During the week of Monday, March 9 to Friday, March 13, we will be celebrating “Literacy Week” at Brantford. 

One of the activities for literacy week will be a “book swap”. This is an opportunity to clean out books from your home that could be better loved in a new home. We will keep track of the number of books that your child brings to school so your child can then choose that many books at the book swap. Please send in your books so Mrs. Dias can prepare the books for the swap!

Here is a list of the activities for Literacy Week:

-Monday – assembly

-Tuesday – Wear any clothing that has letters or words on it and guest author, Nancy Duarte, will visit our class

-Wednesday – Book swap and Open House, early dismissal at 1:50 pm, Mrs. Mah will send home your confirmed slot to visit our class

-Thursday – dress as your favourtite character day – Ms. Mah will have the class create a simple costume at school so no need to create something at home (unless you really want to!)

-Friday – Cozy reading day. Students can wear PJ’s, bring stuffies and cozy blankets to have for special reading times throughout the day.

Looking forward to seeing you next week!

Click here to watch the video

We are so proud of our class for being very brave and trying to use their big voices during the reading of their story “How to be a good friend”. We hope you enjoy!

As you know, the class had a series of curling lessons. Here are a few pictures of the students demonstrating their learned skills:

Here are some pictures of the students exploring light and sound:

Dates to remember:

Wednesday  February 26, Pink Shirt Day– Our class will be presenting at the assembly at 9:30. We will be sharing a story we wrote titled “How to be a good friend” You are welcome to attend but I will try to upload a video of their presentation.

Wednesday March 11 – Student Led Conferences – early dismissal at 2:00. More information about signing up for a time slot will be sent home soon.

We hope you had a lovely family day weekend! It is wonderful to see the beautiful sunshine this week!

You may have noticed that the Gr. 7’s have initiated a “litterless lunch” project to bring awareness to the amount of packaging that we throw out at school. The students are being encouraged to take home their wrappers to recycle at home. For this reason, please empty the wrappers from your child’s backpack. We have an “emergency” garbage can in our room to dispose of things like kleenex and bandaids. Thank you for your support.

We thought you would enjoy seeing how our 100 day collections were used.

We also had fun building “trains” of 100 unifex cubes and doing an activity 100 times in the gym.

More photos of playtime fun :

Please try to complete some mathletics activities and read from your RED folder.

Upcoming dates to remember:

-Wednesday February 26 – Pink Shirt Day

-Thursday February 27 – Movie Night – Pikachu – please see PAC website for more details

-Friday February 28 – Pro-D Day – No school for students

Have a great week!

100th day and Valentine’s Day are happening this week !!!

Tuesday – return library books for our Wednesday library time

Wednesday – Our 100th Day of School. Please remember your collection of 100 small, inexpensive items. Examples include stickers, pasta, cereal, beads, marshmallows, etc. These items will not be returned.

Thursday – 

Friday – Happy Valentine’s Day. If your child is handing out valentine cards, please remember to bring them today. Please also remember your one piece of chopped fruit to add to our friendship fruit salad.

Please make note of the following dates:

Feb. 17 – Family Day – school is closed

Feb. 26 – Pink Shirt Day, assembly in afternoon

Feb. 28 – District Professional Day – school is closed for students.

Hello families!

I am excited to introduce “Mathletics” to you. It is an online program that you can use with your child at home to practice and reinforce math concepts. Our school has a license to provide this program to our class. Your child has received a specific username and password so they can use the program at home with your permission. You will want to supervise your child while they start out with this program to ensure they understand how to navigate the site. We practiced using the site in class so they should be somewhat familiar with how it works. I recommend no more than 10 minutes per session, 3-4 times per week because I feel it is important to limit screen time for children.

Your child’s username, password, and website address are taped into the front of their planner for easy access at home. Thank you for your support!

Weekly update Feb. 3 to 7

Monday – dismissal at 2:00

Tuesday – 

Wednesday – library day, hot lunch

Thursday – 

Friday – Family reading, curling class

Upcoming special days:

-Wednesday Feb. 12 – 100th day of school. Remember to bring a collection of 100 small inexpensive items.

-Friday, Feb. 14 – Valentine’s Day – students are invited to bring Valentine cards for classmates and one piece of pre-cut fruit for our Friendship fruit salad.

-Wednesday, Feb. 26 – Pink Shirt Day – this is a day to remember to be kind and be a good friend. Students are welcome to wear pink.

I cannot believe that we have already arrived at the last week of January! 

Today I will be sending home a calendar for February and some notes about Valentine’s Day, 100th Day of school, and Pink shirt day. Please look for this information on the reverse of the February calendar.

We continue to have Family Reading time on Friday mornings from 8:55 to 9:15. Please join us if you are able to!

The students are understanding the process of subtraction very well, but please encourage your child to practice at home so they are able to move towards memorizing basic subtraction facts.

Please send library books to school tomorrow (Wednesday).

Have a wonderful week!

I am sure you have heard your child mention “Daily 5” and you may be wondering what exactly they are talking about. Here is some more information for you.

What is Daily 5?

It is a literacy structure that allows for differentiation (students working at their own level) while maintaining consistency in the classroom. It is a system of 5 literacy tasks that teaches students independence and self-regulation.

1. READ TO SELF: When students reads to themselves, they are choosing leveled books from their “book holders”. They are taught to read by looking at the pictures, re-telling the story, or looking at the words.
2. READ TO SOMEONE: When students read to a buddy, they are practicing their reading skills orally and are working on connecting, predicting, and listening.
3. LISTENING TO READING: The students will soon begin to listen to reading on CD’s while they follow along with a corresponding book.
4. WORD WORK: the students will work in class on activities that correspond to a list of sight words that are introduced at school. 
5. WORKING ON WRITING: The students will be given prompts and tools to work in their journals and explore other forms of writing.

This week, READ TO SOMEONE was introduced. I hope you enjoy looking at the photos of everyone engaged in reading to a buddy. For our first session, they were on task for 15 minutes!!! Please also see the poem we say to remember how we sit during “Read to Someone”.

I hope you had a lovely weekend! 

Monday – dismissal at 2:00

Tuesday – please return library books for tomorrow

Wednesday- We are fortunate to have an in-class workshop from the Burnaby Art Gallery. We will focus on creating a 3D community. The PAC is very generously supplying the funds for the opportunity. Thank you PAC!

Please continue reading the RED folder books with your child as often as you can. The students are working so hard on building their reading skills and we are so proud of their determination. 

At this point in Grade 1, we are working on memorizing basic math facts up to 10 (ie, 3+7=10, 4+6=10). If you have time to practice with your child that would be wonderful. 

We will be introducing the concept of subtraction this week so understanding basic addition facts will help the students with subtraction as well.

Have a great week!

Hello families!

How exciting to have our first snowfall of the year! For homework, the students are to think of ways that they like to play in the snow and we will then be using these ideas in our writing and art projects on Tuesday. 

Please remember to send in the curling permission form/$5 and any hot dog/samosa day orders. There were some overdue library book notices that were sent home today so please send in those books asap.

Thank you for sending your child prepared for the cold weather. Playing outside is so much more fun when we are warm and dry.

Have fun in the snow tonight!