November 5, 2023

 Last week was so very exciting with the Halloween Howler and costume day on Halloween. The students all enjoyed dressing up for the day and pretending to be someone else.  

Thank you for measuring out the Halloween candy and maintaining overall healthy snacks.  It has made a positive impact on their learning. We are continuing to collect the small treat boxes that their candy came in, such as the little Smarties boxes, or anything similar in size. Please send them in as you have them.

Pumpkin Math/Science was enjoyed by all.  We measured in many different ways and compared size, shape and appearance of the pumpkins.  Many thanks to the parent volunteers who came in to support us.  We identified the parts of a pumpkin and their uses as well as the lifecycle of this fantastic squash.  We found answers to many questions we had about pumpkins, such as why they are orange and the shapes and sizes they come in.  We learned some fantastic facts about pumpkins, including that some are large enough to be made into boats!

We worked on reading, writing and representing teen numbers in many different ways and most seem to have an understanding that “teen” means there is a ten.  For the purposes of simplicity and understanding of place value, we are including 11 and 12 in the teen numbers as well as they are one ten and some more, even though we don’t say, “teen”.

We will begin adding teen numbers this week using a variety of hands on strategies to build understanding and flexibility.  As we master this skill and understanding, we will move on to numbers up to 50. You can support your child at home by helping them practice counting fluently to 100 by ones, fives and tens. 

In social studies we are focusing on being good citizens by helping out at home, school and in our communities.  The Terry Fox Run, Jacket Racket and Remembrance Day poppy donations are tangible ways students can support the greater community.  I encourage you to have these conversations with your child to help them understand the importance of working together as a community.  

We are painting poppies for a school wide display during the Remembrance Day service on Wednesday.  We have read A Poppy Is To Remember and learned about Lt. Colonel John McCrae and his poem, In Flanders Fields.  My intention is to keep our discussions focused on being peaceful with one another and in finding peace within our own selves in support of our personal wellbeing. This includes sharing, inviting, giving, acceptance and having empathy for ourselves and others. This will be the focus of our writing in the coming days.

Magic/bossy “e” continues to be our focus in our phonics/reading/lessons. The language we are using is that the silent “e” causes the previous vowel to say it’s own name or the long vowel sound.  You can support your child by doing dictation of word lists at home such as mat, mate, pan, pane, can, cane, mal, male, pal, pale, tam tame, lat, late, sham, shame, lit, lite, bit, bite, rid, ride, shin, shine, etc.  We will move on to long u next.

Pumpkin Week!

 Briar Hill School’s coat drive is back! We will once again be collecting gently used winter clothing for Jacket Racket, a volunteer organization which aims to ensure that all school aged children are appropriately dressed in the winter. Please consider donating winter coats, snow pants, mittens and hats for kids and families. There will be a collection bin by the main doors within the school building. Please send in any items with your child to give to their teacher and we will see that they get into the bin. Donations will be accepted between October 23 and November 3. 

As the weather is showing signs of cooler temperatures, we are exploring the changes that occur during this time of year.  We are discussing what people and animals do to adapt to the changing environment including location, shelter, body coverings, food sources/preferences, activities and movement.  We are learning about how indigenous peoples relate to the seasons and the significance of these seasonal cycles to their beliefs, culture and livelihood. What are you noticing about how your family is adapting at this time of year?  Are you warming up the car? Wearing different clothes? Eating differently? Turning up the furnace? Changing outdoor activities? What do you notice animals doing? Changing colour? Gathering food? Seeking winter shelter? Migrating?  Students are encouraged to engage in practical applications of this learning such as checking the weather forecast before going to school to ensure they are dressed appropriately.

We have been making scientific observations of natural objects and sketching what our eyes see.  I am amazed at the level of skill the students are demonstrating with their sketching.  We began with items we collected from nature including leaves, twigs, rocks and bark.  We have pumpkins in our room now and have been using the same skills to sketch them. These skills will help students record and share and explain their learning across the curriculum. When you are out in nature, take some time with your children to stop and notice, sketch and wonder.

In math we are finishing up our patterns by identifying, creating and extending number patterns through skip counting, noticing rhythms and looking for rules. We are using various arrangements of numbers including hundred charts, number lines, ten frames, tallies, beaded number lines and place value charts to explore these number patterns in ways that make sense for us. 

Do you see the visual patterns? Do you see the number patterns? 

Hint:  Look in the ones place.

12332  12332  ...

76  76  ...

09  09  ...

890  890  ...

45  45  ...

556  556  ...

1112  1112  ...

12122  12122  ...

During our daily calendar activities, we have been representing our daily numbers in many different ways in order to build understanding of quantity while we compose and decompose them.  These foundational skills build understandings that are transferable to other applications. We are moving into exploring teen numbers in greater detail and moving on to numbers to 50.  Unpacking these numbers through various hands on activities, written work and oral sharing will continue for the next few weeks. You can support your child with practice in reading and writing numbers as well as identifying the tens and ones in numbers. 

We will also be completing a cross-curricular pumpkin unit that will focus mostly on math and science as well as some social studies and art components.  We could use some volunteer help this coming week between 11:15 and 12:00 each day. This time will be devoted to pumpkin math including measuring, weighing, counting and comparing. On Thursday we will carve the pumpkins and having an adult at each of the four table groups would be greatly appreciated.

While our guided printing lessons have been completed, we will continue to focus on proper letter formation, size and placement through our daily work.  Please notice your child’s printing in their agenda message to determine if they require some support at home with these skills.  Daily direct teaching of phonics lessons will continue as we develop our reading and writing skills.  Through a sequential and systematic process, students are learning “the code” of the English language which will enable to them to decode (read) or encode (spell) words successfully using the skills taught. I will be sending home “heart” words (irregularly spelled) and “high frequency”  words (occur often) that you can help your child learn to read and write. Some words, such as said, fit into both categories.

I am in the process of setting up a home reading program wherein your child will bring home books/passages to read that focus on the skills they are currently practicing. Any books or laminated materials will need to be returned when the reading is complete.  Plain paper sheets will generally not need to be returned.  

October 10, 2023

 What a wonderful long weekend it was! I’m so grateful that the nice weather held over until today. It looks like that is about to change for a few days, so please make sure your children are dressed for chilly, damp weather for the remainder of the week.

Last week was quite busy with Thanksgiving art and writing for our Thanksgiving cards.  We worked very hard on them and really enjoyed being able to work with parts of nature again.  We have at least one more leaf project to work on this week, so hopefully the weather will allow us to collect enough small leaves. Donations are welcome!!

As we have been observing the changes in weather, we are noticing that frost is showing up some mornings.  I hope you will be able to take the time to stop with your child and enjoy this time of year and all the fascinating sights, sounds and smells it brings. What do you see when you look closely at the frost on the windows? Leaves? Grass?  Do you see any patterns?  How long does it last before it disappears?  Is there more frost some places than others? Why might that be?

We have been building up our stamina with quiet/independent reading time and we are up to 15 minutes of uninterrupted reading already!  Each student has a selection of books in their bins to choose from and has opportunities throughout the week to make new selections.  They also enjoy reading with partners very much. Today we met our grade 5/6 buddies in Ms. Kobel’s class.  We read together and got to know each other a little bit.  We are planning to meet every Monday to do some fun and creative things together throughout the year.

We are continuously learning new math games we can play to build our number sense and basic fact skills.  Last week we played some shape games and are trying to remember the names of 2D shapes such as rhombus, hexagon and trapezoid. These have been added to our morning centre time.

This week we will explore numbers to 100 on a variety of number lines and hundred charts, including the beaded number line below.  Ask your child about it. 

We will look for and practice skip counting patterns including by 10s, 5s and 2s.  If you could work with your child at home on these counting skills, it would be very beneficial to their learning and help them to achieve success at school. Today we learned that half of the number line is 50 and half of 50 is 25.  We also noticed that there are four groups of 25 in one hundred.  

Along with our daily printing/spelling skills, we are focusing on a high frequency word each day.  Here is a list of the words we have focused on so far - we, this, for, when, do, my, the, very …

Please review them with your child.  They are words that they use often in their reading and/or writing. Can they use them in a sentence? Can they read them? Can they spell them?

We are reviewing our oral rhyming skills and are beginning to transfer them from speech to written words.  Here is one type of activity that will support us with this.  How many rhyming words can they write?  Can they use consonant blends and digraphs in their words as well (cram, swam, etc.)?

Playing rhyming games at home, whether oral or written will be very beneficial.  During our daily printing, we also replace the first letter of words to create new words and build an awareness that many words that sound similar are also spelled similarly. Recognizing these spelling patterns builds strong readers and writers.

That's all for now.  Have a beautiful week!

It's Already Pumpkin Month!

I can’t believe it’s already October!!  September goes by so fast, so I hope we can linger in October for a while and enjoy the beauty fall brings.

Our lockdown practice today went very well!  We were all so quiet and found our places so quickly.  I don't think anyone was very nervous (we practiced earlier), but just in case, maybe have a conversation with your child to see how they are feeling.  

Last week, we continued our work on repeating patterns and I did manage to download some previous pics as well as current ones.

 We are now in the process of naming our patterns using the ABCs and looking for errors in patterns.  They amaze me each day with their knowledge and skill. I keep trying to stump them, but it never works!

Amazing!!!

As it was Orange Shirt Day and Truth and Reconciliation Day last week, we spent some time thinking about the experiences of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit children who attended residential schools.  We tried to empathize by thinking, drawing and writing about what is precious to us what we would miss if it was taken away.  It was a bit somber to think about, but a valuable exercise in putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes.  Here are a couple of books we read together.

When We Were Alone

You Hold Me Up

We are about 2/3 of the way through our alphabet in printing practice.  So far we have covered the letters a, b, c, d, e, f, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t and u. The students are using these letters to make consonant-vowel-consonant words  (sat, bat, bin, tap), words with consonant blends (stop, plot, trot), stomp) and words with digraphs (much, chop, ship, mash). Note that all of the words we are practicing at this point can all be sounded out if we know our short vowel and consonant sounds plus the digraphs /sh/ and /ch/. Please continue to practice these words at home.  We are using sound boxes to isolate each sound using a counter and then writing the letter(s) that make that sound.  Have them tell you about it. This is very important work that is laying the foundation for their successful reading and spelling skills.

Cooperative games are continuing in phys. ed and we began developing our skills with balls and scoops as well as some new tag games.  We will continue to go outside for gym on occasion as the weather suits it.  

Pizza Day was very popular and exciting.  Many thanks to the parents who organized and volunteered in addition to the student helpers who handed out our pizza.  Our environment also thanks you for sending in the plates.  FYI – if you ever forget to send a plate, I do have a bit of a supply of reusable plates here in class, so please do not worry.  The students know this as well.

We have the Terry Fox Run on Friday, Healthy Hunger on Thursday, and we will be doing some Thanksgiving activities throughout the week.    I was so thankful today for how hard each of the students worked on a Monday morning. I came in dragging my feet, but they sure stepped up to the plate.  Ask them about our marble jar! 

In a couple of weeks, we will be starting our yearly tradition of Pumpkin Math.  If you have not experienced this event previously in grade one or two, you do not need to miss out any longer. If you have already joined in the fun in previous years, please consider joining us again. I will be asking for volunteers for specific days (to be announced) and I hope many of you will be able to join us for this fun and valuable time of learning.  We will be observing, experimenting, counting, measuring, weighing, estimating, digging, carving and celebrating!