Week 6 - Safe Pockets

This week in first grade we started to learn about 5 life skills that keep us and everyone around us safe:

This week we talked about being helpful, careful, patient, and responsible. Next week we will talk about the last skill: being respectful. 

Every day we look for students displaying these 5 skills and make it the basis of conversations we have about keeping ourselves and others safe. When a student cannot make appropriate choices, then their kangaroo will leave their safe pocket and go into mine. It stays there until I see that child making the right choices.

For example, I might see a child grab a paper from another child’s hand. “Riley, is that polite or rude? Grabbing another person’s work is disrespectful. Jamie has worked hard on that paper. Move your kangaroo into my Safe Pocket.”

After the student moves their kangaroo, I require a right act. I acknowledge the right choice and the kangaroo goes back into their safe pocket quickly.

The Safe Pocket is based on teaching children new life skills and gives new chances in every moment to self-­correct. 

Home Connections:

Being Helpful

My words and actions help not hurt others. Our Question: Are you being helpful or hurtful?

Family Mission:
Discuss the importance as a family to be helpful to one another. “Catch” your child being helpful in words or actions.

Being Careful

I treat friends and things in a gentle way. Are you being gentle or rough?

Family Mission:
Discuss the importance of being careful with your belongings and your family members.

“Catch” your child being careful with household belongings and their toys.

Being Responsible

I do the right thing and can be trusted to do what needs to be done.

Our question: Are you being trustworthy or careless?

Family mission: 

Discuss the importance of being trustworthy and doing what needs to be done even if no one is looking or telling you to. For example, bringing dishes to the kitchen when they are finished eating or picking up something they see on the floor and putting it away instead of walking past or stepping on it.

Alternative: Give your child a "job" to do at home each day and track/reward them for doing their job!

Continuing our unit on Who We Are, the students tried out what it might be like to lose one of their senses. We also started to put everything together by asking ourselves What [have we learned?]? So what [seems important here]? Now what [should we do with what we've learned]?

In language, we have been building our knowledge of spelling through Word Sorts at our just right level. In readers workshop we are learning different ways to partner read. In Writer's Workshop, we are starting to practice taking a big watermelon idea and turning it into a seed idea. 

In maths, we are practicing:

• solving addition story problems with sums to 20 with situations of adding to and putting together, with unknowns in all positions
• using strategies to add with sums to 20
• solve for the unknown in an addition equation involving 3 whole numbers
• modeling with mathematics
• using appropriate tools strategically

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend!

Week 5 - Communication and Self Management

This week in Unit of Inquiry, First Grade saw how the skills of communication and self-management are necessary to work as a group:

(IB PYP Poster Pack BUNDLE By Megan Schreiber)

We split into groups to create a page to add to our senses book about the function of each sense and then presented that to the class. 

Look at what we created:

Ask us how one of our senses works!

In maths we practiced result unknown, change unknown, and start unknown story problems using our rekenrek number racks. We focused on using 5 as a landmark as an addition strategy and started to think about finding a double to add on and compensation to make a double. 

In literacy we practiced stretching our words to write all the sounds we hear in words. We also are learning new literacy stations this week and next week. Home learning will be picking an activity from our Words Their Way Choice board to practice our latest word sort with.

In arts, we have our first museum wall of the year, celebrating our still life paintings. 

We also used our sense of sight to imagine what our symmetry paintings could be. We also practiced keeping a beat with our hands while singing a different beat using ti-ti ta (eighth and quarter notes).

Please don't forget to place your Scholastic book order by Friday, October 2nd. Every dollar you spend helps build your child's love of reading and earns our school bonus points to use toward new books for our library!

Have a wonderful weekend enjoying the beginnings of fall weather!

Week 4 - Focus on Function

First grade dug deeper into our Who We Are Unit this week by unpacking the central idea. We rephrased this big idea into our own words:

Topic: The Five Senses

Big Idea (in our words): We use the senses to figure out what things are.

After sorting some of our questions from the Wonder Wall, we notice a couple asking about one of our key concepts: function

So we started to learn about how we hear and how and why we taste, recording those in our journals.

Also experimenting with mystery shakers using our sense of hearing, touch (heavy/light), and smell to figure out what was inside.

 

In literacy, we are working on small moment stories using the writing process:

1. Think of an idea.
2. Touch and tell across the pages.
3. Sketch.
4. Write.
5. Revise.

We are also building good reading habits:

1. Take a sneak peek at the beginning.
2. Check your sneak peek.
3. Do something at the end.
4. Read more and more.

For homework this week we have a new Words Their Way Choice board. Students will pick one activity from the Choice Board to do with the words they sorted in class today.

In maths, we worked on our number sense by building our own rekenreks (number racks) practice quickly recognizing how many objects are in a collection, without counting from 1. The number rack is a math tool made up of 2 strings of 10 beads; each string is broken into a group of 5 red beads and a group of 5 white beads. These groupings invite students to think in groups of 2, 5, and 10, rather than counting by 1s.

If your child is already familiar with combinations to 10, try challenging them by:

• creating a story problem to match the equations
• write the fact family for the equation 
• 5+4=10
• 4+5=10
• 10-5=4
• 10-4=5

In arts we completed our Still Life Paintings and began learning the song Make New Friends with sign language.

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Have a great weekend everyone!

TGIF Weekend GIF from Tgif GIFs

Week 3 - Sensing our World

First Grade got busy using their senses on a walk around the school. We thought about ways to record and describe what we sensed.

We were lucky to find basil and rosemary growing so we could think about how they smell and taste!

In arts, we used our sense of sight to do a still life drawing like the painter Paul Cézanne. We will add paint next week.

In literacy we had a very special visitor to help us roll our our literacy centers where we each practice skills that are just right for us. 

In maths we thought about combinations of ten using more than two addends by playing Game of Totals. In this game we have an opportunity to count, add, keep track of totals, and use visuals to see the sum. We considered what quantities we will need to reach a total of 10. We are still considering how to create a strategy to reach ten before our partner. Ask us how to play! Make sure you only pick from the numbers 1, 2, and 3.

Have a great weekend!

Week 2 - Beginning our Who We Are Unit

This week in First Grade we started to tune-in to our Who We Are Unit of Inquiry on Senses.

Here are the things we connected to the unit in our chalk talk after watching this video. 

Central Idea
Our senses help us to learn about and interpret the world around us.

Lines of Inquiry

• how we use our five senses
• how people can live without one or more of the senses
• keeping our sensory organs healthy 

Concepts

• function
• causation
• responsibility

Approaches to Learning

• Communication Skills
• Self Management Skills

Learner Profile

• Caring
• Open-minded
• Communicator

Learning Goals/Success Criteria

• Understand how we get information from outside and make sense of it
• Child can empathize with others who don't have all their senses - songs using sign language as an example
• Be able to explain how to take care of our senses and keep ourselves healthy
• Grade 1 one - two senses
• Grade 2 three or more senses

Action 

Actions are best when student-initiated but some actions we have seen before are:

• students creating a model of the sense they are interested in
• students learning some sign language 
• students writing books about the senses

If you child takes action at home, please be sure to record it (writing, video, or photo) so we can share it with the class!

How to support your child at home. 

• Noticing what senses you are using during a particular activity.
• Talk about ways things taste, smell, feel, sound and look to build their vocabulary in these areas.
• Note any questions they have and encourage them to bring those questions to add to the wonder wall!
• English language learners basic vocabulary video.

Drawing What We Know about the Senses:

Beginning to generate questions about our senses:

Home learning:

We began our Readers Workshop this week and students should begin to bring home books to read independently and/or with someone else nightly. 

This week we talked about the -at family of words and students will bring home their Word Work book to practice reading a poem for fluency. Ask them what words rhyme! Then they can draw a picture of what image they visualize when they read the poem.

Show and Tell

First grade is ready to get back into Show and Tell. Due to health precautions I won't be sending home a bag like last year, it will be the student's responsibility to bring something the next day when it is their turn. At home please practice with them three clues about how it LOOKS, SMELLS, TASTES, FEELS, or SOUNDS. 

Looks	Sound	Taste	Feel	Smell
Round, Square...	Loud	Sweet	Hot / Cold	sweet
Red, Green...	Quiet	Sour	Rough / Smooth	strong
Colorful	Squeaky	Bitter	Soft / Hard	fresh
Like a...	Musical	Salty	Dry / Wet	fruity
See-through (transparent)	Rings	Spicy	Slimy	spicy

First Week Report

We had a wonderful week (and 2 days) in First Grade!

We began the year learning, practicing, and filming The School Cone Tree to welcome the incoming Preschool class upstairs!

In literacy, we have begun our Reader's Workshop routine and built our stamina with a ten minute independent reading time. We also got to tour and explore the new and improved library organization thanks greatly to a Grade 1 parent giving a lot of her time over the summer. Please remember to return the books borrowed on Monday.

In maths, we began exploring the manipulatives we will be using and have been reviewing some of the maths concepts taught in first grade like: counting, skip-counting, addition, and story problems. We also investigated what exactly a meter is as the students are being asked to keep a meter apart from each other. 

In Unit of Inquiry, we started exploring How We Express Ourselves by creating self-portraits.

See you next week!

Welcome to First Grade!

It is my pleasure to be taking our class up to first grade! I am looking forward to welcoming you all back at 8:45am on Thursday, August 20th!

As we are still maintaining a COVID-19 safety protocol, please review the Coronavirus Health and Safety Policy August 2020 (attached in today's email). Grade 1 will be lining up outside of the yard gate (same place as in June) with the other lower primary students:
 

Please arrive at 8:45am when we will begin temperature checks to avoid a lot of time spent milling around outside. Remember students need hats and plenty of liquids to drink during the day so please send adequately sized water bottles. I would recommend a 1-1.5L bottle. They have ones with straps that are easy for the student to carry along with their backpack like this. Also, our school is not centrally air conditioned, so please have your child dress in cool, loose clothing so they will be comfortable.

SUPPLIES
Also very important is due to the safety protocols for COVID-19, students should not be using shared resources. Please make sure your student comes to school with the following supplies:

• colored pencil set
• 2 pencils
• 1 eraser
• 1 glue stick
• marker set

Sometimes it is helpful to have a box for them to keep their things organized in their cubby like this cardboard box or this plastic box.

Parent Night! Friday, August 28th at 6pm. 

Please mark your calendars for our online class parent meeting at 6pm Friday, August 28th at 6pm. At this time I will go over what you can expect this year, answer any questions, and we will decide our Class Representative and Deputy Representative for the PTA! The Class Representative is the liaison between our classroom and the PTA and would attend the 1-hour, monthly meetings. If they were not able to attend any meeting, they would then call on the Deputy Representative to fill-in. We will first ask for volunteers and if everyone is too shy, we will draw lottery style.

I am so excited to learn with you all!