March 20-24, 2017

This first week back from March break was filled with Francofête activities! The kids had Francofête passports and each day had a special theme. Monday was all about French words. The kids learned how to play Scrabble Junior in French, and the whole class played Scrabble on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There was a Scrabble tournament on Thursday with 2 students from our class (I drew names from a list of students who had won games) playing against other grade 1 students.

On Monday we also read through the words on the Spelling Bee list and wrote some on them in the passports, using stamps with the vowels in red.

We worked with these words throughout the week. The next day the kids read through the list again in partners and identified the words they didn't yet know how to spell by circling them. The next day they wrote out the words they found difficult. Later, we had a dictée of the some of the words.

After this lead up, we had a classroom Spelling Bee to determine who would compete in the school-wide Spelling Bee. We were very proud of the 3 classmates who did so well in that event!

Tuesday's theme was French film, and we watched Le Petit Nicholas in the gym. Wednesday's theme was "the day of 1000 thank-you's." We watched a short animated film that illustrates the "magic words" in French (please, thank you, hello, goodbye, and excuse me) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euruZYeJRgI). The kids wrote out the words as a list in their passports, and then they used the magic words with other students. They collected tally marks from other students each time they used one of the magic words.

Thursday was the dress-up day, check out the video on our school blog to see some of the costumes that day: https://lordlansdowne.wordpress.com/. And Friday was the Spelling Bee. We also observed Earth Hour on Friday, and turned off all the lights in the school from 2pm onward. This provided an opportunity for our class to start talking about electricity and conservation, which leads us into our next inquiry focus on energy. 

Kids were finishing up their structures projects this week, listing their materials and properties and adding words to their photos using Skitch.

We did writer's workshop and reading with a bit less time. We talked about the 3 consonants that "give hugs" to other consonants - s, l and r. Many students find it challenging to blend these letter sounds closely enough with other consonants. The kids read simple syllables with these blends in a game show set-up with 2 teams competing.

We are back to geometry and spatial activities in math. We reviewed the names of the 3D solids and positional language with an activity that had kids giving each other a specific challenge such as "Put the cone beside the cylinder" and so on.

Then we had a fun group challenge of trying to find as many ways as we could to fit pattern blocks into a specific hexagon. The kids started off in their table groups, coming up with as many different hexagon solutions as they could.

The kids got really into it and we decided to line up all the various solutions, with the matching solutions together. Then we eliminated the matches and tried for more new solutions. We counted the solutions and there were nearly 50 ways the class had come up with! There was some rich analysis in comparing the solutions to decide if a given one was new or a repeat of an existing solution.

March 6-10, 2017

This week we focused on the French digraph "in" and its variations, "im" and "ain." The students practised writing a shorter text than last week, just 3 sentences. On Friday they wrote the sentences with many words available on the word wall, and with a partner. Afterwards they corrected their writing in coloured pencil, which has them practising the skill of editing.

The students also read and worked with a comptine using many "in" words, underlining the sound, filling in blanks, and putting the lines into order. 

In writer's workshop, I introduced an editing checklist to support the students through the steps of editing. Several students are taking the next step of conferencing with me and then producing a good copy of a chosen text. Some good copies are stories on a single page for inclusion in the class book, some are stand alone books in the same format as the A-Z books. These will be available for other students to read during reading time. 

In math, we worked on the vocabulary words for describing the position of things (under, over, beside...). We will be applying this vocabulary as we explore more spatial challenges in geometry. Here is a link to the song we sang with some of these words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npniUd2M_vI

The week was dominated by the work around our structures projects. Having planned the structures last week, the kids built them again using fasteners like white glue and hot glue to make them permanent. In their plan, each student had sketched their structure, named it, and identified the goal of the structure (to contain, to support, or to span). Before the building began, I asked them to take 3 photos as they worked, to show the beginning, the middle and the end of their construction. 

Once the building phase was done and the 3 photos were taken, the kids had 2 jobs to complete: to fill in the rest of their planning sheet with a list of the materials they had used, the properties of those materials, and the fasteners they had used; and to add 1 sentence to each of their 3 photos using an app called Skitch. Both projects required a lot of initiative and risk-taking on the part of the students. I provided a template for the 3 sentences for the Skitch project to help them write, for example, "At the beginning I put the wood on the base. In the middle I put the cardboard beside the wood. At the end I put the plastic on the cardboard."

Some students managed to finish both tasks, but most students will return to the projects after March break. 

February 27 - March 3, 2017

The French digraph we focused on this week was "on". The sight words with "on" were fairly simple, but our dictée was quite challenging because it was a text instead of a list of words. I recently attended a literacy conference and was inspired to try the new approach to dictée that I encountered there. The kids read the text and copied the text several times during the week.

They did a practice dictée on Thursday. The dictée on Friday was done with partners and with all classroom spelling resources available. So the sight words with "on" were visible on the wall, but the kids had to know where to look. They could discuss the spelling with their partner. Afterwards, the kids corrected mistakes in the text with a coloured pencil. This experience resembles closely what they do during writer's workshop and enforces the skills they need to spell words correctly when they are writing: noticing incorrect spelling, finding a reference for correct spelling, and correcting spelling mistakes during editing.

We watched a video of Zayd in Ireland. In it he gives a tour of his new home and shows some of his toys. I showed the kids a way to plan 4 things to say in a letter, either questions or news from here, and we wrote a sample letter together. Some of the kids took on writing a letter to Zayd as their next writing project.

We also did a review of all the comptines we've learned so far before writing one day, and some kids took on writing down and illustrating the comptines. We have special paper now for the good copies kids are producing, which will be put together into a class book.

The kids made invitations for the Art Opening on Tuesday evening, and so many parents came out to the event! The kids were really proud to show off their amazing work! Thanks to all for making the night such a success.

In math we continued to explore 3D shapes. We learned the French vocabulary for describing their properties (face, edge and vertex) and together completed a chart of those properties.

Then in partners the kids were given 2 3D shapes to compare using a Venn diagram. They had 5 criteria to compare: number of edges, number of vertices, number of faces, the shapes of the faces, and whether or not it could roll. The pairs presented their completed diagrams to the class, and together we filled in any gaps.

We embarked on our structures unit! We talked about the 3 possible goals of a built structure: to contain, to support or to span (i.e. a bridge). Then we learned the French vocabulary for the materials we'll be using when we build our structures: wood, paper, cardboard, metal, styrofoam, plastic, cloth, etc. 

We played a game where we passed each material around the circle, and before passing it each person said "This is made of ____." This got crazy and fun when multiple materials went around the circle in both directions!

We had a practice building session on Friday, in which the kids each came up with an original structure. They had to draw and name their structure (a fairy castle, a city, a nest...), and decide on the goal of their structure. Then they dismantled their structures and put away the materials. This was the planning phase, and next week they will make permanent structures to keep and bring home!