Fabulous First Graders

Hello Grade 1 Families, It has been a wonderfully adventurous month.  We can't believe that we only have one more month of Grade 1 left! Science This month we focused on the needs of animals and plants.  We learned what plants need to survive and we even planted some.  Ms. Secord's class has watched a bean grow (it is even starting to bloom a little flower) and their sunflowers and wildflowers are looking green! Ms. McGill's class planted seeds as well.  Unfortunately they did not grow.  Room 2 has been investigating why!  So far, we think it is because Ms. McGill added some soil that wasn't as healthy as she thought.  Oh no!  She is working hard to develop her gardening skills.  This past week Room 2 planted more wildflower and sunflower seeds and we are hoping to see them sprout before the end of the school year. Next, Grade 1 began exploring the relationship between animals (specifically insects) and plants.   We investigated the questions: "Why are plants impor

 This week we continued with our new literacy centres.  They are so much fun.  the kids are even taking videos and pictures of their completed work. We also continued with practicing sentence writing and using kid spelling.  The kids are becoming more confident in sounding out words to try and spell them by themselves. We worked a few more days on our subtraction colour by number, and then Ms. Secord's class started learning about story problems and graphing, and Ms. McGill's class started learning about fact families, and how addition and subtraction are related.  Next week we will switch and learn about the topics we didn't do this week. We decided to look keeping into plants this week, and find out more about where they come from.  Most of the students knew that plants come from seeds, but we didn't really know where seeds come from.  We talked about where seeds might come from, why we might plant seeds, and what seeds look like.  We discussed what a seed needs to gr

We got to start our online reading program with Calgary Reads this week!  It was so much fun meeting our reading buddies, sharing a book, and looking closely at the pictures!  It is also amazing that all of the students got to take home a brand new book!  We can't wait for next week. This week we started new literacy centres, and they have been fun!  We are practicing building poems with words we have learned in the classroom, we are trying to find the beginning, middle, and end sounds of CVC words, we are continuing to practice segmenting sounds in words to try and spell what we hear, we are practicing reading in small groups with the teacher, and we have started trying to hear the 2 sounds at the beginning of a word that starts with 2 consonants (for example, st- bl- tr-). We are also working on building our independence and mastery of kid spelling and trying to write simple sentences on our own. The teacher is giving the students a sentence starter on the board, and one example

 Welcome back!  We hope you had a great spring break!  This week has been full of getting ready for our Circle of Courage assembly about Independence. In writing this week we started off with brainstorming ideas about how we are independent at school.  We had a video chat with the other class and we cam up with so many ideas! Then we learn how to use speech bubbles when drawing our pictures, and we looked at how our favourite characters, Piggie and Gerald, use speech bubbles in their books.  We paired up with a buddy and planned a page where Piggie and Gerald showed one of our ideas about independence, and then we got to act it out!  We made Piggie and Gerald headbands, and our teachers recorded us acting out our Independence ideas, and then put it together like a book! We shared our book/video with the school during the assembly! In math we have continued to practice our doubles addition facts, with answers to 20.  Check out the links in our Google classroom to practice at home with y

Our big question for the year:  Who am I and how do I know? has been explored further over the last few weeks.  Following our interview questions that were sent home we created a classroom map and pinpointed where we are now (Calgary) as well as other parts of the world that our families were from before us! Ms. Secord's class map Our next step was to look up photos of the countries that our families are from, as well as the flags that represent them.  This led to conversations about why someone might leave one country and move to where we are now.  As a class, we continued to discuss flags and the symbols that are on them.  We made a class flag and at the end of the week worked on individual flags that represent answers to questions such as "Who am I as a person?" and "What is important to me?". Ms. Secord's class flag In Science we explored using paint on different surfaces!  Using a wooden cutting board, foil sheet, glass cutting board, cardboard and some

 This week we have been learning some new literacy centres to start next week.  We have spent time on figuring out the first and last sounds of words, and now we are adding how to find the middle sound of a word.    The students are also doing more practice writing using kid spelling.  They have been practicing hearing the sounds in the words they are trying to spell, and then writing them down. In math we have been learning about subtraction and how to use manipulatives to find the answer to subtraction questions (20 or less). We have also been practicing skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s, and students will be practicing filling in a missing number using these patterns.  Students are also practicing memorizing their addition doubles (0+0, 1+1, 2+2, ect). In Science we have continued our exploration of colour.  Students mixed 2 primary colours using clay and then recorded their results on a piece of paper.  We also started an experiment by applying paint to 5 different surfaces (glass,