Grade 1/2 Experiences at Rosser Elementary
Rosser Leadership students are planning a Bake Sale next Tuesday at noon to support several of their causes: their Adopt a Village in Ecuador, Community Homelessness, and the Grade 6/7 Camp next June. If you are interested, please send in cash on Tuesday for your child to purchase a treat. All items are either $.50 or $1.00.
Next week Rosser Leadership students are holding a Scare Hunger Food Drive in support of the Burnaby Food Bank. Please send in canned or packaged food items with your child to donate to this worthy cause.
We have our finalized weekly schedule and there are a few updates for you:
P.E. – Mondays and Fridays. Please ensure that your child is wearing running shoes these days. Also, it would be preferable if the girls were not in dresses or skirts for our gym times.
Computer Lab – Thursdays – 11:15 – 12:00. 30 minutes will be dedicated to DreamBox (Math) once we get it set up and then 15 minutes for other activities.
Library – Tuesdays 1:30 – 2:00. Please help your child remember to bring their books back each week so that they can check out two new ones.
Reading Groups – Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 9:15 – 10:00 a.m. These groups are starting next week. Students in our class are divided into leveled groups. I will be sending a letter home on Friday with your child’s Reading Group teacher’s name.
Music – Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Daily Read Aloud – We have been enjoying Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Ask your child to tell you about what happens each day. It will help the development of their listening skills and abilities to re-tell events.
Additional reminders:
We have had a great start to the school year! I am looking forward to continuing our journey together.
On Monday we began our daily read aloud: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling. We will read a few pages each day after Planners are done. Reading a chapter book is a great way to encourage active listening and the expansion of the children’s vocabulary through her very descriptive and rich writing. It is a great introduction to hearing stories that are longer and more involved. Novels provide the opportunity to learn delayed gratification (i.e. not having the whole story over in 15 minutes) as well as teaching reflection, prediction, and anticipation. I have a recently released special hardcover edition of the novel which has been illustrated throughout.
When we have completed the novel we will take the opportunity to watch the movie. Through this we will compare the book and the movie through their similarities and differences. Appreciating that most of the movies that we watch originally came from the written books is also a valuable lesson – and hopefully will inspire their love of literature.
Hi all,
The Burnaby School District has been experiencing a LOT of issues with certain email providers. What happens is that – because of some phishing scams – when we use our sd41 email to communicate with parents, their email bounces back as being ‘undeliverable’. This is especially true if the parents have a ‘Hotmail’ account. From current information from our District tech person, this is not likely to be fixed anytime soon. I sent an email two weeks ago about sending in grocery flyers and 14 of 21 emails bounced back to me!! Very frustrating for all of us, I’m sure.
For the interim, please check this blog for regular updates about upcoming events. I will be posting information about events that will be happening as we get into the ‘home stretch’ of the grade one year. We have several field trips, one via bus and other ‘walking’ ones in our neighbourhood, coming up over the next 6 weeks. Hopefully you have not been trying to email me without success. Know that if you have, and I have not responded, it is not due to neglect. I answer every email I get within a day:)
Alternatively, if you have another email address (besides the ‘Hotmail’ one provided to the school) please send it to me so I can use it to communicate with you.
Thank you for your understanding.
Shelagh Temple
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 …
We have spent the last few weeks learning and playing with magnets. Students have done experiments learning about attraction and what things are ‘magnetic’ and which ones are not. They have also learned about the two ‘poles’ – north and south – and how the opposites will attract each other but the same one will push apart from the same one.
We also experimented with the different magnets to see which ones were the strongest by seeing how many paper clips they could hold in a line hanging down. Originally most students had the same number of paper clips hanging off each type of magnets. Through experimenting one student discovered how to magnetize the paper clips to have more paper clips hanging. Then we all went back and re-tried all the different magnets and managed to get better results by magnetizing the clips as we pushed them over the magnet to join the line.
The students had a lot of fun and also learned a lot. We also spoke about how our earth is one huge magnet – with a north pole an a south pole.
We spent most of June learning about personal safety through the use of the C.A.R.E. kit and with the help of its character puppet whom the students named “Robert”. Students learned the correct, scientific names for parts of the body and what our rights and responsibilities are for keeping our bodies safe from harm.
Daily lessons were followed with a take-home paper that students were expected to share with their parents. I hope you had good discussions with your children.
On February 6th we participated in our JUMP event, during the afternoon, with our Division 2 buddies. We had a lot of fun doing a variety of skipping techniques including partner skipping and the long rope. We decorated our paper hearts and began the heart wall in the gym. Other classes added their hearts to the wall, as well.
Through the generosity of our parent community we have raised a great deal of money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation – over $2800.
This Wednesday we will be hosting our annual Student Led Conferences. Students will be dismissed at 1:45 to allow for these. The conferences will run from 2:00 – 4:30 and then from 5:00 – 6:20 p.m. Most of you have indicated the time slot which works best for you. Confirmations will be going home tomorrow. If you have not yet returned your form, please do so tomorrow.
Typically the conference takes about 20 – 30 minutes to complete. Once you are done you are encouraged to go and check out the Scholastic Book Fair that Mrs. Anstee has arranged for us.