January Newsletter 2013

Dear Parents,

January has come and gone, but in the Grade One classroom we’ve been extremely busy and have accomplished a lot. The students have come back to school after the winter break excited for term two and ready to learn. The growth evident in each and every student is immense and on a daily basis I am impressed with the students’ willingness to learn, to cooperate and to help one another along the learning curve we’ve come to call “Grade One”.

In Language Arts, the students continue to work on the various weekly constants including printing, word families and phonics. Most recently, we have explored the “op”, “ot”, “et”, “en”, “ug” and “un” word families, we have printed upper and lower case letters up to and including “k” and in phonics we’ve been focusing on long a, i, o, e and u words, always remembering to rehearse our long vowel rules to help determine the sound and spelling of such words. Aside from long vowel words with magic e endings, the students have also been introduced to the long vowel combinations such as “ai”, “ay”, “oa” “ee” and “ea”. It has been inspiring to watch the children absorb and retain new information and many of them are now independently able to recognize and distinguish short vowel words from long vowel words. They love to rehearse the catchy long vowel rules such as “the magic “e” at the end of a word makes the vowel say its own name” and “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.”

The weekly spelling words have become increasingly challenging and most of the students are motivated to study for these quizzes in advance. Notwithstanding, there are still those who sometimes forget to practice the words over the weekend and I encourage parents to post the words in a visible spot in your home so that the likelihood of forgetting about the spelling tests is minimized. When responding in writing, particularly during Monday journal time, the students are becoming increasingly aware of visual cues around the classroom (e.g., the word wall) and they are now confident inventive spellers who rely on their own sounding out skills whenever necessary. We have also begun to focus on more creative writing which allows the students to use their imaginations when writing instead of only focusing on writing from personal experience. In terms of the conventions of writing, we’ve also begun to focus more stringently on the use of punctuation and capitalization in writing and the students have begun working on a punctuation and capitalization booklet in class, in which they are required to fix incorrectly punctuated sentences. Other areas we’ll focus on include the use of periods, appropriate use of upper case letters when and where applicable, contractions and other punctuation marks.

We are in the midst of completing our Kevin Henkes unit, which explore finding the moral or lesson in each story. Through character analysis, the Grade Ones have come to understand that from Kevin Henkes’ story books, which are rich in important life morals, we can learn imperative lessons that pertain to our own lives. From Wemberly in Wemberly Worried, we learned that “worrying takes the fun out of everything”. From Lilly in Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, we learned that “it’s important to say sorry when you are wrong.” From Sheila Rae in Sheila Rae The Brave, we learned that “little friends can turn out to be great friends.” From Chrysanthemum we learned that we should “treat others the way we want to be treated” and finally, from Chester, Wilson and Lilly in Chester’s Way, we learned that it’s important to “always include others” AND that “it’s important to try new things.” We’ve also continued to practice making text-to-self connections and text-to-text connections whenever we read stories that are in keeping with our Colourful Characters literature unit. This unit will culminate with a look at each of the students’ family’s mottos/family life lessons. Stay tuned for more information on this. We also continue to have our weekly guided reading circles. We read and analyze simple stories, both fiction and non-fiction and in our reading circles the students learn to call upon effective reading strategies when faced with an unknown word. With early readers, there tends to be a heavy reliance on sounding out unfamiliar words or looking only at the pictures to check for meaning and context. However, successful readers rely on a variety of reading strategies and not just the obvious aforementioned ones. For example, looking for words inside words (SMALL = ALL), skipping ahead, substituting what makes sense, looking for familiar patterns (LOOK/BOOK both contain OOK) to name a few. Through our reading groups, we also practice other important reading behaviours like: predicting events, use punctuation to guide understanding and improve expression and fluency, summarizing and retelling the story in our own words, and reflecting personally on the text. Discussing the text, role playing portions of the text and taking turns reading, have allowed the children to begin making more meaningful connections between what they read and what they write. Because comprehension, (in conjunction with fluency) is now becoming a larger focus of reading in Grade One, it would be most beneficial if parents would continue to ask probing questions of their child when reading. Basic recall of information through question asking is good but it is even more important for parents to encourage text – to – self connections and text – to - text connections when reading. For example, if reading a story about a child feeling left out, ask your child if he or she has ever felt that way and to relate the story to “self”. Further to that, ask your child to explain how others might feel and what the moral or lesson of the story is. Also, asking your child to recount the details of the story by summarizing and retelling the events, in sequence and in his or her own words, is a very important aspect of reading comprehension. Being able to retell stories and calling on the most salient parts from memory is something that children learn to do with practice. In the next month or so, we will begin working on elements of story writing (including characters, setting, story order, problem, solution and moral) and so in order to prepare your child for this, please focus on the above-mentioned areas when reading.

         In Math, we completed our unit on graphing and students had many opportunities to graphically represent and record data. To that end, the children learned how to gather information through question-asking activities and we graphed many of our “favourites” including: our favourite type of weather, our favourite season, our favourite time of day, our favourite fruit juice etc. We also graphed the weather during calendar time and throughout the duration of our weather unit. Using correct mathematical language to describe and compare graphing results such as the most, the least and more than became features of our daily math activities. We are now well into our new math units for this term. We have begun our Geometry unit which first examines two dimensional figures. We have also just begun to look at three dimensional solids. As a kick-off to our geometry unit, the students learned about tangrams, the traditional 7 piece ancient Chinese puzzle. Throughout the unit, by using concrete manipulatives, the students will be learning to identify and describe two-dimensional shapes. Moreover, they will also begin to explore, identify and classify three-dimensional objects according to their properties and attributes. Constant practice with addition and subtraction to 20 and counting by 2s, 5s and 10s continue to be part of our math activities. With regard to addition and subtraction to 20; please help your child remember his or her doubles. A couple of weeks ago, I sent home a doubles sheet for you to post in a visible spot in your home. Thank you to those parents who have helped in this way. It is really important that your child learn his or her doubles because knowing one’s doubles makes adding other numbers much simpler. These doubles should be learned by rote and so extra home practice is vital. At the start of the school year, we used manipulatives (counters) to add and subtract small numbers. Slowly we began moving away from  concrete manipulatives and moved onto using a number line. Now, at this point in the year, we have made a move away again from using the number line and we have begun to employ counting on and counting back strategies to add and subtract higher numbers. Please see me should you need further clarification of the strategies we are now employing in grade one. This term, aside from learning our doubles, we will be learning number facts/bonds (e.g., what makes ten?), doubles minus 1, doubles +1 numbers +1, numbers -1, numbers +2 and numbers -2. The number nine becomes very important when learning to add quickly, mainly because of its proximity to ten.

This month, we continued to explore weather in Science, with activities that focused on integrating Language Arts with Science. A particular focus in this unit has involved looking at clouds. The students learned the names of the most common types of clouds (cumulus, stratus and cirrus). Each student made their own cloud information booklet which included the most important features of the aforementioned clouds as well as an imaginative interpretation of an ink-blot style cloud print. We have recently started working on our next Science unit; Force and Motion wherein the students will explore how different forces can be applied to objects to induce movement. Self-directed experiments with marbles as well as a look at the role that friction and gravity play in force and motion will lead the students on this Science journey.

In Social Studies we have been exploring maps and direction. The students have learned about the points on a compass rose and how to use these cardinal points effectively by navigating themselves through pictorially represented maps. Soon we will begin identifying the features of a map, including interpreting map symbols and reading legends. The children have also learned special map terminology and have come to understand that maps are depicted from a bird’s eye view perspective. Soon, they will be replicating the playground at school in the form a basic bird’s eye view map. We have enjoyed many interesting books and videos on maps and during computer lab times, the students will be working on a program called Trudy’s Time and Place House in which they are required to lead an ant character towards a jelly bean by navigating him north, south, east or west.

Reminders:

- February 11^th - Family Day: no sessions

- February 12^th – PRO- D day: no sessions

- February 22^nd – Purim Carnival : 11:25am dismissal

- Pink Shirt Day at VTT- will take place on Wednesday, February 27^th. Pink shirts will be worn to support anti-bullying efforts.

- February 28^th / March 1^st – P.T conferences

FEBRUARY/ (MARCH) AT A GLANCE:

Language Arts	Math	Science	Social Studies/Health and Career Education
- Weekly constants: (spelling, word families, journals, phonics: review of long vowels and intro of beginning blends - Punctuation and capitalization cntd (sticky dot writing) - Reading comprehension activities - (predicting, making inferences, identifying the main idea, characters, setting, problem, solution, moral etc) - Identifying main sequence of events in a story and in written work (focus on first, next, then, last). -Poetry -Story writing -Buddy reading -Reader’s Theatre - Text – to – world connections, introduction to VISUALIZING.	- Geometry - exploring 2D and 3D shapes - Addition and subtraction word problems - 100th day celebration	Force and Motion	- Mapping and Direction cntd. - Celebrating Families - Intro to Nifty News à Show and Tell replacement

Thank you to all those parents who continue to read with their children on a nightly basis. I can appreciate how busy your lives are and taking the time to read with your child has served to enrich the work we do in class. With each passing week, the children grow and mature into independent thinkers and I continue to be inspired by the wonderful work each child produces.

Kind regards,

Mrs. Ariel