Category: Class News

100’s Day

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Today was the 100th day of school this year.  Students were very excited when we added the 100th straw to our Place Value pocket, and changed our running ‘days in school’ total, during Calendar.

Students brought in collections of 100 items.  They also brought in food items (100 each) to add to our 100’s Day Hash.  We will be eating this hash tomorrow (101st Day) with a special movie that we will be watching with the Kindergarten class in the afternoon.  They will tell you about it tomorrow after school.

Some of the activities that we did today were: making necklaces with 10 groups of 10 different coloured Fruit Loops; and making crowns with tally marks (20 groups of 5). These crowns were attached to head bands on which they put 20 stickers (hopefully in a pattern) and wrote the numbers 5 to 100, counting by 5’s. We also began to work in a booklet with ‘hundreds’ of math questions in it.  We will continue working on these tomorrow.

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It was a hectic day – one of many this month!!  There is never a dull moment in grade 1 …

Valentine’s Day

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We had a nice, quiet celebration last Friday (February 12th) when the children delivered valentines to their friends. We decorated red foam hearts with beads, stickers, and other shapes.

We also created these ‘Valentine Puppies’ out of construction paper that we cut into heart shapes and then cut and arranged them to make the dogs.  Spots were added on with red paint by using a finger as a paint brush.

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These are on display on the bulletin board in the hallway between our classroom and the office.  Check them out when you get a chance.

Lunar New Year Math

We had a great week of celebration and learning last week!

Aside from our dumpling making, the great assembly, and the wonderful potluck luncheon we enjoyed – thank you to all the parents who sent in the wonderful food!! – we learned that some of the math games we are used to playing have Chinese origins!  Students spent the afternoon on Thursday playing: Tic Tac Toe; dominoes, and Chinese checkers.

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We also heard the story “Grandfather Tang’s Story” and did some experimenting with tangrams – a square which is cut into seven different shapes.

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Our lanterns looked great in the classroom, and when we moved them to the gym for the assembly.

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Lunar New Year 2016

Our Lunar New Year celebration will be held this Friday (February 5th) as the day of the actual holiday is on Monday, February 8th which is a statutory holiday (Family Day).

We will begin our day by each making some traditional Chinese dumplings with the wonderful mums of the PAC who come in to teach the students this technique.  The dumplings are then cooked and brought to classrooms as part of the luncheon.

After Recess we will be holding our assembly.  Some classes will be presenting and there will also be our school’s version of the dragon dance performed by divisions 3 and 1.

We will be back in our classes by 11:30 a.m. to enjoy our annual potluck luncheon. Thank you, in advance, for the wonderful food that you will send in.  It would be great if a few parents could stay and help with setting up and cleaning up the food.

In our classroom this week we have been doing activities about the traditions of Lunar New Year.  Students wrote poems about dragons. These are on display on the bulletin board by the office.

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Today our Directed Drawing lesson was on a Chinese dragon.  These are on display on the bulletin board at the back of our classroom.  Unfortunately the photos of most of the pencil drawings are too light to show up.  I have a few included below.  It would be great if you could see them in the classroom.  The students are showing strong improvement in their drawings from September!!  These dragons are quite impressive!

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Tomorrow morning the whole school will be in the gym enjoying a traditional Chinese musical group called Golden Pearl.  Tomorrow afternoon our class will continue with our theme-based activities.

Happy Year of the Monkey!

 

Snow Families

We spent the first two weeks’ Art periods working on our Snow Families.  We began by painting the blue ‘sky’ backgrounds onto watercolour paper.  We then cut or ripped up white tissue paper and glued it to the bottom portion of the paper, making the snow base.  This was then drizzled with liquid glue and sprinkled with white crystal glitter.

Students then added the snow bodies using white paint and different sized round sponges – making a snow-figure for each person in their ‘immediate’ family (mum, dad, brother, sister).

The next week, when these were all nicely dried, we added all the extra details.  I made a name banner for each family and the students decorated the snow people with hats, scarves, beads/sequins, etc.  They drew on faces and stick arms with Sharpies.

I think that they look quite amazing.  They are displayed on the bulletin board outside of our classroom.  Check them out, in person if you get a chance, or below …

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Happy New Year

I hope that you all had a great break.  We have had a busy first two weeks back.  It does seem to have taken the students a little bit to get back into the ‘swing of things’.  We have had a few ‘chats’ about expectations and following routine.

We will be finishing up our Fairy Tale unit in the next two weeks.  This week we are looking at Cinderella – the traditional story and a lot of the variations from different cultures around the world.  We will then be putting a lot of our fairy tale activities together in our own Jolly Postman booklets.   Our next Social Studies unit will be ‘Family’.

In Math this week we will be doing a mini-unit on fractions.  This has meshed in quite nicely with our performance of “I am a Pizza” for this Friday’s Celebration of Learning Assembly (COLA) – with Division 1 –  as we are using pizzas to learn ‘half’ and ‘quarter’.  Next week we will begin working on ‘measurement’ in Math.

If you get a chance to come to Rosser on this Friday morning (9:00 a.m.) our class will be performing the song we have been practising.  The students are looking forward to this.

Check the ‘Upcoming Events’ page to see what will be happening in the next month or so.

** Please ensure that your child has a pair of shoes that they can wear as ‘clean, indoor’ shoes – especially in this wet weather.  When students come in from the wet and muddy field their shoes need changing so that our carpet – which is sat upon – is not covered in all that wetness or mud.  Thank you for your support in this.

** A lot of students are reporting that they are not doing daily reading practise at home.  This is becoming evident in the groups that have pink and blue homework sheets sent home weekly.  Please take 10 minutes each night and go over those homework sheets with your child.  This is generally the only ‘homework’ given in grade one.  All words on these sheets should be read with proper phrasing and fluency.  There should no longer be too much hesitation or sounding out of the passages that they should now know.  One of the groups will be bringing home a yellow duotang with extra practise sheets in it this week.  Please work with your child on this each evening and return it when your child is reading all sheets competently (phrased and fluent).  Reading is a major focus of the grade one programme.  It impacts all other subject areas.

We are approaching the mid-point of Grade 1.  It is amazing to think how quickly this year is passing!!  We have many more areas of exciting things to learn and experience.  We will keep you updated as things progress.  Keep checking back …

Pancake Breakfast, Santa, and Bingo

On December 18th we had a fun-filled day.  We began by joining Division 1 in the gym for a very yummy second breakfast of pancakes made by the parent group. Santa, and his elf helper, showed up and gave out goodie bags to all students.  A huge “THANK YOU” to the PAC for all their hard work and generosity!

Between Recess and Lunchtime we participated in the school-wide Bingo.  We had previously made our own personalized Bingo cards.  We were joined by three Grade 7 students who came down to help out.  Thank you to Jenae, Hasib, and Tina!!!  In between Bingo games the winning names of the raffle baskets were drawn.  We were lucky to have winners for both baskets and Bingo.

During the afternoon our class got together with the K class for some joint Centre time.  The Grade 1’s had fun re-visiting their old classroom and getting to know the K students for the first part of the afternoon.  The K’s then came to our classroom where our students introduced the K’s to our Centre activities.  The Grade 1’s seem to really enjoy being the ‘big buddies’ for the afternoon.

At the end of the day I read, “The Night Before Christmas” to my class and then we were surprised by a delivery of some very COLD LETTERS from the North Pole.  Santa answered the letters that the students had written to him.

I hope you all had a very nice break.  We are rested and ready to take on the second term!!!

Clay Snowpeople

We spent several days in December working on the students’ presents to their families.  For many of the students this was their first experience working with clay.

Students began by building the clay into three rings around a wooden doweling form. They learned how to join the clay sections and make it smooth with small bits of water. They pulled out ‘carrot’ noses and then created hats for their people.  Holes were put into the sides of the snow people and the students’ initials were carved onto the bottom of the forms.

These clay forms needed to spend a week drying in the class before they were put into the school’s kiln where they underwent their first ‘firing’.  When they came out of the kiln the students glazed them, and their hats, and then they went back into the kiln for their second (and last) firing.

Students collected twigs from the playground which were used for the snow-people’s arms.  Students made felt scarves by gluing small bits of felt onto a longer piece. They chose three pom poms for the buttons and used a black Sharpie pen to draw on the mouths.  When the pieces were all put together the snow people all looked very festive indeed!

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I hope you all enjoy having these as part of your holiday celebrations for years to come!