Thank you for joining us to celebrate the growth and hard
work of our Room 1 and 2 students at our November conferences. Here is a brief overview of the topics that
we have studied so far this year:
Language
Learning:
Reading
All students are now engaged in home reading and guided
reading. Our grade 1 students are
working in small guided reading groups 4 days per week and our grade 2 students
are working in guided reading groups 3 days per week.
Weekly Journals: Each Monday students are asked to
write about a topic of their choosing in their journal. Students often choose
to write about their weekend or something exciting that is happening in their
lives. Grade 1 students are working on writing 3-4 sentences using their “best
guess” phonetic spelling with support from sentence starters developed
together. Grade 2 students are working
on writing 8-9 sentences using correct letter case and punctuation. Grade 2
students are also encouraged to use their personal dictionaries as part of
their focus on correct spelling.
Guess Who: For this project students worked to
write clues about themselves as a way to learn more about each other and to
begin thinking about writing in full sentences and using descriptive ideas. For
the grade 2’s the expectation was to complete at least 4 topics about
themselves and write small paragraphs about each topic. For the grade 1’s the
expectation was to complete 4 sentences about themselves using their best
sounded out spelling and neatest printing.
Whispering Woods Descriptive Writing:
Our students have worked hard to integrate their understanding of the senses
and their explorations of Whispering Woods with some descriptive poetry. The
grade 1’s worked to develop two descriptive ideas for each sense. Their ideas
needed to include strong describing words and a detailed illustration. The
grade 2’s worked on writing three descriptive ideas for each sense. Each idea
needed to include at least two describing words plus an interesting ending that
helped the reader create a vivid picture in their mind. All students are now
working to type their work on the computer and then they will be making
watercolor illustrations for each page.
Remembrance Day Poetry: Students used their
understandings about descriptive writing to create a short sense poem to
describe their feelings and ideas about peace. Although these ideas were short,
they demonstrate each student’s ability to transfer their learning from our
descriptive writing study into a different context.
Word Work: Grade 1 students are engaged in daily
word work. They are focusing on developing their understanding of word families
as well as short vowel sounds. Grade 2 students are engaged in word work three
days per week. They are focusing on mastering their short and long vowel
sounds. They are also learning to use their personal dictionaries to help them
improve their spelling in their daily writing work.
Math:
Counting: We began the year exploring counting
and developing strategies for counting large sets. We looked at grouping
objects into sets of 2, 5, 10, and 100 in order to make it easier to count. We
also looked at the ways we organize our sets to make them easier for other
people to count.
Patterns and relationships: Students
used objects in nature to develop an understanding of attributes and to learn
to sort materials in a variety of ways based on common attributes. This
included learning to create Venn diagrams and T-charts. Students have also learned
to create and identify a variety of repeating and increasing patterns using
2-or more attributes (gr. 1), 3-or more attributes (gr. 2). This pattern work is an important step towards
understanding number patterns. Students have used their understanding of
patterns to create a special name pattern placemat to use for Fun Lunches.
Problem Solving: Students are engaged in weekly problem
solving related to our current topic of study. Some of these problems are
completed as a large group, some are completed as small group tasks, and others
are completed individually.
Basic Addition skills: Students are developing
their basic addition skills through math games and online practice in
Mathletics each week.
Social
Studies:
Community Stewardship: Following the harvest
of our Sun Circle garden we cooked and baked using the vegetables from the
garden. This was a way for us to come together as a community around a common
project and allowed us to give back to others by sharing recipes with our
families.
An Arctic Community: We were excited to
help Ms. Boyer prepare for her trip to Churchill, MB. We learned about
temperature, landscape, animals, and transportation in the north. We shared
what we learned by compiling travel packages. Next, we will continue looking at
traditional ways of knowing in the arctic by exploring Inuit stories and
culture.
Science:
Community Stewardship: Students were
responsible for harvesting the sun circle garden and reporting the harvest results
to the school community. Next, we will be starting our indoor garden where
students will be responsible for watering and monitoring our plants.
Temperature and Liquids: As part of our study
of the Arctic students are learning about the ways that humans and animals
adapt to harsh temperatures. Students are learning about insulation, including
animal insulations such as fur and blubber. They are also looking at the differences
between salt water and fresh water as well as ways that warmer temperatures
affect our oceans, ice caps, and animals in the arctic. Students will be
continuing this study through a series of science experiments in the next few
weeks.
