Language
Daily Five Centres are running smoothly and we’ve begun Guided Reading at the Teacher’s Table. As students rotate, I call small groups to come and read with me – sometimes to focus on reading above their level, sometimes to read just right books to focus on comprehension, but this time we’re focusing on fluency in reading. We've been meeting some of the Trait Mates (the six writing traits) during Writer's Workshop over the past few weeks and so far we've met: Willy: Just like as an artist paints pictures with paint, a writer paints pictures with words. Willy uses colors like red, blue and green, but he also uses chartreuse, and crimson, and cerulean. In the same way, writers use plain words and fancy words. Willy Word Choice reminds writers that they must use just the right words to tell a story and paint a picture in the reader’s mind. Donna: Just as clues are important to a detective, details are important to a writer. The trait of Ideas is about on generating details on a topic. Donna Details encourages writers to choose topics that they know and care about, and to add rich details that will be interesting to a reader. And just like a detective is always digging deeper for important clues, a writer must "dig deeper" to elaborate and extend the details they write. ] After our field trip to the ROM the students used these Trait Mates to help them write their own 'legend' or story about an imaginary constellation. Once our short stories are written, we'll create constellations to go along with them in a hallway display! Math Students are still encouraged to practice their Mental Math Strategies. Please visit this amazing site to read more about Counting On, Doubles, Doubles Plus One, Making Ten, Making Multiples of Ten and Front End Addition (which we call Partial Sums)! We're using these strategies every day and encouraging the students to explain their thinking, to show their work and really demonstrate an understanding of the strategies. We’ve started our Patterning Unit! First, we need to remember how to sort objects based on their attributes (e.g., colour, size, shape etc.). Once we’ve sorted our objects, we can begin to create patterns. First, we talked about the ‘building block’ or the ‘pattern’s core’, like AB in an orange, apple, orange, apple pattern or AABC in a blue, blue, red, green, blue, blue, red, green pattern. Next week, we’ll take a deeper look at growing and shrinking patterns. *In grade 1, students are expected to create and extend repeating patterns involving one attribute while grade 2s are expected to identify and describe repeating patterns and growing and shrinking patterns. Grade 1s are using Snap Cubes to: create repeating colour patterns; name the core; share with a buddy and ask ‘what comes next?’; create NEW and DIFFERENT patterns with the same attributes (e.g., red & blue: red, red, blue is an AAB pattern, but you could swap it and try red, blue, blue to make an ABB pattern too). Grade 2s are: creating their own repeating patterns (shapes, sizes, colours etc.); describing (naming) patterns in various ways using letters (AAB), words (red, red, blue) numbers (112); and also answering questions like ‘What are 4 ways to show an AAAB pattern?’. Soon, we will get into growing and shrinking patterns with the grade 2s. Try some of this game at home as an extension activity, PLEASE be sure to click on the 1-100 Chart when you use this interactive Number Patterns Game Skip Count and find repeating number patterns (2, 4, 6, 8, 10 OR 5, 10, 15, 20) or harder still, creating a GROWING pattern, for example, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 (doubling) OR 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16, 22, 29 (grows by 1 more each time). Play with it and have fun! If you print any, be sure your son or daughter writes about the pattern rule, then bring them in and I can support your homework practice by offering descriptive feedback. If you’re having trouble, check this example online before you begin with your son or daughter. Full of visuals and examples of number patterns. To skip count by twos, try this 'create a mystery picture' game To practice place value and skip counting (number patterns) try playing this Place Value Hockey Game (select level 1)! See below for the similarities: By the end of this unit, grade 1 students should be able to: - identify, describe, and extend geometric repeating patterns with one attribute (e.g., colour, size, shape, thickness, orientation); – identify and extend numeric repeating patterns (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, …); – describe numeric repeating patterns in a hundreds chart; – identify a rule for a repeating pattern (e.g., “We’re lining up boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl.”); – create a repeating pattern involving one attribute (e.g., colour, size, shape, sound) – represent a repeating pattern in various ways (e.g., pictures, actions, colours, sounds, numbers, letters) By the end of this unit, grade 2 students should be able to: – identify and describe growing patterns and shrinking patterns generated by the repeated addition or subtraction of 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, and 25’s on a number line and on a hundreds chart (e.g., the numbers 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 are in a straight line on a hundreds chart); – identify, describe, and create growing patterns and shrinking patterns involving addition and subtraction, with and without the use of calculators (e.g., 3 + 1 = 4, 3 + 2 = 5, 3 + 3 = 6, …); – identify repeating, growing, and shrinking patterns found in real-life contexts (e.g., a geometric pattern on wallpaper); – represent a growing or shrinking pattern in various ways (e.g., using pictures, actions, colours, sounds, numbers, letters, number lines, bar graphs) .); – create growing or shrinking patterns – create a repeating pattern by combining two attributes (e.g., colour and shape; colour and size) – demonstrate an understanding that a pattern results from repeating an operation (e.g., addition, subtraction) or making a repeated change to an attribute (e.g., colour, orientation). HOMEWORK: Help Peg and Cat finish the chicken dance patterns! Finish the Pattern Game How does my pattern grow? What comes next? Growing Number Patterns **This game is suitable for grade 2s; you may want to use a 100s Chart while playing this game Health The kids had a blast last week making homemade Root Beer with Tanya! Before Tanya came in we talked a lot about added sugars and what they can do to our bodies. Our Root Beer had only 1/3 of the sugars compared to store bought products. You can watch this video at home to learn more. It's great to see the kids reading the labels on their snack foods (or showing us that they have fresh fruits and veggies!) to see how much sugar is in each serving. Click for more information on how how to make healthy food fun for kids!
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In Math, we are learning about Number Sense and Mental Math strategies.
Students are solving problems involving the addition and subtraction of single-digit whole numbers, using lots of different mental strategies (e.g., one more than, one less than, counting on, counting back, doubles). Dot Plates are great for practicing subitizing (recognizing numbers quickly) and then counting on. Other subitizing videos. Check out some great 'doubles' videos on YouTube to help students memorize their doubles facts: Doubles, Doubles, I Can Add Doubles (1 - 5 version) Doubles, Doubles, I Can Add Doubles (6 - 10 version) Add 'Em Up! - one more than Harry Kindergarten Music is great for Curriculum based songs! I Can Write My Numbers - great if your child has reversals Number Words Rap I Can Count to 100 Numbers in the Teens Adding and Subtracting Skip Count - and then Count On! (grade 2s) Welcome back to our Blog! First up - everyone has homework this weekend :) I noticed that many of the students were playing a new 'hand game'. *Sometimes, on the carpet when they were supposed to be listening to instructions, lessons, stories etc. ;) So, because it seemed so exciting we took some time out of our day today to make sure that everyone knew how to play - and guess what? It's AWESOME! So many great math concepts are being used to play this game! It will now be a regular part of our 'minds on' to start our math lessons. We wrote these rules as a shared writing activity and we reread them to make sure they make sense. Your homework - play chopsticks! Please read our rules and make sure they make sense to YOU, our intended audience and readers. If not, then please comment below and let us know how we can edit them. If they make sense to you, if you like our game - then you can comment too! Enjoy your time together this weekend. Here are some of the Number Sense Curriculum Expectations that this game touches on: - demonstrate, using concrete materials, the concept of conservation of number (e.g., 5 counters represent the number 5, regardless whether they are close together or far apart). - relate numbers to the anchors of 5 - compose and decompose numbers (up to 20) in a variety of ways Welcome back to our Blog! ETFO's Work to Rule has been suspended, pending the results of an all-member ratification vote taking place Sunday November 8 - Thursday November 12.
For more information please visit ETFO's website. Thank you for your ongoing support. Where did the first week go!? We've already accomplished a lot in Room 108 :) Please remember to send back: 1) Yellow Home Notes Folders 2) School Forms 3) Family Questionnaire ASAP *My mistake, milk is now 75c in the lunchroom! Sorry for any confusion The 100 Most Frequently Used Words list was introduced, as students were asked to reflect on their first week at school and write a sentence about “school fun”. Many students used the words “I”, “like”, and “play” from the list while some students used the Smart Board to copy the sentence starter “I want to …”. All other words were sounded out by students independently. We’ve bound our “School Fun” pages and created our first class book! Throughout the year students will earn collective “gems” as positive reinforcement when they follow the expectations. For example, if we’re walking down the hallways quietly, respecting the others in the building that are learning and working, we will earn a gem. After a read aloud, if all the students showed active listening, we’ll earn a gem. If we have a Scientist come to do a workshop, and we show appreciation for our visitor by using polite manners, we’ll earn a gem. And if we all follow the steps in a new activity and try something together, we’ll earn a gem. Once all the gems have been earned, we’ll celebrate our good choices by having a ‘gem party’!
Students will also be recognized for making good choices individually too. A favourite read aloud is Have You Filled a Bucket Today? If someone picks up pencils and erasers off the ground to put them where they belong, if they model good listening on the carpet by putting one finger to their lips and the other hand high in the air, if they say excuse me to a classmate at the hooks when they’re trying to get at their backpack or if they take a risk and join in an activity that’s new to them, a student can earn a ‘droplet’ to be put in our classroom bucket. Now, I don't always get the chance to see students making their good choices, so they won’t always get a droplet, but I hope that they’ll continue to make good choices because when they do, they not only make someone else happy (and fill their bucket) they too can feel a sense of pride and happiness for making a good choice. Every once in a while, we’ll draw droplets from the bin and those students will get to choose their centre first, choose the picture book to read aloud, get 5 minutes of extra computer time, or maybe they’ll even get a sticker or a pencil to take home ;) A look at today’s schedule: V.I.P. Congrats Ben! Ask your son or daughter what s/he learned about him from the interview; what did they draw and label on their picture for him? Handwriting Students practice printing Ben’s name and their own names. They draw a picture of something about Ben, then use the anchor chart on the Smart Board to label or write a sentence Recess Swimming (we met coach Pepper and coach Jessica) They discussed expectations for the pool (we start in October). MUST BRING - labelled bag, labelled swim suit, labelled towel, labelled flip flops/crocs (something to wear in case of fire) *elastics or bathing caps for long hair - all long hair MUST be kept up. Girls - one piece bathing suits or tank-inis (if you bring a 2 piece, please send a shirt to be worn in pool) CAN BRING - (NO GLASS) goggles (if wanted, students can borrow from shared bin), ear plugs, nose plugs, plastic water bottles, water shoes *Students will go into the girls/boys change rooms and change independently; adults are not permitted in change rooms. However, I stand close by to the door and students can come to ask for help; I will step just inside the door. *PLEASE discuss with your child appropriate change room behaviour AND that he or she could come to me if there is any silliness that I should be made aware of. *Students take part in a lesson in the shallow end; life jackets are available if needed. *If your son or daughter needs to be excused from swim for any reason, please send a hand written note. Math We started creating our own Number Books and we’ll create a page for each number from #1 - #20. So far we’ve looked at the numbers 1, 2, 3. How can you represent the #2 for example?
This Number Sense book will help to form a foundation for problem solving and showing/explaining our thinking later on. Students will learn to ‘show what they know’ using a ‘WIN’ing strategy: Words, Images, Numbers (in math, we don’t draw pictures, we do a quick sketch of an image).The more ways that students can represent and understand a number, then the more strategies they will be able to use when they problem solve. Lunch Writing Ok so school has been fun, but wow do we miss summer! Today we reminisced about all our adventures and chose one to draw and write about. We'll take these pictures and put them into a class made Summer Fun book! Media Helena took the students up to the computer lab to talk about the routines and the expectations. Soon, she will have the opportunity to work with students one on one to create logins, passwords and save bookmarks on the web (www.starfall.com, www.abcya.com, www.storylineonline.net) Recess Centre Time Puppets, Marbleworks, Listening Centre with Octopus's Garden, Duplo and Book Nook were popular today. Read Aloud The Most Magnificent Thing is a beautiful story about a young girl with GRIT! Ask your son or daughter about Grit (and ask them to show you our action to go along with it!) First off - Thank you so much for smooth transitions at the end of the day! Dismissal can sometimes be tricky with so many people in the yard, but Lillian and I use a little reminder with the kids and we find that it helps: “Eye to Eye and Hand to Hand”. Once a student sees their caregiver they need to make eye contact with me and let me know, then I wave to the caregiver and they wave back to show that they’re ready to pick-up. We’ll always be coming from the middle doors, then walking over to the big white circle. Once all the students are safely inside the painted circle, then we can start our dismissal. Thanks for your support!
*If ever there’s a change in your pick-up routine, please send me a handwritten note* --- Each day we’ll start by checking our backpacks for our Yellow Home Notesfolders (thanks to those of you that have already completed your paperwork and sent it back!!) and place them in the ‘Home Notes Bin’ under the Smart Board. Then, students do quiet reading and chatting on the carpet to get settled. Once we're all ready, we go through our blue pocket chart and schedule for the day, so students can know what to expect as the day goes on. Today’s schedule looked like this: Arival V.I.P. Recess Read Aloud Assembly Lunch Gym with Helena Centre Time Recess Book Buddies with Arthur’s ⅚ Community Meeting Dismissal For the next few weeks, we'll be doing a V.I.P. program for some "Very Important People". Each student will get the chance to be a V.I.P. for a day - Grabriel's name was picked out of the bucket today! He was interviewed by the class and we got to know him a little bit better. This integrates the Oral Language part of the curriculum, as students are expected to ask questions and listen carefully on the carpet, as well as respond to questions thoughtfully (Overall Language Expectation 1 “listen in order to understand and respond appropriately”). As the students are interviewing, I’ll be taking jot notes on the SmartBoard. Then, once an interview is done each student will create a V.I.P. page to contribute to the V.I.P.'s 'all about me' book. We learn how to print the Very Important Person's name as well as one fact that we’ve learned about them (students can write their own idea, they can use keywords or can copy a sentence from the Smart Board). This also provides students the chance to practice using the proper uppercase and lowercase letters (we practice printing before we move into using our daily writing journals). **Please practice printing at home with your son and daughter. You can visitthis website to use as a reference and/or to print practice pages. For the first while we’ll have cooperative centre time in the afternoons, to help our students transition and ease back into the routine of school (especially our grade 1s!). By mid morning some students are already eager to visit their favourite centres - ask your son or daughter about the centres that have been open for group play time. It's a great way for the students to get to know one another and encourages them to practice the Character Education Trait of the month: Respect. As students play, I rotate through the centres to reinforce the routines and the expectations. Students also had the chance to share their thoughts on rules and routines for Book Buddies time. Here are some of their ideas: - big buddies can help boost the little buddies' confidence - little buddies can learn how to read - little buddies can even teach big buddies something new! - our big buddies get a chance to relax and read favourite picture books - we get to make new friends from a different class in our school Despite the heat – your kids had a great first day in grade 1 and 2 in Room 108!
I was honest with the kids as we walked into the room, that I was feeling a little nervous. It’s a new space for me, I’ve got to learn some new routines, meet the new Administrators … but by the end of the day all our jitters were gone and we were all smiles. All of a sudden, it was 3:30!! Here’s what went down: Morning Entry & Explore the Room - what are some things that are the same or different from your class last year? Students noticed so many things that they were familiar with! Ask about some of our centres /stations. Read Aloud - The Night Before First Grade – oh no! What happens when you’re not in the same class as one of your best friends? Recess Routines – we should always try to eat a healthy snack before we play; it gives you the energy you need! When outside, ask a teacher wearing an orange sash if you need help solving a problem, want a drink from the water fountain or if you have to use the washroom. Always go with a buddy! Bathroom Routines: Because our hallway is busy with 3 kindies, a daycare room as well as 2 other HPAS rooms, we’ll be using the ‘recess bathrooms’ as our main bathrooms during the school day (the ones down near the main office). Think / Pair / Share: If you could create a magical potion or a spell, that would make the best teacher ever, what would your teacher be? First we think quietly, just to ourselves, then we rotate on the carpet and pair up a few times to share our ideas with a small group, finally if students want to they share their thoughts with the whole group. (In this heat, one of the answers was: To have enough extendable arms so she could feed ice cream to the whole class at the same time!) *Ask your son or daughter what makes their teacher a ‘good teacher’ Read Aloud - Don't Be Silly Mrs. Millie! Lunch Routines - students were dismissed to daycare as a group or were walked down to the lunchroom. We all sit at the same table, eat our healthy foods first, then the treats as dessert. We learned about the recycling, compost and the garbage bins. If we have any spills or make any mess, it’s our responsibility to wipe it up with the cloths provided. Lunch Recess! Video: Franklin Goes to School Writing: how are you like, or not like Franklin on the first day of school? Music with Violet Afternoon Recess – last snack of the day or your chance to eat left overs from lunch End of Day FREE TIME! Students had the chance to play at lots of centres in our room - listening centre, puppets, library and buddy reading, games, puzzles, bin toys, blocks ... you name it, we've got it! *The computer centre will be open once students go to Media and get passwords. Read Aloud - First Day Jitters; even teachers get nervousJ For some tips on how to ask your son or daughter about the first day, check out : 25 Ways to Ask Your Kids 'So How Was School Today?' Without Asking Them 'So How Was School Today?' If you’re a Tweeter – please follow us! Mention @KellysEdu and share your #FirstWeekWin with your #backtoschool thoughts, feelings and successes. Here’s to a new school year J Language Our new chapter book series is Secrets of Droon by Tony Abbot; we’re already onto book #3! After Book #1, we tweeted to the Author to share our thoughts and praises. However, we noticed that he was only ‘favouriting’ our tweets, not ‘replying’ to them. So we talked about how we could get his attention and engage him in a dialogue; we realized it was a lot like writing our Pen Pal Letters, that if we wanted to know information we had to ask! Once we did … he Tweeted BACK to us! Ask your son or daughter about our conversation. We’ve also been talking a lot about ‘Why do we Tweet?’. We want to share our learning with a larger community, we want to engage in discussions about topics that interest us, and we want to learn more about the world around us. It’s not a race, it’s not a challenge to get more followers, we don’t always need someone else to ReTweet us or Favourite us. We are proud of what we’re learning and if sharing it means that someone else can learn from us, then that’s great! During our library sessions over the past few weeks, we’ve been listening to the long list of Blue Spruce Nominees and on April 29th, we got to vote for our favourite! We learned that the winner at our school was ‘The Highest Number in the World’ - but we have to wait to see if it wins Canada wide! We are continuing to write letters to our Pen Pals and are focusing on the self- and peer-editing process. Students are still working with their Writing Goals Chart (posted on our display wall): - finger spaces (meatball spaces between words and spaghetti spaces between letters!) - word wall word spelling - capital letters (and more lower case letters) - punctuation - beginning, middle, end - printing (legibility) - Does it make sense when you re-read it? We’ve integrated crosswords into our Daily 5 Word Work program and the students are eating them up! They read the clues, answer the riddles, and print neatly one letter in each box. You can make your own cross words here. Many of our Science activities are integrated into the Language Program; all students received a short ‘From Seed to Plant’ book and were asked to highlight the important vocabulary words (it came home a few weeks ago). After many read alouds, discussions and Smart Board lessons, students wrote their own ‘How To’ plant a seed booklet, and were encouraged to include as much vocabulary as they could (soil, seed, plant, sprout, water, roots, shoots, leaves, flowers, sunlight, grow). Our Foodshare Workshop was all about Roots, Shoots, Leaves & Seeds: Students actively learned to identify the different parts of a plant as well as their functions, but the best part was tasting each and every one! To launch our next Social Studies unit, we are reading ‘School Days Around the World’ and learning about different children’s school experiences. First we read about Solomon from Australia and Rupa from India; students picked one of the characters to compare themselves to - how are you alike and how are you different? For example Solomon eats sandwiches for lunch just like many of us, but his sandwiches are made with Vegemite, not ham or cream cheese. Rupa goes to school just like us, but some days she has to stay home and help with the housework. She also has to walk to get her family’s water, but we can get ours from taps. Math In our 3D Unit all students identify and describe common solids (e.g., cubes, cones, cylinders, spheres, rectangular prisms) and sort and classify them by their attributes (e.g., colour; size; texture; number and shape of faces), using hands-on blocks as well as pictorial representations. The grade ones can describe similarities and differences using ‘looks like’ language (e.g.,“A water bottle looks like a cylinder”), but are encouraged to start using geometric attributes. The grade 2s extended their study to create models and skeletons of prisms and pyramids, using straws and modelling clay. As a culminating task for the 3D Solids Unit, students were required to write their own dictionary-like definitions for three of their favourite solids. In their description, they were encouraged to include details about:
Probability is our next unit of study and we started off by watching Bill Nye the Science Guy’s episode. Our first activity was a Mystery Bag problem - each bag had 6 cubes inside, they might be red, yellow or blue. In small groups, students were asked “How could you predict what the cubes are, without dumping them all out onto the ground at once?” We decided that pulling them out, one at a time, and keeping a record of what we pulled might help us. For about 5 minutes, the students pulled, recorded and put the cubes back. Some groups were recording lots of reds, a few blues and no yellows - they predicted their bag might have 4 reds, 2 blues and no yellows. Ask your son or daughter what they predicted for their bag! The grade 1s describe the likelihood that everyday events will occur, using mathematical language like: impossible, unlikely, less likely, more likely, certain. Some of their ideas: It is more likely that we’ll read our Chapter Book Droon at the end of the day; It is unlikely that my mom will let me get a dog; It is impossible to flush my brother down the toilet! When describing the probability that an event will occur (e.g., getting heads when tossing a coin, landing on red when spinning a spinner) the grade 2s use the language: impossible, unlikely, less likely, equally likely, more likely, certain. We are playing simple games and doing lots of probability experiments. Mr. Nussbaum’s Probability Fair is a great way to practice some of these concepts at home, and even to get some extension in too! Other Thank You to all the families that donated items, volunteered their time for our workshop and who came out to our STEM showcase! What an amazing project! It was great to see the students thinking through their problems (but wait, the sparkles are still getting through) and finding solutions (we need more sand!). Downsview Park is a wonderful place to take a class trip. In the morning Water World activity, we learned about the earth’s water cycle and the importance of water conservation. We went on a hike through the park and looked for signs of the water cycle. In the afternoon, we took part in the Park In Spring program, went to their urban forest and did a scavenger hunt. Ask your son or daughter how many signs of spring they spotted! Jump Rope for Heart was so much fun! Thanks for all your donations - as soon as we hear about our fundraising goal, we’ll let you know.
Our GTA Community Clean Up on Friday the 17th was great - we walked across Annette and found some itty bitty bits of trash that wouldn’t normally be seen or picked up (don’t worry, we wore gloves!). On Earth Day, the 22nd, we watched Berenstein Bears Don’t Pollute in the morning and then, we turned off all of our electronic devices (the computers, the listening centre, the Smartboard, our Pencil sharpeners) as well as the lights - we chilled out together and listened to a read aloud :) P.A.L.S. (Playground Activity Leaders in Schools) are actively engaging with our students during the morning, lunchtime and afternoon recess breaks. This month we had some of the HPAS PALS (Lola, Julia, Evelyn and Sadie) come visit us and teach us a game called ‘Mouse Trap’. After we learned how to play, we went out to recess and asked others to join in with us! Yearbook is off and running! This year, ALL of the students at HPAS will have input. Some of the yearbook volunteers came to our room during Daily 5 Rotations and each of our kids got one whole morning to play around with the program, choose pictures and write captions. What an awesome experience. If you don’t have your orders in yet, be sure to get them in soon! May 4 - 8th was Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week. On Mindful Monday, we took some time to do some breathing practices in class. On Take Time To Create Tuesday and We Belong Wednesday every student in both schools was united with a very small, short art activity; students were given a 1/4 circle piece of paper to colour, with words or images and symbols of ‘what makes you feel like you belong?’ These papers are now combined into a large quilt, displayed on the main floor and second floor main windows. On Taking Care Thursday, we were treated to a healthy apple snack and on Fit Friday, both schools walked a block at 1 o’clock. Language
We finished our Chapter Book read aloud – The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles – and we loved every minute of it! The Prock, Gazooks, Sidewinders, Jiffies, Swamp Gaboons, the Oink, The Gyascutus and of course, the Whangdoodle himself; we met some creative characters. We’re now onto a similar story, The Secrets of Droon; these characters too, travel to an imaginary world and go on some exciting adventures. We continue to write letters, not only to our Pen Pals from Garden PS, but to our Roots of Empathy Baby too! Students were asked to imagine Baby Sasha as a 4 year old – what would you write to him on his first day of JK? We also wrote letters to the characters from Whangdoodle. To celebrate World Water Day, we went to the WWD site and watched theirTrailer then with the sentence starter “Water is …” students chose ONE of the ideas Health, Nature, Food, Industry, Urbanization, Energy, Equality – to write and draw about. We also watched an episode from The Water Brothers (Awesome site!! ALL their shows are online) called Bottlegate and learned about the pros and cons between Bottled Water vs Tap Water (*Note: we watched this on a pizza lunch day, and as our volunteer came in to offer those students who have asked for water to drink – from a big bottle – she was promptly told “No thanks, I don’t want to drink from that bottle – I’ll fill my cup from the tap!!”). The books ‘All the Water in the World’ and ‘Down Comes the Rain’ are great illustrations of the water cycle; after reading these stories students wrote about how our water travels around and around and around. Ask them about our ‘Water Cycle Song’ (we’ve got actions for it too! Condensation – Precipitation – Collection – Evaporation). As an extension, we read The Drop in My Drink: The Story of Water on Our Planet and students chose ONE of the four stages to really focus on and describe during a Writer’s Workshop (using Donna Details, Willy Words and Ollie Organization – the trait mates!) We continue to watch and discuss the Raindrop Series as well: Raindrop the Builder: Raindrop, once he has filtered, arrives at an underground cave with a limestone landscape. There he sees how stalactites and stalagmites are formed. He goes into an underground river which comes out to the surface in a geyser. Frosty the Snow Lord - Raindrop turns up in a snowy landscape. The action takes place around a glacier. We discover why rivers are so important for life. Then we see how the thaw happens and what mineralization consists of. When Rivers Flow - The course of a river is followed. The problem of pollution is examined. As we learn about Toronto’s water source (Lake Ontario), we read The Drinking Water Adventures of Danny Droplet and his encounters with the Filthy Five as he travels through the filtration system. Check out thisYouTube version of the story. We integrated math and talked about how many young children and grown women in developing countries spend the majority of their day walking and carrying water; if one young girl carried X litres of water and another carried X, how many litres did they carry together? (This lesson was differentiated for the 1s and 2s; the 1s used single digits and the 2s used double digits). Math Since November I’ve been working with other colleagues in the TDSB through a Numeracy Hub, and this month it was my turn to host a demonstration classroom. The students and I modelled for our two visitors, Anne and Lillian, what a 3 part math lesson looks like in action, complete with a ‘Bansho’ at the end! A three-part problem-solving lesson takes between 45 and 60 minutes. 1. Before – Getting started (5 to 10 minutes). Revisiting mathematical ideas and strategies from a previous lesson that relates to the learning goal of the lesson 2. During – Teaching/learning (15 to 20 minutes). Solving the lesson problem in pairs, small groups or individually 3. After (a) Consolidation (20 to 25 minutes). Co-ordination of whole-class discussion and analysis of student solutions (b) Highlights/summary (5 minutes). Recounting key mathematical ideas and strategies related to the learning goal of the lesson (c) Practice (5 to 10 minutes). Solving a problem that is similar to the lesson problem in order to practise applying new ideas and strategies (Capacity Building Series) OUR focus was a Bansho during the Consolidation portion of the lesson: To organize and record mathematical thinking derived from and collectively produced by students on a large-size chalkboard or dry erase board. Such board writing includes the use of mathematical expressions, figures and diagrams of students’ solutions and strategies to a lesson problem. Because this written record enables simultaneous comparison of multiple-solution methods, there is the potential for students to construct new mathematical ideas and deepen their mathematical understanding. (Capacity Building Series) So what does this look like in a grade 1/2 math class? After students worked on their open-ended addition problems (they chose their own two addends, like 10+13 or 8+5) we compared their ‘Addition Strategies’ (like Adding On, Make a Ten, Doubles, Near Doubles) and talked about EFFICIENCY – which strategy is quicker, easier to use? For example, does it make sense to add 10+13 like this: “I started at 10 and then added on by ones, 13 times – 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, … 23” Or like this? “I started at 10 and then added on a 10 and then a 3, because I know 10+3 is 13 – 10, 20, 21, 22, 23” Or even like this? “10 and 13 are near doubles, like 10+10, only there’s 3 more, so I know 10+10 is 20, then when I add on the other 3, I get 23”. If you’re interested in learning more about 3 part lessons or would like to know more about what a ‘Bansho’ is, these are great articles: What-is-Bansho-_-Capacity-Building-Series.pdf Communication-in-Mathematics-3-Part-Lessons-_-Capacity-Building-Series.pdf We’ve also started a bit of ‘drill and practice’ during our Math program; we set the TeachIt Timer For 8 – 12 minutes and practice our mental math facts; mental math means you don’t have to think and problem solve, you know the answer because it’s right there in your schema. We started with doubles, then moved on to doubles + 1, soon, we’ll do doubles + 2 – near doubles. If you’d like to practice at home, use the same program we do at mathaids.com: Single Digit Doubles (also +1 and +2) Our new focus in math is 3D solids: Easy 2D and 3D practice – recognizing shapes and solids Shapes Shoot – choose the 3D solids to hear word then identify shape WE ARE PLAYING THIS NEXT WEEK: Computer Game – on a mission – must identify 3D solids’ faces, vertices, edges. GREAT practice for grade 2s. Other On World Autism Day (April 2nd) we lit up the room with some blue lights and talked about what it means to be different – this video helped us understand that it’s OK to be different too Day of Pink on April 8th was a great success! We watched the Story of Pink Day and talked about what it means to be gay. We also read 'My Princess Boy' The big message of the day was 'It's OK to be different - be who you are and we will support you!". What an awesome afternoon we had at the KEW beaches! It was fun to see some creative structures, all about ‘warmth’. Thanks volunteers for helping us get out and about to enjoy our local community, especially during the chilly winter season (except, we lucked out and got some really sunny weather). |
In our Room 108 Classroom Community, we foster an engaging, respectful and caring environment. I aim to balance a consistent program with flexible responsiveness to students' individual needs. Archives
November 2017
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