  We also worked on the ideas that just because our friend doesn't want to play with us right now, it doesn't mean that he or she is not our friend.

The building of friendship skills goes hand in hand with empathy.  I plan to do a number of activities around these concepts in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Upcoming

February 19 - 26 - Celebration of Learning available in the google classroom

Monday February 22 - Home Reading Exchange

Wednesday February 23 - Neighbourhood walk in the afternoon

Thursday February 24 - Home Reading Exchange and Pink Shirt Day

Friday February 25 - Library Exchange

Our Short, but Busy Week - Feb 8-10

 We had a very eventful week with our wrap up for Carnaval.  Sadly, we were not able to get outside as much as we would have liked, but we did make it out for just a few minutes every day.  Thank you so much for making sure that your children were dressed and ready to participate.

We learned about the traditional voyageur sashes called the Ceinture Flechee. 

The traditional one from Quebec dates back more than 300 years and is red with

colourful weavings.  There is also an Alberta sash that is blue with red and white

woven in.  Students created their own patterned paper sash.

Of course, students were very excited about the building with ice blocks.

  Thank you so much for all your work creating blocks of ice and making sure

that they made it to the school so that we could build with them.  We made the

base and Ms. Hamm's class added onto it to make a great structure. 

kids sitting in front, some sitting behind, and some standing back. 

We will go out next week and add some more snow and water so that our

structure is more sturdy.

Because it has been so cold, we decided that we should do some

procedural writing about "How to Get Ready to Go Outside in Winter. 

First we acted it out, then we drew our pictures, and then we did our

step by step writing.

For our Valentine's activity, we read stories about kindness and friendship. 

Students chose a special word to be the frame around their heart and then

created a picture demonstrating the word.  We are learning how to use speech

bubbles to help communicate our ideas.  We did not quite finish this, so we

will be working on it next week.

We have been counting the days of school as a way to explore the numbers

from one to one hundred.  Next Friday, February 19th will be our 100th Day of School.

 As part of our celebration for the 100th day of school, we would like each student to

bring a collection of small items.  We are asking for them to create a collection of 50 to 90 objects.

They can record the size of their collection in their show and share journal. 

It will need to be at school no later than Tuesday, February 16th so that we can

quarantine the items prior to our 100th day activities. On the 100th day of school

(Friday February 19), they will trade their collection with someone else in class. 

The challenge will be to accurately count the collection and then figure out how

many more they would need to get to 100.  Here are some ideas of small things

your child could use to create their collection.

(Please do not use edibles as someone might be tempted to change

the number of objects in the collection;-)

-lego pieces

-paper clips

-coins

-buttons

-small toys

-cards

-markers or pencils

Please ensure that the collection is in a Ziploc bag labelled with your child’s name.

In addition to our counting collection challenge, we are encouraging

students to participate in some Math challenges at home and bring one

into class to share.  Please look at the bingo card below and choose which

activities you would like to try with your child.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful long weekend and a very Happy Family Day!

Upcoming

February 11-15 - No School for Students (Teacher's Convention and Family Day)

Tuesday February 16 - Home Reading Exchange - 100th Day Collections due

Thursday February 18 - Home Reading Exchange

Friday February 19 - 100th Day of School - Bring projects to share - Library Exchange

Carnaval and Other Things - February 1-5

 Our second annual Carnaval De Tuscany has gotten off to a great start!  We have been busy celebrating our winter culture by participating in a variety of outdoor activities.  We have also been immersing ourselves in French Canadian culture through language, music, and art experiences.  Here are some details about our work:

For our Phys. Ed, we have been doing some great outdoor experiences including, Scoots, Snowshoes and some sliding.  We also started our skipping unit in the gym.

In Science, we continued to learn about how animals adapt to the cold of winter.  We learned about what animals in our neighbourhood are still active in winter and what they do in order to survive. Students recorded their favourite active winter animal to record and wrote in their own words what adaptations the animals have or behaviors that they use to be successful in our cold climate.

Students have had a great time learning about some of the traditions associated with winter Carnaval.  We played the musical spoons, and made our effigies of Bonhomme.  We thoroughly enjoyed the music of Folklofolie and have been listening to a variety of french music in class.  

Our writing this week was centered around recording information in Science and on reflecting on our personal experience of snowshoeing.  Students are becoming much more confident in their ability to write complete sentences and are working to be more descriptive in their work.

Upcoming

Monday February 8 - Palais du Glass - Please bring your ice blocks in the morning and leave them on the north side of the outdoor classroom near the sign for my class - Home Reading exchange

Wednesday February 10 - Wear Red and Read - Students are encouraged to wear red or pink clothing and to bring a favourite book from home to share with the class - Students are not to bring paper valentines to school - we will be creating positive messages to display at school

Thursday -Friday - February 11 & 12 - Teacher's Convention - No school for students

Monday February 15 - Family Day - No School for Students

Friday February 19 - 100th Day of School!