Dear parents,         

It’s hard to believe that the first term is almost complete. We have a short but exciting month ahead and we will be exploring many interesting topics in class. It has been wonderful to watch and facilitate the ongoing progress each student has been making. Thank you to all the parents for your support and enthusiasm towards the program at school. 

In Language Arts the students have been working on various writing activities with a focus on responding from personal experience. Practice with correctly forming letters, using correct punctuation and capitalization and learning to space words along the lines, have been areas we have focused on as well. Furthermore, the students have been learning to add more descriptive language to their writing and I have been encouraging them to take more risks in their written responses. I am so impressed by the wonderful stories the students have been producing, especially at this early stage of the year. Now that the spelling program is underway, the students have been motivated to use a combination of conventional as well as inventive spelling in their writing.  In phonics practice, we continue to review the short vowel sounds in words. In word families, we’ve moved on to explore the “it”, “in”, “ig”, “ip” and “op” and “ot” families and during our brainstorming sessions, the children come up with such unique and amusing words. They are clearly beginning to integrate their knowledge of word family patterns with other language-based activities, such as recognizing words within other words, rhyming words etc. In reading, I have been inspired by the measurable growth each child has made. Despite the varying reading levels in our class, each child is reading!  So many of them have been moving through the leveled readers at a good pace and they are still so motivated to “read for beads”. Thank you to those parents who continue to read with their children on a nightly basis. The work you are doing with your children at home is invaluable and without question fuels the whole learning process. Just a reminder: the home reading leveled readers are designed to be short, succinct texts. Please don’t worry if your child is reading any given book very quickly. They are supposed to be read in this way and shouldn’t take long to read. Moreover, for those students who are already reading chapter books, I encourage parents to count every 5-10 pages as 1 book on the reading log so that these kids can earn beads at the same rate as their classmates. However, I leave the ‘number of pages’ allocation up to your discretion. We continue to add high frequency sight words to our word wall and I have introduced the students to a word building game which they thoroughly enjoy called “Making Words”, in which the children use a combination of vowels and consonants to build 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and even 7 letter words. There is always a ‘secret word’ which we build right at the end of the activity and there is always so much excitement when students attempt to figure it out. The students know that when writing, they HAVE to spell words that appear on the word wall correctly. If they don’t, I do what’s now called “The Crazy Word Dance”…ask your child to explain this to you. Various poetry activities and whole language activities continue to be features of the Language curriculum and are often integrated with Science, Social Studies and Health and Career Education.

Next week we will also begun to assess each child’s reading level using the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment). This assessment tool (created by Pearson Education) aims to assess reading fluency, comprehension and vocabulary. The results of this assessment will allow us to give each student an overall a score and will target the areas that require work or improvement in terms of their reading.

In Reading Power we have continued to explore “text-self-self” connections by way of stories that contain messages that are easy for students to connect with. Text-to-self connections are highly personal connections that a reader makes between a piece of reading material and the reader’s own experiences or life. Most recently, we have begun to look at the next part of connecting on the Reading Power continuum. This involves making “tex-to-text” connections which is much harder to do since we are asking the students to connect two texts to each other. Sometimes when reading, readers are reminded of other things that they have read, other books by the same author, stories from a similar genre, or perhaps on the same topic. These types of connections are text-to-text connections. Readers gain insight during reading by thinking about how the information they are reading connects to other familiar texts. “This character has the same problem that I read about in a story last year,” would be an example of a text-to-text connection. We read two stories last week and the students made wonderful text-to-text connections. We read, The Way I Feel and My Many Coloured Days, both texts that deal with feelings. The students all had a very good first go of trying to connect the two texts.

As part of our Reading Power program, we have also just started a literature unit that goes hand in hand with what is being taught in terms of connecting. Our most recent literature unit is called, Colourful Characters: Story Book Characters Teach Us Real Life Lessons. We will be looking at the literary works of well-known author, Kevin Henkes whose wonderful stories are laden with important morals and life lessons. Each time we study one of his stories, the students will be responding to the literature in a variety of ways. We will also be looking at stories with similar messages written by other authors so as to make text-to-text connections more easily. Through read alouds, class discussions and written tasks, the students will learn to identify important morals or lessons embedded in children’s stories. A main skill that the children will learn during this unit is the importance of being able to retell the main parts of a story in their own words. This is a very significant indicator of solid comprehension of each and every story read or listened to. As a final task of this unit, the children will have an opportunity to dress up as various characters from Kevin Henkes’ stories. Using important question words (what, where, who, why, when and how) the children will role-play and pretend to interview these characters. What a great way to bring these special characters to life and make them and their teachings feel real and relevant. 

In Math, we have continued to explore number concepts. Some areas we’ve focused on include but are not limited to subatizing (i.e., recognizing number groupings at a glance), adding sets of dots, using 10 frames and ordering and comparing sets. Moreover, with practice the children have shown great improvement in their ability to make reasonable guesses when estimating groups of objects. We have also been practicing addition and subtraction using the number line which forms the basis of using “counting on” and “counting back” strategies. Many have shown improvement in their overall computation skills. During November (and continuing through December) we have begun our data analysis unit, in which we have focused on graphing. We graph many things including the weather and the children are becoming familiarized with important math vocabulary such as “more than”, “less than”, “equal to”. Concepts, such as reading and comparing graphs, have introduced the students to the basics of statistics. They are learning to sort objects to one chosen attribute and are busy collecting first-hand information by counting objects, conducting surveys, measuring, and performing simple experiments. We also continue to practice counting by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s in a more formal capacity. Counting by 5s is the trickiest but I have taught the students to remember the pattern; when counting by 5s, each digit either ends in a 5 or a 0 and aside from 5, 10, 15 and 100 at the end, there are two numbers in each decade. Please continue to practice rote skip counting with your child at home.

In Social Studies/Health and Career Planning, the children have been engaged in activities which require them to respond personally. They then share information about themselves with their classmates. We have discussed the various rules we have in our homes, highlighting for the students that each family follows a set of very different rules at home, e.g., "take off your shoes at the front door", "don't use too much toilet paper", tidy up after playing with toys", and "take your plate to the sink when you have finished eating." The students were very perceptive, understanding that rules exist to protect us and keep our world ordered and safe. Understanding that we can have a multitude of roles at any given time (e.g., daughter, sister, friend, artist, Jew) has helped the students understand the definition of a role and each student has come to realize his/her place in our community through a study of roles. This unit culminates with a look at responsibilities. The children are learning that a responsibility is "something we care for and can't forget to do". In the context of this very articulate Grade 1 definition, we have been looking at responsibilities from the perspective of fulfilling duties/chores at home as well as from the perspective of doing good deeds. The students have also been given opportunities to role play certain scenarios in which they “show” desirable/ undesirable behaviours and we’ve role played how to fulfill responsibilities at home and at school. Through important stories and discussions, we know that we are all responsible for our actions towards others. In Grade One we all strive to be "bucket fillers", filling our own and other's imaginary buckets by enacting mitzvot and deeds of kindness.

           

In Science, we completed our magnets unit and the students thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with magnets in the classroom. We conducted a number of Science experiments which involved the students using magnets to test for attraction/ repelsion. We have also been learning about Autumn and the fascinating environmental changes that occur during this season. During our mini unit on Fall, we brainstormed various fall activities as well as all the different things we could do/make with fall leaves. Then each child collected their own magnificent fall leaves. Based on a book called, “Look What I Did With a Leaf”, by Morteza Sohi, the Grade Ones, together with their Grade Seven buddies, created colourful artwork and used the leaves to produce various creatures/animals. An accompanying acrostic poem describing the season finished off this most successful project. The students also learned a lot about hibernation and what exactly takes place during this time. We learned that some animals naturally adapt to the changing weather conditions, whereas some animals need to hibernate in order to survive. As a culminating activity, each student created their own unique bingo card using hibernating and non-hibernating animals. We all had great fun playing hibernation bingo with our buddies. This unit on Autumn has been a great way to introduce our current Science unit, Weather, wherein, we are exploring various weather conditions and phenomena, tracking the temperature and graphing the weather on a daily basis. I’ll be asking that each child look up the temperature (either from the television, from the internet or from the radio or newspaper) every day. Each morning/afternoon the students will have the opportunity of recording the weather in degrees, Celsius on the board. We will compare and contrast the answers on a daily basis. Before we go on winter break later this month, we will be taking part in an in-class workshop. Scientists from High Touch, High Tech will be coming in to conduct a weather workshop with our students. They will learn about extreme weather conditions and phenomena and it is sure to be a worthwhile learning experience. There is no cost for this in-house workshop and it will happen on December 17^th.

DECEMBER / JANUARY AT A GLANCE:

Language Arts	Math	Social Studies/Personal Planning	Science
-Journals - Printing - Reading groups - Word families - Spelling - Phonics – conclusion of short vowels and intro to long vowels - Sight words - Whole language activities (responding to literature and poetry) - Colourful Characters Literacy unit -Reading Power (text-to-text connections)	- Weekly estimating activities - Data analysis-graphing - Review of counting by  2s, 5s, 10s with a focus on skip counting - Review of addition and subtraction to 12 – with a focus on counting on and counting back without visuals (i.e., without the number line) - Geometry	- Personal development - Rules, Roles and Responsibilities - Connecting experiences at home and school with larger community - Mapping and direction	- Weather continued

Reminders:

1.            If your child is absent or away from school due to illness, please remember to send in a note on their return explaining the reason for their absence. If you are intending to take your child out of school for an extended period of time (i.e., for a vacation), please remember to send a note (to the office and to me) explaining the reason for their absence beforehand. In this case, your child will be marked “excused” in our attendance records as opposed to “absent”. The Ministry of Education requires that we correctly document all absences.

2.            Please also note that for this half of the school year, I am the home room teacher in the mornings for 1C and Morah Anna is the home room teacher in the afternoons. When we do the half year switch-over in February, our roles will be reversed.

3.            Now that the weather is getting colder, please make sure that your child has a jacket/coat to wear at school for the various outdoor recess times. Since they are bringing more outer wear to school, please label their uniforms, jackets and boots. It makes it easier for me to help them find lost items.

4.            Footwear: according to the parent handbook, students are required to wear dark coloured shoes (like runners or plain shoes). Many students are coming to school in either multi-coloured shoes, high top sneakers or ugg type boots. Please be advised that these rules are not teacher made but school policy. To that end, kindly ensure that your child comes to school with the appropriate footwear. Moreover, due to the frequency with which we have rain in Vancouver, please make every effort to send you child to school with rain boots, even on days when there is no rain forecasted (these can be left in their locker). Even on a sunny day, there are still huge puddles outside and it would appear that many students are accidentally falling into these puddles. Please also keep an extra change of clothes (including most importantly socks, underwear and pants) at school in your child’s locker and replenish the supply when a change has occurred during the day.

5.            The Channukah concert takes place on December 12^th. We will have a late start at 10:05am the next day (Dec. 13^th).

6.            Our Weather Or Not science workshop will take place on December 17^th.

7.            Report cards will ‘go live’ for parents to view online the day before school ends for winter break on December 20^th.

8.            There are many children who are very hungry at the end of the day and are complaining that they are not sent to school with enough snacks. Please can you send your child to school with two snacks (one for morning and one for afternoon recess times).

Thank you to all parents for a wonderful first term. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost finished!

Warmly,

Mrs. Ariel