Grade 1 B Newsletter #23

Day 2 PE Day 3 MUSIC Day 4 IT Library Day 5 ART Day 6 PE

Things to look forward to: Parental Engagement Week Grade 1 Presentation on Wednesday about Online Learning at Home. International Day: Thursday
We have a busy and exciting week ahead! Firstly we will be moving on to Ancient Greece as our exploration into Ancient Civilization Systems and Ideas continue as well as International Day on Thursday. Please note that this will be an early finishing day, times to be confirmed. In literacy this week we will be learning about the r controlled vowel AR as in pirates say Arrr We will make a pirate map filled with Ar words such as star, car and market. During guided reading we will rotate through 4 literacy activities that will further develop the Ar sound as well as grammar concepts. This week we will have a focus on verbs in our 20 minute morning sessions. We will link our new knowledge of verbs with nouns. We will start by introducing verbs through the game charades, move on to sorting verbs from nouns and adjectives and finally to using verbs in meaningful sentences. In writing we will recount our weekend news by using time connectives to order and sequence the events i.e. first, next, after that, then, last and finally. We will also focus on connecting sentences with and, so and because and focus students attention on ways to prevent run on sentences in their writing.

Now that we have completed 4 weeks of our Words Their Way Spelling Program, we will reassess students to see where they are in their progress with their spelling group to either move to the next group or stay in the current group for more practice and a deeper understanding of that spelling pattern. In mathematics we will introduce the new concept of greater than and less than. Students will play a guessing game to guess their partners number using the language greater than and less than. We will link it with a fun song called Baby Shark by the Learning Station which will help visual learners understand that sharks want to eat bigger numbers which will make the mathematic signs > and < more meaningful. Students will rotate through different activities that focus on this concept. We will then move on to an introduction to area and weight by discovering the surface area of different objects and weights of different items. We will find the surface area of different objects by covering the surface area with a common unit as well as introducing the concept of estimation of area where students will estimate and then check the correct answer alongside their estimate. We will start exploring Ancient Greek systems and ideas specifically focusing on the development and history of the Olympics. We will even have a mini Olympics during one of the lessons which will focus on our Transdisciplinary skill- Communication and working co-operatively in groups. We will look at the different ideas that were invented in Ancient Greece that are still used today. We will also link The Olympics with our language unit on Verbs and the different actions associated with the different sports such as throwing, hopping, jumping, swinging, skipping, running etc. Enjoy your week from the Grade 1 Team