Winter has hit us full blast in 1D since we returned from Christmas break. We have been, and will continue to, explore all things winter in Language Arts and Science. We began by brainstorming about winter using all 5 senses, including some winter activities. From there, the students had their first simple writing project of 2019 where they wrote about Winter is / Winter has / Winter can.
We went out and visited our class tree to see how it was doing in winter. We were only out there for a few minutes, as it was FREEZING outside (that blue sky is SO deceiving!), but we managed to get some observations that we recorded in our Tree Journals.
Our next focus was on reading rather than writing. We read a cute poem called "My Snowman Friend". We used highlighters (our FAVOURITE tool!) and highlighted all the sight words and spelling rules that we know - there are SO many now! We also looked for the rhyming words in the poem. After reading it together many times, the students then had to re-sequence the poem and read it back to me. They did a really good job!
We made our very own "winter friends" out of clay. Aren't they just SO adorable?! Next week we will be writing all about our winter friends and displaying the writing with the snowmen.
Our second winter project was imagining that you live in a snow globe. We examined some snow globes and talked about what is inside a snow globe, and how they are made. We used our 5 senses to describe what it would be like if we lived in a snow globe. After writing and creating our own wintery world in the snow globe, we read it to our friends in Mrs. Dupont's class.
Look at these beautiful winter scenes we created using different types of textures - lace, sand paper, paper, cotton balls. So pretty.
As soon as we returned to school after the break, we put all that we have learned about the Daily 5 into full rotations. Students have a stamp card for each rotation and they get free choice of where they want to go. They must do all 5 elements by the time we finish all rotations.
We now know all of the elements of the Daily 5:
Read to Self
Read to Someone
Listen to Reading
Word Work
Working on Writing
Here we are hard at work during the Daily 5.
We are all becoming such good readers. I was able to read with every student one-on-one last week. I love listening to them read!
We have a new and exciting reading tool to use on the Chromebooks. It is called Raz Kids. This is a levelled digital reading program. Each child has his / her own account and they are put at their own level (by me). The students have plenty of online books to choose from. They listen to the book, read the book and answer questions about the book. They can earn rewards for reading so many books and getting all the questions right. They really enjoyed it and we will be using it a couple times each week.
It has a been a VERY fun couple weeks in Math. We have been experimenting with 2D shapes. We have been exploring all kinds of ways to create these simple shapes using geoboards, playdough, pattern blocks and even making drawings out of shapes. It has been a blast! It is really neat to see children naturally exploring and not even realizing that they are learning.
Good news! Zero the Hero has finally returned from his Christmas vacation and he made an appearance on the 80th day of school! To celebrate, we counted 8 groups of 10 chocolate Cheerios. There's something about counting chocolate Cheerios that makes math easy! We practiced skip counting by 10s, then 5s, and then 2s. We represented the number 80 in a few different ways and recorded this in our Math Journals. We made cute little snowmen out of the number 80.
Our Science units right now really lend themselves nicely to Language Arts as well, so much of what we do in our day all overlaps together. Besides learning about winter, we are all also learning about our 5 senses. We have learned to identify the senses, match them to a body part and sort and classify them. We had a fun afternoon where I made popcorn and while it was popping, the students had to use only their sense of smell and hearing to describe the popcorn. Then they added the senses of sight and touch, and finally taste. We created an anchor chart to help us describe the popcorn.
Our learning in Social Studies has expanded from focusing on ourselves and our families, to learning about our school community. I introduced it with a discussion and mini lesson about maps and globes, and learning the difference between them. We examined a globe to find Canada. We looked at a map of Robina Baker and found some important places within our school. We will continue to look at many different types of maps of different places, including the community of Devon.
Phys. Ed. time has also been a favourite time of day lately. I am not sure, but I think it may have to do with all the fun mat and gymnastics work we have been doing. We have learned safe ways to balance, stretch, roll and jump and the students have been exploring these movements in some pretty cool Phys. Ed. centres.
But of course, after all that fun in the gym, we need to come back and regroup and get ourselves back into the 'green zone'. We have been practicing mindfulness each day.
CONGRATULATIONS TO CHRISTOPHER FOR BEING STUDENT OF THE WEEK!
